"Positiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... affords no parallel, and of which our senses are inadequate to the conception. Thus far, my young friend, 1 believe in the Gods, or in what you will of existences removed from the sphere of my knowledge. That you should believe, with positiveness, in one unseen existence or another, appears to me no crime, although it may appear to me unreasonable; and so, my doubt of the same should appear to you no moral offence, although you might account it erroneous. I fear to fatigue your attention, ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... projecting your psychic power directly upon and into the mind of the other person whom you wish to influence. Sometimes, if the person is quite negative to you, this is a very simple and easy matter; but where the person is near your own degree of psychic positiveness you will have to assert your psychic superiority to him, and get the psychic "upper hand" before you can proceed further. This is accomplished by throwing into your psychic atmosphere some particularly strong mental statements accompanied by clear ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... back of a piece of embroidery. There is, however, a class of minds which delight in the fogs of mystery, and, when a book puzzles them, accept this as evidence of depth of thought. I have been bewildered at times by the positiveness and reasoning folly of the insane, and I think most trained intelligences will feel that books like these mystical volumes require an amount of care and thinking to avoid bewilderment of which the mass of men ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... of our history, ideal and social, will be grand and of new import; it is perfectly natural to the American to mould in clay and carve in stone. The permanence of material and solid, relief in the forms correspond to the positiveness of his nature better than the mere ephemeral and even tricky methods of the painter,—to his need of motion and action, better than the chambered scribbling of the poet. He will thus record his best experiences, and these records will adorn the noble structures that ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... possible," says Jeremy Taylor, "for a man to bring himself to believe any thing he hath a mind to." But what is this belief?—Analyse it into its constituents;—is it more than certain passions or feelings converging into the sensation of positiveness as their focus, and then associated with certain sounds or images?—'Nemo enim', says Augustin, 'huic evidentiae contradicet, nisi quem plus defensare delectat, quod sentit, quam, quid ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... different point of view in his exposition of the Mu'tazilite physics, which he presents in a more systematic and favorable light than Maimonides, defending it against the strictures of the latter. But everywhere Aaron ben Elijah lacks the positiveness and commanding mastery of Maimonides. He is not clear what side of a question to espouse. For the most part he places side by side the opposed points of view and only barely intimates his own attitude or preference. ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... removed, in which Mary would probably have joined, but that she was now in her little sleeping-chamber with Tibb, who was exerting her simple skill to console the young lady for her mother's death. But the younger Glendinning stood up in defence of her property, and, with a positiveness which had hitherto made no part of his character, declared, that now the kind lady was dead, the book was Mary's, and no one but Mary ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... silence, leaning upon his walking-stick, whilst the committal was making out for Bampfylde the second. The fear of ridicule was struggling with the natural positiveness of his temper: he was dreadfully afraid that the story of his being taken in by the king of the gipsies would get abroad; and, at the same time, he was unwilling to give up his prejudice against ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... yard, likely, Dick," said Tom, but his tone lacked positiveness. It was evident that he had fears that such ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... will," Billy rejoined with great positiveness. "It's us for the San Joaquin. We don't know what's in our country. No wonder we're out ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... Regillus. There is no doubt but that Posthumius, after the battle, spread the report of such an appearance. No person could deny it whilst it was said to last. No person, perhaps, had any inclination to dispute it afterwards; or, if they had, could say with positiveness what was or what was not seen by some or other of the army, in the dismay and amidst the tumult ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... my purpose. First, that this part of the world has actually been peopled (Q.E.D.) to support which we have living proofs in the numerous tribes of Indians that inhabit it. Secondly, that it has been peopled in five hundred different ways, as proved by a cloud of authors, who, from the positiveness of their assertions, seem to have been eye-witnesses to the fact. Thirdly, that the people of this country had a variety of fathers, which, as it may not be thought much to their credit by the common run of readers, the less we say on ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... his people, though he acknowledged that they were probably of the same race. Attila and his armies, he said, came and disappeared in a very mysterious manner, and that nothing could be said with positiveness about them; that the people now known as Magyars first made their appearance in Muscovy in the year 884, under the leadership of Almus, called so from Alom, which, in the Hungarian language, signifies a dream; his mother, before his birth, having dreamt that the ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... they be modern books, is, they admit, a desirable accomplishment if it can be gained without too much cost, but not to be allowed the place of more valuable knowledge. A typical modern father, writing not long ago to a modern educator, after giving with equal positiveness the subjects that his boy must have and must not have included in his course of study, added by way of concession, "The boy might, if he has ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... other alienists (Wernicke, for example, in his Grundriss der Psychiatrie, Theil ii., Leipzig, 1896) have explained "paranoiac" conditions by a laming of the association-organ. But the higher mystical flights, with their positiveness and abruptness, are surely products of no such merely negative condition. It seems far more reasonable to ascribe them to inroads from the subconscious life, of the cerebral activity correlative to which we as yet ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... again instantly heard—the characteristics of the sounds in this instance being rapidity and energy, or positiveness. ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... might think this ought to make such a person modest in his enunciations; not so: too often it happens that, in proportion to the narrowness of his knowledge, is, not his distrust of it, but the deep hold it has upon him, his absolute conviction of his own conclusions, and his positiveness in maintaining them. He has the obstinacy of the bigot, whom he scorns, without the bigot's apology, that he has been taught, as he thinks, his doctrine from heaven. Thus he becomes, what is commonly called, a man of one idea; which properly means a man ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... connection with spiritualistic "circles" of his own day. It is curious to observe how readily this suggestion was adopted, and with what uniformity recent popular narratives of the delusion reiterate, with increasing positiveness of phrase, the unfounded assumption. The expression, to "try projects," is therefore taken by Mr. Drake from modern folk-lore. Fowler's address, entitled "An Account of the Life and Character of the Rev. Samuel Parris, of Salem Village, and of his Connection ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... are nearly the arguments which Antiochus used to urge at Alexandria, and many years afterwards, with much more positiveness too, in Syria, when he was there with me, a little before he died. But, as my case is now established, I will not hesitate to warn you, as you are my dearest friend, (he was addressing me,) and one a good deal younger ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the taproom to consult the driver of the Carlisle coach, who was taking a glass before going to bed—his hours of work being in the night and his hours of rest being in the day. That authority recommended, with the utmost positiveness of advice, that Robbie should take a seat in his coach when he left for the ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... and to know him so perfectly, that I could say, without flattery, he had all the depth of understanding that was requisite in an able statesman, and all that honesty which commonly is wanting; that he was brave without vanity, and knowing without positiveness; that he was loyal to his prince, and a lover of his country; that his principles were full of moderation, and all his counsels such as tended to heal, and not to widen, the breaches of the nation: that in all his conversation ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... candidate. The document asserted that he believed the Bible to be a tissue of fictions and fables; Jesus a sinful man like others, neither risen from the dead, nor sitting in the glory of his Father; no one can assert with positiveness a life beyond the grave; and the opinion that we are reconciled to God by Jesus Christ, merely a superstition and a day-dream. The authors of the circular besought the ecclesiastical council to deliver them and their children from the promulgation of such doctrines, and further reminded them that ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... similarity to Lemuel. She felt certain, too, that she had noticed vestiges of the Five Towns accent beneath his Americanisms. But apart from these reasons, she knew by a superrational instinct that Lionel Belmont was her father; it was not the call of blood, but the positiveness of a woman asserting that a thing is so because she is sure ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... used every effort to induce her to compose herself, and at length succeeded; but she only resumed her composure to express herself with the same positiveness as before. "No, Reuben, I'll bring disgrace hame to nae man's hearth; my ain distresses I can bear, and I maun bear, but there is nae occasion for buckling them on other folk's shouthers. I will bear my load alone—the back is ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... except that of permitting closer daily intercourse between families. And it is questionable if the petty society of such a village can compensate for the freedom and purity of rural family life now existing. It may even be asserted with some degree of positiveness that the small village, on the moral and intellectual sides, is distinctly inferior to ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... to the field to-morrow,"—his habitually calm, unfeeling positiveness left no ground for objection; "I cannot support you in idleness, ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of sympathetic emotions which finds no actual expression, no relief in deeds. The substance of this warning essay is repeated, often word for word, but considerably amplified with new material, and rendered more convincing by increased breadth of outlook and positiveness of assertion, the fruit of six years of observation and reflection, as part of a treatise, entitled, "Von der nthigen Sorge fr die Erhaltung des Gleichgewichts unter den menschlichen Krften: Besondere Warnung vor dem Modefehler die Empfindsamkeit zu berspannen." It is in the third volume of the ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... matches, ends of cigars and pipe tobacco, while the ash-crumbs speckled all dark objects, not excepting the green rug under his feet. Warrington smoked incessantly while at work, now a cigarette, now a cigar, now a