"Cubit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... demolished in order to obtain it. (184) The cross was tall enough for Haman and his ten sons to be hanged upon it. It was planted three cubits deep in the ground, each of the victims required three cubits space in length, one cubit space was left vacant between the feet of the one above and the head of the one below, and the youngest son, Vaizatha, had his feet four cubits from the ground as he ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... been guilty of trying to add a cubit to its stature by taking thought. Established, like thousands of other pools left in the prairies by that tidal wave of humanity sweeping westward in the middle of the last century, it passed its tenth thousand with a rush; ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... conceptions, mastery over language can do much, but they cannot make a poet. Nothing can, but being a poet. Nor can these gifts make a great romancer or poet in prose. Nothing can, but being born to romance, being a prose poet. As the Gospel has it—"Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?" George Eliot had not sufficiently meditated on this scripture. She too often supposed that by taking thought—by enormous pains, profound thought, by putting this thought in ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... than clothing? [6:26]Look at the birds of heaven; they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into store-houses; but your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they? [6:27]Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his stature? [6:28]And why are you anxious concerning clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they perform no hard labor, neither do they spin; [6:29]but I tell you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. [6:30]And if God so ...
— The New Testament • Various
... you what their respective weights are. The weight of a pint of hydrogen is three-quarters of a grain; the weight of the same quantity of oxygen is nearly twelve grains. This is a very great difference. The weight of a cubit foot of hydrogen is one-twelfth of an ounce; and the weight of a cubit foot of oxygen is one ounce and a third. And so on we might come to masses of matter which may be weighed in the balance, and which we can take account of as ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... smallness of the social conditions which allowed him to play the role of a Croesus in the fancy of love-sick maids, he could not deny that he found it a pleasant thing to be the object of such tender rivalry. It seemed to add a cubit to his height and two to his self-esteem. He revelled in the sense of his desirability and watched with amusement the innocent manoeuvres by which his fair entertainers checkmated each other, and in their zeal occasionally forgot that he, too, was a rational being, endowed ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... by the power of the imagination he thinks to "gain a being more intense," to add a cubit to his spiritual stature. Byron professes the same faith in The Dream (stanza i. lines 19-22), which also belongs ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... tributary Prince. Argosies of gold, silk and spices, sailing steady, sailing fast over a waterway unblocked by Mahound and his soldans. All Europe burning bright, rising a rich Queen. Holy Church with another cubit to her stature. Christopherus Columbus, the Discoverer, the Enricher, the Deliverer! Queen Isabella, and on her cheeks a flush of gratitude; all the Spanish court bowing low. All the friends, the kindred, all so blessed! Sons, brothers; Genoa, and Domenico Colombo clad in velvet, dining ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... classified as brains of one, two and three storeys. As you cannot, by thinking, add a cubit to your stature, so can you not, by thinking, add a storey to your brain. You may furnish and brighten the one storey or the two storeys with which your mental house was built before your birth. You may open the windows and let in the sun and air. By the best ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... would be troublesome,—but simply by looking at her. You can see the feeling in their faces. They are for the most part small in stature, well made little men, who are aware that they have something to be proud of, wearing close-packed, shining little hats, by which they seem to add more than a cubit to their stature; men endowed with certain gifts of personal—dignity I may perhaps call it, though the word rises somewhat too high. They look as though they would be able to say a clever thing; but their spoken thoughts seldom rise above a small, acrid sharpness. They respect no ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... by gold or silver chains tied to the knee [g]. The ecclesiastics took exception at this ornament, which they said was an attempt to belie the scripture, where it is affirmed, that no man can add a cubit to his stature; and they declaimed against it with great vehemence, nay, assembled some synods, who absolutely condemned it. But, such are the strange contradictions in human nature! though the clergy, at that time, could overturn thrones, and had ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... body than the raiment? Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto the measure of ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong
... whose every cubit Seems to cry out, "How shall that Claribel Measure us back to Naples? Keep in Tunis, 250 And let Sebastian wake." Say, this were death That now hath seized them; why, they were no worse Than now they are. There be that can rule Naples As well ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... to this astronomer, whose lectures so profoundly taught lessons of humility to the created, and which were so replete with silent eulogies on the power of the Creator! What was it to me whether I were a modest plant, of half a cubit in stature, or the proudest oak of the forest—man or vegetable? My duty was clearly to glorify the dread Being who had produced all these marvels, and to fulfil my time in worship, praise and contentment. It mattered not whether my impressions were derived through ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... and perhaps made a faint inclination, as much as to say, "I hear you, young gentlemen, but I do not forget that I am standing on my dignity, especially now since a new degree has added a moral cubit to my stature." Still the cries went on, and at last I saw nothing else to do than to edge back among the silk gowns, and so lose myself and be lost to the clamorous crowd in the mass of dignitaries. It was not ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... residence of Degial. I determined to visit this wonderful place, and in my way thither saw fishes of 100 and 200 cubits long, that occasion more fear than hurt; for they are so timorous, that they will fly upon the rattling of two sticks or boards. I saw likewise other fish about a cubit in length, that ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... comfortably and obscurely merging in a petty constellation of Alma Mater, was to become a bright particular star, and dwell apart. The avowed liberalism of Robert may, however, have done more in reality to shock Sir Henry, than his inability to add a cubit to his stature. It is pleasant to know, that the 'admiral and general at sea' never outgrew a tenderness for literature—his first-love, despite the rebuff of his advances. Even in the busiest turmoil of a life teeming with accidents ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... cunning Artificer, because that hee would not trouble one Cubit with the tuch of another. With a signe of shamefastnes, the Images with their left handes did hide that part which modestie would not haue seene, but accounteth ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... Chron. iv. 2. 5. by proving that a vessel of oblate spheroidal form—of 30 cubits in the periphery, and 10 cubits in the major axis—would (according to the acknowledged relation of the bath to the cubit) hold exactly 2,000 baths liquid measure, and 3,000 baths when filled and heaped up conically with wheat (as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... longer';—nor the moon rounder, he might have added. Why, 'tis the perfectness and completeness of it which makes us imagine that not a line could be added to it, or diminished from it, with advantage. Would we have a cubit added to the stature of the Medicean Venus? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... comparison between the size of Noah's ark and the Great Eastern, both being considered in point of tonnage, after the old law for calculating the tonnage of a vessel, exhibits a remarkable similarity. The cubit of the Bible, according to Sir Isaac Newton, is 20-1/2 inches, or, to be exact, 20.625 inches. Bishop Wilkins makes the cubit 20.88 inches. According to Newton the dimensions of the ark were: Length between perpendiculars, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... a horse, with a cubit and a half long horn on the forehead; was adopted by James I. as the symbol of Scotland on the royal arms; is in Christian art a symbol of the incarnation, and an ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than food, and the body than raiment? (26)Behold the birds of the air, that they sow not, nor reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feeds them. Are ye not much better than they? (27)And which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature[6:27]? (28)And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, nor spin; (29)and I say to you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (30)And if God so clothes the grass of the field, which to-day ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... links, called suluh, the common sort of which are nothing more than dried bamboos of a convenient length, beaten at the joints till split in every part, without the addition of any resinous or other inflammable substance. A superior kind is made by filling with dammar a young bamboo, about a cubit long, well dried, and having the outer skin ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... cover every land satisfactorily. Plants, herbs, and trees shall bend beneath [the weight of] their produce. The goddess Rennet (the Harvest goddess) shall be at the head of everything, and every product shall increase a hundred thousandfold, according to the cubit of the year.