pipe. Specialists declare with cold authoritative positiveness that the use of tobacco blunts the thought, dulls the edge of invention; but Warrington knew better. Many a night he had thrown his coat over his smoking-jacket and dashed down the street to the corner drug-store for a fresh supply of tobacco. He simply could not work without ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... for say, state, and the like. It means "to declare," "to affirm," or "to assert with the idea of positiveness" and is not applicable to ordinary statements not ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... overthrowing Reconstruction. Other questions practically dropped out. The whole discussion of the canvass turned on these two controlling propositions. No violence of design which the Republicans imputed to their adversaries exceeded their open avowals. The greater positiveness of General Blair, the keener popular interest in the Southern question and the broader realization of its possible dangers, made the issue on Reconstruction overshadow the other. The utterances of Southern leaders confirmed its superior importance in the public estimate. The jubilant expressions ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... awakening to the infinite, and ask a thousand questions of the spirits that are to unfold our destinies, too far-reaching to be clothed in words. Who does not feel the sway of such a voice? It makes the whole range of our capacities resound and tremble, and, when there is positiveness enough to give an answer, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Mr. Tilden. Not wanting the sense of humor, he seldom indulged it. In spite of his positiveness of opinion and amplitude of knowledge he was always courteous and deferential in debate. He had none of the audacious daring, let us say, of Mr. Elaine, the energetic self-assertion of Mr. Roosevelt. Either in his place would have ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the matron, with smiling positiveness, "Susie is boss only out of doors; I am, in the house. There is a fresh- made cup of coffee and some eggs on toast in the dining-room. Having taken such an early start, you ought to have a lunch before being put ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... Robin answered with amazing positiveness. "No, I hated his eyes. They were not true eyes. But—I like Dale—lots." And just here, for the second time, she locked her lips on her precious secret for Dale must never know that she remembered him; all that belonged to her childhood. Beryl might laugh, too, as she often ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... He's awful good-natured, but he isn't the sort of young man I would like," concluded Carrie, with amusing positiveness. ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... in conformity with their obligations and honest convictions of duty in bringing in their verdicts. They had sworn to decide according to the law and the evidence. The law under which they were required to act was laid down with absolute positiveness by the Court. They were bound to receive it, and to take and weigh the evidence that was admitted; and to their minds it was clear, decisive, and overwhelming, offered by persons of good character, and confirmed by a great number of confessions. If it had been within their province, as it always ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Captain Downs's query did not sound human. It was a sort of muffled wail, but there was no mistaking its positiveness. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... withhold it when you ask it; at the same time leaving you perfectly at liberty to reject it, if not adopted by your own judgment. The experience of old age Is very likely to be balanced by the weaknesses incident to that age. I have not, however, its positiveness yet; and willingly abandon my criticism to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... sufficient positiveness that I will finish the book at no particular date; that I will not hurry it; that I will not hurry myself; that I will take things easy and comfortably—write when I choose to write, leave it alone when I do so prefer... I have got everything at a dead standstill, and that is where it ought to be, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... shopkeeper, Lavinia," she said with some positiveness, "nor a barber, nor a painter, nor a cook, nor a dentist. We'll try and keep him a gentleman, my dear, whatever happens. As for his being a musician, I think you will agree with me, that music is only possible ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that terrible fear to contend against with all your other troubles?" asked Mr. Corbin, in a tone of compassion. "No, Miss Montague," he added, with grave positiveness, "I do not believe that Walter Dinsmore—and I knew him well—ever willfully committed a wrong against any human being. Now," he resumed, smiling, to see the look of trouble fade out of her eyes at his assurance, "I am going to try to ferret out the 'mystery' ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Brownson was the most satisfactory to him. I thought then that this was due to the authority of Brownson's masterful tone, the definiteness of his views, the force of his 'understanding,' as the word was then philosophically used in distinction from the reason. Brownson's mental vigor and positiveness were very agreeable to a candid mind which was speculatively adrift and experimenting, and, as it seemed to me, which was more emotional than logical. Brownson, after his life of varied theological and controversial activity, ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... of command, becomes agreeable and necessary to him. Thus many of the same causes which make a young man a pleasant companion abroad, tend naturally to make him a tyrant at home. This perversity and positiveness of temper, ultimately arise from the want of occupation, and from deficient energy of mind. We may guard against these evils by education: when we see a playful, active child, we have little fear of his temper. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... the truth, it may answer an end perhaps as useful, in discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not make us knowing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from error, it may at least from the spirit of error; and may make us cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much labour may end ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... not answer the question with any degree of positiveness, and he went to bed wishing that he had never seen the valley of ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... was ready to execute one of those changes of front which lent variety to his positiveness, and he addressed himself particularly to Albert, with the persuasive tone and gesture of a man to another man in a company ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... cried with abrupt positiveness. "Before the year is out I'll put an even hundred of those little yellow-boys into your hand. I don't ask you to believe me. All you have to do is ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... shock at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... that time would soften Marian's feelings toward him. The war could not last forever. Unexpected circumstances might arise, and a steadfast course must win a certain kind of respect. At any rate it was not in his nature to falter, especially when her tolerance was parting with much of its old positiveness. His presence undoubtedly had the sanction of her father and mother, and for the former he was gaining an esteem and liking independent of his fortunes with the daughter. Love is a hardy plant, and thrives on meagre sustenance. It was evident that the relations between Marian and Strahan ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... smiled at his crestfallen look. It was plain that, in talking over myself and my situation, he had declared with the positiveness which I found was part of his character, that I had fallen into some trouble at school ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... fancy and of fact, of childish credulity with more than mere haphazard prophecy of mechanical and physical results which have been so lately reached in the progress of science as to be among new things even six centuries after Bacon's death. Its positiveness of statement is puzzling, when tested by what is known from other sources of the nature of the discoveries and inventions of that early time; and were there reason to question Bacon's truth, it would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... to time in the early summer the newspapers contained definite statements, authorized from Washington with increasing positiveness, that the cordon around the N.P.C. was tightening. In July Barclay's scorn of Inspector Smith grew into disquietude; for a letter from Judge Bemis, of the federal court,—written up in the Catskills,—warned ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... a la Charette and the corresponding prose settled this in my mind long ago; and though I have been open to unsettlement since, I have not been unsettled. The most unlucky instance of that over-positiveness to which I have referred above is M. Cledat's statement that "nous savons" that the prose romances are later than the verse. We certainly do not "know" this any more than we know the contrary. There is important authority both ways; there is fair argument both ways; but the positive evidence ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... the baker's wife," cried Juffrouw Mabbel, with a positiveness in her tone which showed her intention to ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... method of stanching the flow from a cut finger gives the impression that it contains a little salt. Every fluid of the body is salty, and every cell of the body is bathed in salt water. It is too long since the ancestors of our cells swam in the seas of the Eozoic time for us to assert with any positiveness that the ancestral habit is responsible for this trait in the descendants. Sure it is that to-day our cells, like their ancestors of old, live in water, and this water is slightly salty—as were ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... as the divine principle working through all nature, is at the very center of Browning's creed. His is the heartiest, happiest, most beautiful poetic voice that his age has read. He stands apart from most others of his kind and age in the positiveness of his religious faith, a faith that is based upon a conviction of the conquering universality of ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... of all occurred in the case of an old maiden lady, who, having brought a cart-load of personal necessaries and comforts, which were positively essential to her continued existence, and having been firmly refused the transmission of the greater part of them, declared with the utmost positiveness that the lord chancellor had himself expressly informed all the guests at the banquet that each was at liberty to take an unlimited quantity of goods; nor could any explanation convince her of her mistake. Let them say what they pleased, she had heard the word unlimited with her own ears: and hearing ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... life and general demoralisation. And it is possible for the scientific instincts, when developed at the expense of the aesthetic and the sympathetic, to evolve a hard, unemotional type of character which is self-centred and selfish owing to its positiveness and lack of imagination. But these are instances of inharmonious growth. When growth is harmonious and many-sided, it leads of necessity to out-growth, to escape from self. For the expansive instincts are so many ways of escape from self which ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... cried Hermon, interrupting his companion with angry positiveness. "The city of Alexandria, which is growing with unprecedented vigour, is their home. There, the place to which every race on earth sends a representative, the pulse of the whole world is throbbing. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... here given. Belasco and Akop would be recognized as very tall Igorot in any part of the mountains. Two of the above are pygmy and all but seven are below 1600, and correspond to Topinard's "below medium" statures. We may say, then, with positiveness that the Igorot is one of the exceptionally short races of mankind. With three or four exceptions the arm-reach is greater than the height, usually by 40 to 50 mm. Thus, the short stature is somewhat compensated for by long arms, heavy, robust ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... such a case an advertisement is the proper thing. But, my boy, your positiveness on this subject is extraordinary. How could you drop the wallet? Do you keep it in the same ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... that two buffaloes were amply sufficient to carry all they would bring. I now find that they have more than full loads for two buffaloes, two mules, and two donkeys; but when these animals fall down under them, they assure me with so much positiveness that they are not overloaded, that I have to be silent, or only, as I have several times done before, express the opinion that they will kill these animals. This observation on my part leads them to hide their ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... the baby's testimony; and yet if we had it it would not do us any good—a furtive conjecture, a sly insinuation, a pious "if" or two, would be smuggled in, here and there, with a solemn air of judicial investigation, and its positiveness ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... carelessness of culture have reigned in that family? I know many who seem to be excellent men in society, but who are any thing but amiable men at home. In one they are pleasant, affable, kind, and charitable; in the other, cross-grained, hard, unkind, and unjust. I declare with all positiveness, that when a family or a neighborhood of children is bad, there is a reason for it outside of the children. There are bad influences which descend upon them, and work out their natural ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... with wild witty Irish eloquence, "worthy," as the press say of poor misguided Mitchell, "of a better cause." Altogether, a much-enduring Ulysses, unscrupulous, tough-hided, ready to do and suffer anything fair or foul, for what he honestly believed—if a confused, virulent positiveness be worthy of the name "belief"—to be the true ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... and its effects upon the national literature, one quickly discerns two main streams of influence. On the one hand, there is the influence of the original Puritans—whether of New England or of the South—, who came to the New World with a ready-made philosophy of the utmost clarity, positiveness and inclusiveness of scope, and who attained to such a position of political and intellectual leadership that they were able to force it almost unchanged upon the whole population, and to endow it with such vitality that ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... in the world is success in getting money and ingenuity in spending it. With all the rest she was a woman of some direct force of character which, in times of crisis as at the present moment, asserted itself with considerable positiveness. ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... herself and was a-laying out ter tell you some enflirtment she had been a-trying ter have with him. Don't pay no 'tention to it." By this time she had regained her composure and was able to reassure Caroline with her usual positiveness to which she added an amount of worldly tact in substituting a highly disturbing thought in place ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... stand by him, and day after day elapsed and nothing was settled. In the meantime London was alive with reports; and the on dit of the day, repeated with every variety of circumstance and with the usual positiveness of entire ignorance, would fill a volume. Time crept on, and Parliament was to adjourn on the 13th (this day). On the 9th Canning went to the King, and, after a long audience, he came away without anything ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... that is commonly and absurdly called "existence," is a flow, or a current, or an attempt, from negativeness to positiveness, ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... since the event spoken of in that article is so great that I feel some hesitation in answering your letter and the article from the "Democrat" as I might do if I had access to the archives at Washington; but, writing from memory, I think I can say with great positiveness there was never any despatch from you to me, or from you to any one in Washington, disparaging General Thomas's movements at Nashville. On the contrary, my recollection is that when I met you on your way to Wilmington, N. C., subsequent to the battle of Nashville, you explained the situation at Nashville ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... aged face, with a high forehead, a small mouth, and a pair of cold blue eyes which had kept much of the freshness of youth. Madame de Bellegarde looked hard at him, and returned his hand-shake with a sort of British positiveness which reminded him that she was the daughter of the Earl of St. Dunstan's. Her daughter-in-law stopped playing and gave him an agreeable smile. Newman sat down and looked about him, while Valentin went and kissed the hand of ...
— The American • Henry James