[2] The people shall be filled, verily to their hearts' desire, yea, everyone. Want shall cease, and the emptiness of the granaries shall come to an end. The Land of Mera (i.e. Egypt) shall be one cultivated land, the districts shall ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... on his second voyage alludes to another method of using the herb. They make a powder of the leaves, which "they take through a cane half a cubit long; one end of this they place in the nose, and the other upon the powder, and so draw it up, which purges them ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... to be loyal to Hellas,—to strive valiantly for her freedom,—and now! Was the Nemesis coming upon him, not in one great clap, but stealthily, finger by finger, cubit by cubit, until his soul's price was to be utterly paid? Was this the beginning of the recompense for the night scene ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... does it conduce to a better and higher morality. Why, my Masters, it can not as much as purge its own channels. For what is the ballot box, I ask again, but a modern vehicle of corruption and debasement? The ballot box, believe me, can not add a cubit to your frame, nor can it shed a modicum of light on the deeper problems of life. Of course, it is the exponent of the will of the majority, that is to say, the will of the Party that has more money at its disposal. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... certainly derived from the food of the animal, as the motion of Trevethyck's walking-engine from the fuel in its furnace. As regards matter, the animal body creates nothing; as regards force, it creates nothing. Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature? All that has been said, then, regarding the plant, may be restated with regard to the animal. Every particle that enters into the composition of a nerve, a muscle, or a bone, has been placed in its position by molecular force. And unless the existence of law in these matters ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the traffic can bear!"—a brazen rule. Of such sage policy the result can be seen in the wizened and undersized submerged of London; of nearer than London. Man, by not taking thought, has taken a cubit from his stature. ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... affected man, too, may be honest, may be generous, may be pious;—but surely he cannot be manly. The self-conscious assumption of any outward manner, the striving to add,—even though it be but a tenth of a cubit to the height,—is fatal, and will at once banish the all but divine attribute. Before the man can be manly, the gifts which make him so must be there, collected by him slowly, unconsciously, as are his bones, his flesh, and his blood. They cannot be put on like ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... particles thereof'—I am giving you the gist of the Lord's words, you understand—'and then realise that your seed shall be as numberless as those sands.' Now think for a minute how many particles there are, say in a cubit foot of sand—about one thousand million particles. Think of that! In eight thousand years, if the inhabitants of earth increased one trillion a century, three cubic yards of sand would still contain more particles than there would be people on the whole globe. ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... Nebuchadrezzar's city), the remains of which can still be traced to the east. According to Nebuchadrezzar, Imgur-Bel was built in the form of a square, each side of which measured "30 aslu by the great cubit"; this would be equivalent, if Professor F. Hommel is right, to 2400 metres. Four thousand cubits to the east the great rampart was built "mountain high," which surrounded both the old and the new town; it was provided with a moat, and a reservoir was excavated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Bundukani," they replied. So she said to herself, "He is naught but a Robber and Captain of thieves." Then the masons divided and marked out the ground, and each found that each and every had to pave and slab a surface of a cubit or less. Such was their case; but as concerneth the Caliph, he turned him to the chief Carpenter, and looking at him keenly said, "Go thou likewise and assemble all thy fellows in the capital: then do thou repair ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... of Zu-lai [3], And the cypresses of Hsin-fu [3], Were cut down and measured, With the cubit line and the eight cubits' line. The projecting beams of pine were made very large; The grand inner apartments rose vast. Splendid look the new temples, The work of Hsi-sze, Very wide and large, Answering to the ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... this city Babylon! and in magnificence also it surpassed every city of which we have any knowledge. It is surrounded by a trench, deep, wide, and full of water. Within this is a wall, the width of which is fifty royal cubits, and its height two hundred cubits.[6] The royal cubit exceeds the common measure by three ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... science to-day admits to be the curviture of the earth—and accepts in surveying. It was their knowledge of this fact that kept the building sound, without the cracking of a joint, through centuries, though so high. The Egyptians did not use the sacred amma, or cubit, which is about twenty-five of our inches. They used a profane cubit, as ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... Sea. A galley may be 180 or 190 spans long—Furttenbach measures a ship by palmi, which varied from nine to ten inches in different places in Italy,—say 150 feet, the length of an old seventy-four frigate, but with hardly a fifth of its cubit contents—and its greatest beam is 25 spans broad. The one engraved on p. 37 is evidently an admiral's galley of the Knights of Malta. She carries two masts—the albero maestro or mainmast, and the trinchetto, or foremast, each with a great lateen sail. The Genoese and ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... consciousness of the body, and there was therefore no reaction from it of those feelings of weakness and need which, to such a man as Cosmo, soon reveal the fact that he is not lord of his body, that he cannot add to it one cubit, or make one hair white or black, and must therefore leave the care of it to him who made it, he had to learn in other ways that his castle of stone was God's also. His truth and humility and love had not yet reached to the quickening ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... every other gas or combination of gases, possesses weight; some persons who have been taught that the air exerts a pressure of 14.7 lb. per square inch, cannot, however, be got to realize the fact that a cubit foot of air at the same pressure and at a temperature of 62 deg. weighs the thirteenth part of a pound, or over one ounce; 13.141 cubic feet of air weigh one pound. In round numbers 30,000 cubic ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... cubit is the space from the point of the elbow to that of the little finger: a span is the space one can stretch over with the ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... and sorrowful, And down upon him bare the bandit three. And at the midmost charging, Prince Geraint Drave the long spear a cubit through his breast And out beyond; and then against his brace Of comrades, each of whom had broken on him A lance that splintered like an icicle, Swung from his brand a windy buffet out Once, twice, to right, to left, and stunned the twain Or slew them, and ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... this gift became in old age was seen when, being almost incapable of moving his legs, and with body half paralysed, he was nevertheless enabled to accompany a procession for the length of two miles on foot, walking, to the stupefaction of thousands of spectators, at about a cubit's height above the street, on air; after the fashion of those Hindu gods whose feet—so the pagans fable—are too pure ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Mr. Fergusson, estimating the cubit rather lower than in the text, makes the porch 30 by 15; the pronaos, or Holy Place, 60 by 30; the Holy of Holies, 30; the height 45 feet. Mr. Fergusson, following Josephus, supposes that the whole Temple ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... boat go by pushing against the mast. He is like a drowning man trying to lift himself out of the water by pulling at the hair of his own head. Christ held up this method almost to ridicule when He said: "Which of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature?" The one redeeming feature of the self-sufficient method is this—that those who try it find out almost at once that it will not gain the goal. ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... Byles Gridley. He had come on an inquisitor's errand, his heart secure, as he thought, against all blandishments, his will steeled to break down all resistance. He had come armed with an instrument of torture worse than the thumb-screw, worse than the pulleys which attempt the miracle of adding a cubit to the stature, worse than the brazier of live coals brought close to the naked soles of the feet,—an instrument which, instead of trifling with the nerves, would clutch all the nerve-centres and the heart itself in its ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was the base of the whole system.[97] We shall not here attempt to explain how the other measures—itinerary, agrarian, of capacity, of weight—were derived from the cubit; to call attention to the traces left in our nomenclature by the duodecimal or sexagesimal system of the Babylonians, even after the complete triumph of the decimal system, is sufficient for our purposes. It is used for instance ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... two verses God's watchfulness and care over His beloved are held up to the view of the pilgrims, who are impressed with the truth that no one, "by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature." The best exposition which I can give of those two verses I have learned from our Saviour's "Sermon on the Mount" (Matt. vi. 25-33.). The third and following verses, as well as the next Psalm, are exegetical or illustrative. To whom do you attribute the gift of children? Is it not ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... manner you would be afraid to say that ten exceeded eight by, and by reason of, two; but would say by, and by reason of, number; or you would say that two cubits exceed one cubit not by a half, but by magnitude?