... appealed to, failed to remember anything about the club, the latter suggesting that probably it flourished before he came to C———. Jessie was quite sure she recalled Henry, but the others could not do so with much positiveness. ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... name with a peremptory positiveness that was almost an accusation. He rose calmly, raising his eyebrows ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... idea that the conscious subject is a mere phenomenon, or "series of phenomena," with more indignation than Hamilton. Notwithstanding the contradictory assertion, "that the subject is unknown," he still teaches, with equal positiveness, "that in every act of perception I am conscious of self, as a perceiving subject." And still more explicitly he says: "As clearly as I am conscious of existing, so clearly am I conscious, at ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... without change of termination. I have not yet knowingly used it so myself, nor does it appear to have been classed with the auxiliaries, by any of our grammarians, except Webster.[258] I shall therefore not presume to say now, with positiveness, that it deserves this rank; (though I incline to think it does;) but rather quote such instances as have occurred to me in reading, and leave the student to take his choice, whether to condemn as bad English ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... own souls; the supply of our necessary temporal wants; and the extension of his kingdom. These are the kind of blessings that we are to ask; and the degree of confidence with which we are to look for an answer must be in proportion to the positiveness of the promises. Our Lord assures us that our heavenly Father is more willing to give good things, and particularly his Holy Spirit, to them that ask him, than earthly parents are to give good gifts to their children; and he declares expressly, that our sanctification is ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... is going to stop here," Mr. Mouell broke in, with frank positiveness. "If I cannot have him at my own house,—and for certain reasons it is not advisable,—I shall at least have the satisfaction of knowing he is in the charge of ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... scowled at this frank reference to their looks; and a few in the encircling crowd laughed grimly. Plainly there could be no collusion between this witness and Ugger and Quinley; and this apparent fact gave almost the positiveness of proven truth to his testimony, in ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... gentleman more than to hear William Pitt called by his tardy honors; and yet, unwilling to give up what he thought his political opinions, he exclaimed, with an unanswerable positiveness of argument, ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... want her," said Aunt Mary with a positiveness that was final. "I don't want her. My heavens, Lucinda, ain't we just had enough of her? Anyhow, if you ain't, I have. I don't want her, nor no livin' soul except my trunk; an' I want that just as quick as Joshua can haul it down ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... back!" he said, using positiveness in his argument; "that is, not for awhile. You'd have all Deadwood down on us in a jiffy. I'll give you work in the shaft, at three dollars a day. You can accept that offer, or submit to confinement until I see fit to set ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... two, to which they responded only "hmm," and began the examination. Miss Harper sent her three nieces away. I lay and listened in the busy stillness. Presently one of the examiners murmured with a certain positiveness to the other, who after a moment's silence replied with conviction; Miss Harper touched our surgeon's arm inquiringly and he looked back in a glad way and nodded. Miss Harper nodded to me; they had located the ball! Now the ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... position by argument is not ready to be convinced by the spirit. If you are obliged to carry on a conversation with an argumentative person, silently deny all his statements of error, and with calm positiveness affirm for him intelligence, wisdom, and a desire to know truth. In other words, recognize his spiritual self, which is in perfect peace and harmony, and the outward disturbance or inharmony, which is simply nothingness expressed by him, is annulled. Possibly you may seem obliged to ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... very dull, and that Mr Pope is the author of it.' The writer of Gulliveriana is of another opinion, and says, 'The whole, or greatest part, of the merit of this treatise must and can only be ascribed to Gulliver.'[188] (Here, gentle reader! cannot I but smile at the strange blindness and positiveness of men, knowing the said treatise to appertain to none other but to me, Martinus Scriblerus.) We are assured, in Mist of June 8, 'That his own plays and farces would better have adorned the Dunciad than those of Mr Theobald, for he had neither genius for tragedy ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... the marriage certificate, and I will acknowledge the marriage, and acknowledge the child;" but they could not, and I knew they could not; and I kept the estate for my darling boy,' cried the old gentleman, with the exultation of successful positiveness again appearing strong in his physiognomy; but suddenly changing and relaxing, his countenance fell, and he added, 'But now I have no darling boy. What use all!—all must go to the heir-at-law, or I must will it to a stranger—a lady of quality, who has just found out she is ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... lies the difference. Before, my positiveness was founded, without examination, upon prejudice; but now, after ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... exist just as much though we and all the world disbelieved it. The strength of belief comes from that which is believed in; if you separate it from that, it becomes a mere self-opinion, a sensation of positiveness; and what sort of strength that will give, history will tell us in the tragedies of the Jews who opposed Titus, of the rabble who followed Walter the Penniless to the Crusades, of the Munster Anabaptists, and many another ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... faults, and wondered, not that he had them, but that they had not crushed or dwarfed his soul. But in spite of Macaulay's brilliancy and his admirable faculty of making the commonplace seem fresh and picturesque, his positiveness wearied me at times, and his frequent sacrifices of truth to effect kept me in a questioning attitude very unlike the attitude of reverence in which I had listened to the ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... in profound silence, leaning upon his walking-stick, whilst the committal was making out for Bampfylde the Second. The fear of ridicule was struggling with the natural positiveness of his temper. He was dreadfully afraid that the story of his being taken in by the king of the gipsies would get abroad; and, at the same time, he was unwilling to give up his prejudice ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... cited his own son as an example of the havoc wrought by present- day university methods. The elder Anthony's wealth and position made it good copy. The yellow journals liked it immensely, and, strangely enough, notwithstanding the positiveness with which the newspapers spoke, the facts agreed essentially with their statements. Darwin K. Anthony and his son had quarrelled, they were estranged; the young man did prefer idleness to industry. Exactly as the published narratives related, he toiled not at all, he ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... see her." The reply came with some positiveness and a slight touch of irony. He had made up his mind now that if the speaker had a pull, he would meet it by ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... it's about time it was stopped!" declared Bud with as great positiveness as before. This time he picked up the hat he had dashed to the ground and dusted it off. "I'm going to do ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... ears of Donna Giulia, first of all, that I imparted the state of my feelings, my hopes, fears and prayers with regard to Aurelia. There was that about Count Giraldi, a diamantine brilliancy, a something hard and crystalline, a positiveness, an incisiveness of view and reflection, which on first acquaintance decided me not to take him into my confidence. When I came to know him better, or to think that I did, I followed my natural bent and talked to him unreservedly; but in the lady, from the beginning, I found a very interested ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... to produce tuberculosis in cattle and other animals by inoculating them with tuberculous material of human origin and his success in causing progressive and fatal tuberculosis in the same kinds of animals when inoculated with tuberculous material of bovine origin. With such positiveness did he hold to the constant and specific difference between the human and bovine bacillus that he promulgated an experimental method of discriminating between them. Speaking of the etiology of intestinal ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... letter had a certain volubility about it, and the writer seemed to me to pull out rather adroitly one or two loose sticks in his opponents' bundle, and to lay them vehemently about their backs. But, alas! the acrimony, the positiveness, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the same with that of the Church of England. Their confession of faith, and the thirty-nine articles, contain the same points, even the doctrine of predestination.' JOHNSON. 'Why yes, Sir, predestination was a part of the clamour of the times, so it is mentioned in our articles, but with as little positiveness as could be.' BOSWELL. 'Is it necessary, Sir, to believe all the thirty-nine articles?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, that is a question which has been much agitated. Some have thought it necessary that they ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... abhorrence, be the slave of jailers, be loaded with fetters; thus shall you be cleared from every unworthy aspersion, and restored to reputation and honour!' This is the consolation she affords to those whom malignity or folly, private pique or unfounded positiveness, have, without the smallest foundation, loaded with calumny." For myself, I felt my own innocence; and I soon found, upon enquiry, that three fourths of those who are regularly subjected to a similar treatment, are persons whom, even with ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... with a cool positiveness that bred belief. Martin, in almost as vengeful a mood as the other, was grimly ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... the last few years has been more discussed than that of their influence upon prices. Opinions have differed widely, the opponents of the Combinations usually believing that they have increased prices materially, their defenders claiming with equal positiveness that they have reduced prices. Differences of opinion have probably originated largely from the fact that the subject has been approached from different points of view; and mistakes have also, in many cases, been made through lack of a careful interpretation of available ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... that this bearded patriarch, who now poses as the only original Adam, has never been able, with any degree of positiveness, to answer the question as to whether or not he was provided with a caudal appendage—a question which I am prepared to answer definitely, at any moment, if called upon by the proper authorities, and, if need be, to produce not only the tail itself, but the fierce and untamed pterodactyl ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... needs reform in manners. We all need a new social intercourse, which shall breathe genuine refinement; which shall unite the two great elements of politeness, self-respect, and a delicate regard to the rights and feelings of others; which shall be free without rudeness, and earnest without positiveness; which shall be graceful, yet warm-hearted; and in which communication shall be frank, unlabored, overflowing, through the absence of all assumption and pretence, and through the consciousness of being safe from ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... procrastinator had a very doubtful future. Every day at nine o'clock his lordship seated himself at his desk, and stayed there writing industriously, hour after hour, upon his dispatches; every day he foretold with much accuracy and positiveness of manner that these would surely be ready, and the ship would inevitably sail, on the next day. Thus week after week glided by, and still he uttered the same prediction, "to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow." Yet in spite of this wonderful industry of the great man his letters never got written, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr. |