-for there is the same liability to ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... And binding slich[20] also thou take Within and out, thou not slake To annoint it through all thy might. Three hundred cubits it shall be long, And so of breadth to make it strong, Of height so, then must thou fonge,[21] Thus measure it about. One window work though thy might; One cubit of length and breadth make it, Upon the side a door shall fit For to come in and out. Eating-places thou make also, Three roofed chambers, one or two: For with water I think to stow[22] Man that I can make. Destroyed all the world shall be, Save thou, thy wife, and sons three, And all their wives, ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... regiments extraordinary. The loss on the part of the British was heavy. Major Montazambert, of the 10th foot, Colonel Pattoun, of the 32nd, Quartermaster Taylor, also of that regiment, were the officers of the royal regiments which fell. Lieutenant Cubit and Ensign Lloyd, of the Company's service, also fell. The latter officer was treacherously cut down while parleying with the enemy. The 10th regiment fought desperately, making havoc of the Mooltanese ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... And they entered in straightway to Rud-didet, and they closed the door on her and on themselves. Then Isis stood before her, and Nebhat stood behind her, and Hakt helped her. And Isis said, "O child, by thy name of User-ref, do not do violence." And the child came upon her hands, as a child of a cubit; its bones were strong, the beauty of its limbs was like gold, and its hair was like true lapis-lazuli. They washed him, and prepared him, and placed him on a carpet on the brickwork. Then Meskhent approached him and said, "This ...
— Egyptian Literature
... familiar, rule of diet, exercise and rest; and Eric's attention began to wander. As well bid him add a cubit to his stature! He wondered how much Gaisford suspected. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... in our imaginations, since a city fifteen hundred miles high, is utterly inconceivable. The instruction intended to be conveyed to us by the vast dimensions, and precious materials of this city may be, the incomprehensible nature and transcendent glory of heaven. (1 Cor. ii. 9.) A cubit, as the word signifies, "is the measure of a man" from his elbow to the end of his middle finger. The measure of the wall, in height or breadth, was a hundred and forty-four cubits, or the twelve ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... I compare them with the general tone of Free Soil men in Congress, I distrust the atmosphere of Washington and of politics. These men move about, Sauls and Goliaths among us, taller by many a cubit. There they lose port and stature. Mr. Sumner's speech in the Senate unsays no part of his Faneuil Hall pledge. But, though discussing the same topic, no one would gather from any word or argument that the speaker ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... to add, by taking thought, One cubit to thy stature? and hast thou, Or such as thou, Nature's whole fabric wrought? Not thine such vaunt—not thine to disavow The lustre of thy genuine origin. To the Most Highest, as thine author, bow With rapture of exulting faith, wherein Devotion's cravings their desire achieve, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... of his father is stated, as I have noted, to have been ten feet, and though Confucius came short of this by four inches, he was often called 'the tall man.' It is allowed that the ancient foot or cubit was shorter than the modem, but it must be reduced more than any scholar I have consulted has yet done, to bring this statement within the range of credibility. The legends assign to his figure 'nine-and-forty remarkable peculiarities [1],' a tenth part of which would ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... can inform you somewhat on that head. A scriptural cubit measures twenty-one inches, and it has been calculated according to the dimensions given in the 6th chapter of Genesis, that the ark must have been of the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... the Inundations.—The just height of the inundation, according to Pliny, is sixteen cubits.(290) When it rises but to twelve or thirteen, a famine is threatened; and when it exceeds sixteen, there is danger. It must be remembered, that a cubit is a foot and a half. The emperor Julian takes notice, in a letter to Ecdicius, prefect of Egypt,(291) that the height of the Nile's overflowing was fifteen cubits, the 20th of September, in 362. The ancients do not agree entirely with ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... The Spirit of Wisdom in Arrangement; called the Lord or Father of Truth: throned on a four-square cubit, with a measuring-rod in his ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... object in the strict sense, i. e., some thing that exists independently of anything else, and is the recipient of qualities, as for example a man, a mountain, a chair. Or it is a quantity, like four, or cubit; or a quality, like good, black, straight; or a relation like long, double, master, slave; and so on throughout the ten categories. This classification applies to words and thoughts as well as to things. As an analysis of the first two it led him to more important ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... and therefore more numerous missiles. Lastly, in order that his own men might heap their weapons upon the enemy, without receiving any wounds themselves, he perforated the wall from the top to the bottom with a great number of loop-holes, about a cubit in diameter, through which some with arrows, others with scorpions of moderate size, assailed the enemy without being seen. Certain ships which came nearer to the walls in order to get within the range of the engines, he placed upon their sterns, raising up their prows by ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... beautiful woman of thoughtful and benign aspect and regal bearing; a diadem crowns her majestic brow, and she bears in her hand a rudder, balance, and cubit;—fitting emblems of the manner in which she guides, weighs, and measures all human events. She is also sometimes seen with a wheel, to symbolize the rapidity with which she executes justice. As the avenger of evil she appears winged, bearing in her ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... man should ascertain his height; height of his eye above ground; ditto, when kneeling: his fathom; his cubit; his average pace; the span, from ball of thumb to tip of one of his fingers; the length of the foot; the width of two, three, or four fingers; and the distance between his eyes. In all probability, some one of these is an even and a useful number of feet or inches, which he will always ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... we gazed upon the bearded face of the man, drawn by himself, in the manner we have described, with the brush on the canvas and without any previous sketch. The locks of the beard are almost a cubit long, and so exquisitely and cleverly drawn, at such regular distances and in so exact a manner, that the better any one understands art, the more he would admire it, and the more certain would he deem it that in fashioning these locks the ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... content themselves chiefly with winter crops of wheat, barley, and mustard. The Raja reserves to himself the sole right of catching the elephants, and annually procures a considerable number. They are sold on his account at 200 Mohurs, or 86 rupees, for every cubit of their height; but five cubits of the royal measure are only six English feet. As few merchants are willing to give this price for elephants which have not been seasoned, the Raja generally forces them on such persons as have claims on the court, who sell their elephants ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... do well to be angry, why is it thus with me?" But, "who hath hardened himself against him and prospered?" His counsel must stand; and you may vex yourself, and disquiet your soul in the mean time, by impatience, but you cannot by your thought add one cubit to your stature. You may make your case worse than providence hath made it, but you cannot make it better by so doing, so that at length you must bow to him or be broken. Oh then that this were engraven on our hearts with the point of a ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... and how many days of the wasted year, do some females devote to the improvement of their persons! Impossible as it has ever been, and ever will be found, to make one hair black or white, to add one cubit to the stature, to bend one untractable feature into the admired curve to which common consent attributes grace and loveliness; the impossible transformation is nevertheless attempted. The treasures of opulence are exhausted; the more valuable possession of health is ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... habits and the good are already fixed in our nervous system, and in physiology also possession is nine tenths of the law. We may intend to change, but by taking thought alone we cannot add a cubit to our stature. Reflection can do no more than point the way we should go. For unless the wrong actions are systematically and repeatedly refrained from, and the proper ones made habitual, thinking remains merely an impotent summary of what can ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... those things which are settled for one externally, as are the colour of one's hair and the size of one's bones, and which should be taken or left alone, as Providence may have directed? "One cannot add a cubit to one's height, nor yet make oneself a lady;" that was the nature of ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... way we discovered of irritating the aristocratic type of steam launch, was to mistake them for a beanfeast, and ask them if they were Messrs. Cubit's lot or the Bermondsey Good Templars, and could they ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... thy wheel unresting, trackless, all Our joys and griefs befall; In thy full sight our secret things go on; Step after step, thy wrath Follows the caitiff's path, And in his triumph breaks his vile neck bone. To all alike, thou meetest out their due, Cubit for cubit, ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... eyelids. Then lifted he up his left hand, with hard wringing and stretching forth his four fingers and elevating his thumb, which he held in a line directly correspondent to the situation of his right hand, with the distance of a cubit and a half between them. This done, in the same form he abased towards the ground about the one and the other hand. Lastly, he held them in the midst, as aiming right at the Englishman's nose. And if Mercury,—said the Englishman. There Panurge ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... for his good journey and safe return, insomuch that he was called jocosely by the name of Callipides, who is famous in a Greek proverb, for being in a great hurry to go forward, but without ever advancing a cubit. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... art makes each of us agree with himself about the comparative length of the span and of the cubit? Does ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato
... ourselves in the belief that we cannot bring our experiences to an end, however petulantly and irritably we desire to do so, because it simply is not in our power to effect it. We talk about the power of the will, but no effort of will can obliterate the life that we have lived, or add a cubit to our stature; we cannot abrogate any law of nature, or destroy a single atom of matter. What it seems that we can do with the will is to make a certain choice, to select a certain line, to combine existing ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... all on fire appeared the glowing throne; The dome's high arch reflects the mingled blaze, And forms a rainbow of alternate rays. When on the Goddess first I cast my sight, Scarce seemed her stature of a cubit's height; But swelled to larger size the more I gazed, Till to the roof her towering front she raised; With her the Temple every moment grew, And ampler vistas opened to my view: Upward the columns shoot, the ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... feasts, and mourning of the women, and took away everything that was either unbecoming or immodest; when they walked abroad, no more than three articles of dress were allowed them; an obol's worth of meat and drink; and no basket above a cubit high; and at night they were not to go about unless in a chariot with a torch before them. Mourners tearing themselves to raise pity, and set wailings, and at one man's funeral to lament for another, he forbade. To offer an ox at the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... A space, whose eu'ry cubit Seemes to cry out, how shall that Claribell Measure vs backe to Naples? keepe in Tunis, And let Sebastian wake. Say, this were death That now hath seiz'd them, why they were no worse Then now they are: There be that can rule Naples As well as he that sleepes: Lords, that can prate ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... court during the first Crusade: 'Neither amongst our own nation (the Greeks), nor amongst foreigners, is there in our age a man equal to Bohemond. His presence dazzled the eyes, as his reputation the fancy. He was one cubit taller than the tallest man known. In his waist he was thin, but broad in his shoulders and chest, without being either too thin or too fat. His arms were strong, his hands full and large, his feet firm and solid. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the poet's conception—and the sagaman's—of Bodli—a man in the grip of terrible Fate, who can no more swerve from the paths she marks out for him than he can add a cubit to his stature. The Greek tragedy embodies this idea, and Old Norse literature is full of it. Thomas Hardy gives it later in his contemporary novels. We sympathize with Bodli's fate because his agony is so terrible, ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... though, as I have said, he never was quite sure about his next meal, a raven always flew in from somewhere just in the nick of time. Minna came, and her sister, and his home was made comfortable for him; he had many friends; he rapidly became recognized as many a cubit taller than any other musician in the parish. The opera and some orchestral concerts were placed under his direction; and Hans von Buelow came to serve his apprenticeship as conductor under him, very largely at the theatre. Wagner mentions a performance ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... quite possible, in the first place, that Ravaillac had no accomplices; and in the second, that if he had any, they were in no way connected with the fire of 1618. Two other very plausible explanations exist: First, the great flaming star, a foot broad, and a cubit high, which fell from heaven, as every one knows, upon the law courts, after midnight on the seventh of March; ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... jesting tongue was silent in that presence. Anne Brinsmade came with her father and wondered. A miracle had changed Virginia. Her poise, her gentleness, her dignity, were the effects which people saw. Her force people felt. And this is why we cannot of ourselves add one cubit to our stature. It is God who changes, —who cleanses us of our levity with the fire of trial. Happy, thrice happy, those whom He chasteneth. And yet how many are there who could not bear the fire—who would cry out ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... dread." Then the foremost of them couched his lance, and rushed upon Geraint. And he received him, and that not feebly. But he let the thrust go by him, while he struck the horseman upon the centre of his shield in such a manner, that his shield was split, and his armour broken, and so that a cubit's length of the shaft of Geraint's lance passed through his body, and sent him to the earth the length of the lance over his horse's crupper. Then the second horseman attacked him furiously, being wroth at the death of his companion. But with one thrust Geraint overthrew him also, and ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... special attention has been paid to units of quantity, and, in the ignorance of more constant quantities, the governors of men have offered their own persons as measures; hence the fathom, yard, pace, cubit, foot, span, hand, digit, pound, and pint. It is quite probable that the Egyptians first gave to such measures the permanent form of government standards, and that copies of them were carried by commerce, and otherwise, to surrounding nations. In time, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... nor yet espied * Who amid men three gifts hath unified: To wit, a beard one cubit long, a snout * Span-long and figure tall ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... a wall encircling a temple, and in the man's hand a measuring reed six cubits long, each cubit being equal to about twenty-one inches. And he measured the thickness of the building one reed (about ten and one-half feet); and the height ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... island is also found the rhinoceros, an animal less than the elephant, but larger than the buffalo. It has a horn upon its nose, about a cubit in length; this horn is solid, and cleft through the middle. The rhinoceros fights with the elephant, runs his horn into his belly, and carries him off upon his head; but the blood and the fat of the elephant running into his eyes and making him blind, he falls ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... long space it could come from this place to that, without measuring the time in which it is moved? This same time then, how do I measure? do we by a shorter time measure a longer, as by the space of a cubit, the space of a rood? for so indeed we seem by the space of a short syllable, to measure the space of a long syllable, and to say that this is double the other. Thus measure we the spaces of stanzas, by the spaces of the verses, and the ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... found. See E.N. Adler's Jews in Many Lands, p. 28, also J.Q.R., IX, 669. The Nilometer is in a square well 16 feet in diameter, having in the centre a graduated octagonal column with Cufic inscriptions, and is 17 cubits in height, the cubit being 21-1/3 inches. The water of the Nile, when at its lowest, covers 7 cubits of the Nilometer, and when it reaches a height of 15-2/3 cubits the Sheikh of the Nile proclaims the Wefa, i.e., that the height of the water necessary ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... a very good house, belonging to a very great person. Colonel Morley had procured an invitation for Lionel, and said, "Go; you should be seen there." Colonel Morley had passed the age of growing into society: no such cares for the morrow could add a cubit to his conventional stature. One amongst a group of other young men by the doorway, Lionel beheld Darrell, who had arrived before him, listening to a very handsome young lady, with an attention quite as earnest ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... views will suffice. In a funeral sermon preached in Nauvoo, March 20, 1842, he said: "As concerning the resurrection, I will merely say that all men will come from the grave as they lie down, whether old or young; there will not be 'added unto their stature one cubit,' neither taken from it. All will be raised by the power of God, having spirit in ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... This I performed with scrupulous regard to all the rules of art. When I had finished that part of my work, I raised the mold by windlasses and stout ropes to a perpendicular position, and suspending it with greatest care one cubit above the level of the furnace, so that it hung exactly above the middle of the pit, I next lowered it gently down into the very bottom of the furnace, and had it firmly placed with every possible precaution ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... fishes of one hundred and two hundred cubits long, that occasion more fear than hurt, for they are so timid that they will fly at the rattling of two sticks or boards. I saw likewise other fishes, about a cubit in length, that had heads ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... advancement; and, when grace is begun, it is sweet to grow in grace. If we had power to add cubit by cubit to our stature, we should have far to grow ere our head should strike the heavens; and in bearing meekly, and acting righteously, and living purely, we have room enough to expand: it will be long ere we have done all, and so our progress be stopped by striking ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... to bid a man be habitually cheerful, he not being so already, is like bidding him treble his fortune, or add a cubit to his stature. The quality of a cheerful, buoyant temperament partly belongs to the original cast of the constitution—like the bone, the muscle, the power of memory, the aptitude for science or for music; and is partly ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... let them go into my tank. The most strange thing that ever struck me in connexion with this event, was, that the fish did not fall helter skelter, everywhere, or 'here and there;' but they fell in a straight line, not more than a cubit in breadth." Another shower is said to have taken place at a village near Allahabad, in the month of May. About noon, the wind being in the west, and a few distant clouds visible, a blast of high wind came on, accompanied with ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous |
