"Subject-matter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... representation; the history of one generation became the poetry of the next, until the whole island was illuminated and coloured by the poetry of the bards. Productions of mere fancy and imagination these songs are not, though fancy and imagination may have coloured and shaped all their subject-matter, but the names are names of men and women who once lived and died in Ireland, and over whom their people raised the swelling rath and reared the rocky cromlech. In the sepulchral monuments their names were preserved, and in the performance of sacred rites, and the holding of games, fairs, ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... the reason? Is it not plain that the poem contains a predominant element of imagination and feeling which is absolutely excluded from the proposition? And in the same way it may be shown that whenever a man expresses himself properly in metre, the subject-matter of his composition belongs to imagination or feeling; whenever he writes in prose his subject belongs to or (if the prose be fiction) intimately resembles matter of fact. We may decide then with ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... or experiences, personified,' said Langham, puffing away. 'I take it they are the subject-matter of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to CHARLEMAGNE. Folio. The subject-matter of this most precious book is thus arranged. In the first place, there are five large illuminations, of the entire size of the page, which are much discoloured. The first four represent the Evangelists: each sitting upon a cushion, not unlike ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... a different mental origin to truths, simply because (from the nature of the subject-matter, as it seems to us) there is a difference with regard to the sort of certainty we feel of them, has always appeared to us most unphilosophical. It is admitted that we arrive at a general proposition through experience; there ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... evident that it is true, that some forms of matter grow out of other forms. There are endless combinations. And the growth of new out of old forms is of necessity a sequence, and falls under the law of invariability of sequences, and becomes the subject-matter of Science. As in each separate case Science asserts each event of to-day to have followed by a law of invariable sequence on the events of yesterday; the earth has reached the precise point in its orbit now which was determined by the ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... following pages I have avoided the repetition of particulars to be found in my Four Generations of a Literary Family, 1897, and in my Confessions of a Collector, 1897, so far as they concern the immediate subject-matter. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... the serving of a common purpose. In creating such an impression the introductory paragraphs at the beginning of many of the chapters and the summaries throughout the book, as well as the general arrangement of the subject-matter, will be ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... a question whether the trouble of learning the language should be incurred for the sake of the untranslated part. Or, it may be wholly translated: but, conscious of the necessary defects even of good translations, if the subject-matter be supremely important, some people will think it worth while to learn the language in order to obtain the knowledge in its greatest purity and precision. This is a situation that admits of no certain rule. Our clergy are expected to know ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... will hardly accept) is this—that they secretly share somewhat in the doubt which many educated men have of the correctness of their inductions; that these same laws of political economy (where they leave the plain and safe subject-matter of trade) have been arrived at somewhat too hastily; that they are, in plain English, not quite sound enough yet to build upon; and that we must wait for a few more facts before we begin any theories. Be it so. At least, these men, in their ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... man's ethical duty in broad philosophical terms as follows: Despise matter, and have to do with it only so far as is absolutely necessary.[286] This is too general to be enlightening, and it is necessary to have recourse to psychology. Ethics has for its subject-matter the improvement and perfection of character. Making use of a medical analogy we may say that as it is the business of the physician to cure the body, so it is the aim of the moral teacher to cure the soul. We may carry this figure further and conclude that ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... of the Soul that the creator of the Niobe has presented to us. All the means by which Art tempers even the Terrible, are here made use of. Mightiness of form, sensuous Grace, nay, even the nature of the subject-matter itself, soften the expression, through this, that Pain, transcending all expression, annihilates itself, and Beauty, which it seemed impossible to preserve from destruction when alive, is protected from injury by ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... are ingeniously applied, to the subversion of the text and the objects of the instrument. The truth is, in order to ascertain how far an affirmative or negative provision excludes or implies others, we must look to the nature of the provision, the subject-matter, the objects, and the scope of the instrument; these and these only can properly determine the rule ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... conceptions and principles belonging to the understanding and the reason, and which relate to objects in general, but not to any particular given objects (Ontologia); the latter has nature for its subject-matter, that is, the sum of given objects—whether given to the senses, or, if we will, to some other kind of intuition—and is accordingly physiology, although only rationalis. But the use of the faculty ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... some of whose very able papers in the Edinburgh Review have been republished in two octavo volumes in England, and one of whose articles, that on "Reason and Faith," dealt with some of the topics which form the subject-matter of this volume. ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... confine myself in this article to the personality of Liszt, and have made no allusion to his orchestral works and oratorio compositions. The "Symphonic Poems" speak for themselves—magnificent renderings of the inner life of spontaneous emotion—but subject-matter which calls for a special article can find no place at the fag-end of this, and at all times it is better to hear music than to describe it. As it would be impossible to describe Liszt's orchestration intelligibly to those who have not heard it, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... in spring and their falling in autumn the effects of the interaction between the organisation of a plant and the solar light and heat. And, as the study of the activities of the living being is called its physiology, so are these phenomena the subject-matter of an analogous telluric physiology, to which we sometimes give the name of meteorology, sometimes that of physical geography, sometimes that of geology. Again, the earth has a place in space and in time, and relations ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... predilection to mythology. But as the contrast between the matter and form is here in its proper place, and nothing can be more thoroughly opposite to the ludicrous form of exhibition than the most important and serious concerns of men, public life and the state naturally became the peculiar subject-matter of the Old Comedy. It is, therefore, altogether political; and private and family life, beyond which the new never soars, was only introduced occasionally and indirectly, in so far as it might have a reference to public life. The Chorus is therefore essential to it, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... banished both their cares and their thirst with wine. No harps, no melody of voices,[20] no long pipe of boxwood pierced with many a hole, delights them; but in discourse they pass the night, and valour is the subject-matter of their conversation. They relate the combats of the enemy and their own; and often do they delight to recount, in turn, both the dangers that they have encountered and that they have surmounted. For ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... talents,' as in revolutionary France, so also in revolutionary Greece, began to be promoted by the elaboration of a system of persuasive argument. Devices of method called 'commonplaces' were constructed, whereby, irrespective of the truth or falsehood of the subject-matter, a favourable vote in the public assemblies, a successful verdict in the public courts, might more readily be procured. Thus by skill of verbal rhetoric, the worse might be made to appear the better reason; and philosophy, so far as it continued its functions, {85} became a search, ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... lecturer may largely rely. The second object of the author, in the present publication of his Lectures, was to contribute to the best form of our popular literature a volume which may be regarded either as introductory to, or as a substitute for, an extended course of reading on its subject-matter, according to the leisure and capacity of those who may possess themselves of it. We must congratulate alike the lecturer and the author for very marked success in the adaptation of his materials and in the treatment of his subject so as to answer equally well the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... both method and subject-matter were originally still more completely simplified, 'quantitative' methods have since Jevons's time tended to take the place of 'qualitative'. How far is a similar ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... purchase them"), with perhaps here and there a stray letter, or a metamorphosed tradition, to offer even a probable account of the circumstances. It requires not only an intimate knowledge of the subject-matter which forms the groundwork of the inquiry, both in its antecedent and cotemporary states, and likewise in its most improved state at the present time; it also requires an analytical mind of no ordinary powers, to separate the necessary ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... the plan of his poem (as a number of distinct narratives) from Ariosto; but he has engrafted upon it an exuberance of fancy, and an endless voluptuousness of sentiment, which are not to be found in the Italian writer. Farther, Spenser is even more of an inventor in the subject-matter. There is an originality, richness, and variety in his allegorical personages and fictions, which almost vies with the splendor of the ancient mythology. If Ariosto transports us into the regions of romance, Spenser's poetry is all fairy-land. In Ariosto, we walk upon the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... him. He is always occupied Married a wealthy manufacturer—bartered her blood for his money Notoriously been above the honours of grammar Our comedies are frequently youth's tragedies Rebukes which give immeasurable rebounds Recalling her to the subject-matter with all the patience Remarked that the young men must fight it out together Rose was much behind her age Rose! what have I done? 'Nothing at all,' she said Says you're so clever you ought to be a man She believed friendship practicable between ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... title of a book. Does it convey an adequate idea of the subject-matter? I would claim for mine at least that merit; for is not every sea over which we have voyaged to the ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... extraordinary manner does dead Catholicism somerset and caper, skilfully galvanised. For, does the reader inquire into the subject-matter of controversy in this case; what the difference between Orthodoxy or My-doxy and Heterodoxy or Thy-doxy might here be? My-doxy is that an august National Assembly can equalize the extent of Bishopricks; that an equalized Bishop, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Henry James. We wrote from our heart—and they said something about a disordered liver. We took a text from Matthew or—er—yes, Deuteronomy, but the preachers were hammering away at the inspiration idea before we could get into type. So, driven to the wall, we go for our subject-matter to the reliable, old, moral, unassailable vade ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... often asked which revision of Science and Health is the best. The arrangement of my last revision, in 1890, makes the subject-matter clearer than any previous edition, and it is therefore better adapted to spiritualize thought and elucidate scientific healing and teaching. It has already been proven that this volume is accomplishing ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... conclusions). Philosophers, therefore, searching for something more accurately true, surmised that definitions must be statements and analyses, neither of words nor of things, as such, but of ideas; and they supposed the subject-matter of all demonstrative sciences to be abstractions of the mind. But even allowing this (though, in fact, the mind cannot so abstract one property, e.g. length, from all others; it only attends to the one exclusively), yet the conclusions would still follow, not ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... purported to free slaves in certain States, was issued on May 19. In it he said that the resolution, which had been passed at his request, "now stands an authentic, definite, and solemn proposal of the nation to the States and people most interested in the subject-matter. To the people of these States I now earnestly appeal. I do not argue; I beseech you to make the arguments for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be blind to the signs of the times. I beg of you a calm and enlarged consideration of them, ranging, if it may ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... preoccupation with death in the plays of M. Maeterlinck's youth and a greater ghoulishness in the verse of Mr. Hardy's youth. It is of Mr. Hardy's verses that one thinks oftenest as one reads these verses of Synge, and not only because of certain likenesses in subject-matter, but because of the imperfect mastery of both over the verse forms and a certain epigrammatic gnomic quality common to both. The verses of Synge are not relatively so important in comparison with the rest of his writing as Mr. Hardy's verses are in comparison with ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... to give definite significance, in succeeding chapters, to these expressions, which, standing unexplained and unillustrated, probably convey very little meaning. We shall then see that every work, no matter what its subject-matter, necessarily involves these three principles in varying degrees; and that its success is always strictly in accordance with its conformity to the guidance of ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... on the wall, perpetually in view, a sampler, the produce of the industry and ingenuity of her mother or her grandmother, of which the subject-matter was the most important of all theologico-human incidents, the fall of man in Paradise. There was Adam—there was Eve—and there was the serpent. In these there was much to interest and amuse me. One thing ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... but be regarded as a wholesome and altogether welcome sign of the times that the science and methods as well as subject-matter of education are becoming increasingly popular questions, receiving a considerable share of attention, and inviting a more close, careful, and comprehensive study. Here, however, it happens, as it does in many other things: the difficulties ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... on all." If a principle exists at all it exists universally. We must not allow ourselves to be misled by appearances; we must remember that the perceptible results of the working of any principle consist of two factors—the principle itself or the active factor, and the subject-matter on which it acts or the passive factor; and that while the former is invariable, the latter is variable, and that the operation of the same invariable upon different variables must necessarily produce a variety of results. This at once becomes evident if we state it mathematically; ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... misguiding leadership of the bad old mule. Two Arrows rode gladly away upon his errand, and some of the braves set out at once after the "left baggage." All whom they left behind them had now abundant subject-matter for conversation and for unlimited "Ughs!" The entire future suddenly brightened up for that band of Nez Perces, and they were entirely confident of their ability to procure a new supply of dogs. As for One-eye, ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... Evolution, there is a similarity to that which has been adopted by Mr. Herbert Spencer in the third part of his Principles of Biology. I should therefore like to state, that while such similarity is no doubt in part due to the similarity of subject-matter, I think, upon reading again, after an interval of ten years, his admirable presentation of the evidence it may also in part be due to unconscious memory. This applies particularly to the headings ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... wish of the publishers of Professor Haeckel's reply to Professor Virchow, that I should furnish a prefatory note expressing my own opinion in respect of the subject-matter of the controversy, Gay's homely lines, prophetic of the fate of those "who in quarrels interpose," emerge from some brain-cupboard in which they have been hidden since my childish days. In fact, the hard-hitting with ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... related to the Autobiography, while its poetical passages range it with the Suspiria and the Mail-Coach. De Quincey seems to have believed that he was creating in such writings a new literary type of prose poetry or prose phantasy; he had, with his splendid dreams as subject-matter, lifted prose to heights hitherto scaled only by the poet. In reality his style owed much to the seventeenth-century writers, such as Milton and Sir Thomas Browne. He took part with Coleridge, Lamb, and others in the general revival of interest in earlier ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... of Rhetoric must incur the same criticism. That with the same subject-matter all professors should not agree, but maintain conflicting opinions, amounts to a demonstration: that which is differently apprehended cannot exist. The inquiry whether a thing is this or that, in place of agreement that it is one, is tantamount to ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... that the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors. But the subject-matter of physical science is furnished by observation, which cannot extend beyond the limits of our faculties; while, even within those limits, we cannot be certain that any observation is absolutely exact and exhaustive. Hence it follows that any ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... This indicates the ethical, historical, and other subject-matter of interest to the teacher, thus making the volume serviceable ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... introduction and four chapters, in which every sentence is full of condensed doctrine, the whole having impressed upon it a singular beauty and splendor of Divine truth. The commission was engaged in recasting this schema until the end of February. Its subject-matter was what may well be considered the first foundations of natural and revealed religion, viz.: the existence and perfections of God, the creation of the world, the powers and office of human reason, revelation, faith, the relation of reason to faith and ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... is indeed an indispensable auxiliary to conscience; but this cannot be affirmed exclusively of any specific department of knowledge. It is true of all knowledge; for there is no fact or law in the universe that may not in some contingency become the subject-matter or the occasion for the action of conscience. Nothing could seem more remote from the ordinary field of conscience than the theory of planetary motion; yet it was this that gave Galileo the one grand opportunity ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... after much anxious thought, called a cabinet meeting upon the subject.... I said to the cabinet that I had resolved upon this step, and had not called them together to ask their advice, but to lay the subject-matter of a proclamation before them, suggestions as to which would be in order after they had ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... no individuality, it has no history; quarrels between neighbouring tribes, grudges, blood-shedding, exhaustion, raids, success, defeat, the same thing over and over again, this is not the action of society, nor the subject-matter of narrative; it neither interests the curiosity, nor leaves any impression on the memory. "Labitur et labetur;" it forms and breaks again, like the billows of the sea, and is but a mockery of unity. When I speak of barbarian states, I mean such as consist of members not ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... conducts himself very well in my house, and I am fairly satisfied with the progress of my boy, who, I must admit, has a greater interest in subject-matter than in diction. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... that numerous commentators, living in different parts of India, know the text of only nineteen cantos. Furthermore, it is unlikely that Kalidasa left the poem incomplete at his death; for it was, without serious question, one of his earlier works. Apart from evidences of style, there is the subject-matter of the introductory stanzas, in which the poet presents himself as an aspirant for literary fame. No writer of established reputation would be likely ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... this information, placed the letter in my hands; and, leaving me to take a lunch at Garraway's with Mr. Timmis, I eagerly sat about my task—and luckily it was not only plainly written, but the subject-matter by no means difficult, being rather complimentary than technical. By the time they returned, I had not only translated, but made a fair copy of ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... the impulse which leads judges, from a feeling that justice should be publicly administered, to throw wide the doors of every courtroom, irrespective of the subject-matter of the trial. We need have no fear of Star Chamber proceedings in America, and no harm would be done by excluding from the courtroom all persons who have no ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... he must have as his main, his master faculty, SENSE—Brains—{nous}, justness of mind, because his subject-matter is one in which principle works, rather than impulse, as in painting; the understanding has first to do with it, however much it is worthy of the full exercise of the feelings, and the affections. But all will not do, if GENIUS is not ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... "the Romantic School." Writers of English literary history, while recognizing the importance of England's share in this great movement in European letters, have not generally accorded it a place by itself in the arrangement of their subject-matter, but have treated it cursively, as a tendency present in the work of individual authors; and have maintained a simple chronological division of eras into the "Georgian,", the "Victorian," etc. The reason of this is perhaps to be found in the fact that, although Romanticism began earlier in England ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... be strictly distinguished. As Paulsen remarks, 'They are but different modes of presenting the same subject-matter.'[1] Virtues are permanent traits of character; duties are particular acts which seek ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... imperfection of the science. For what is the history of every science but the history of the elimination of the notion of creative, or other interferences, with the natural order of the phaenomena which are the subject-matter of that science? When Astronomy was young "the morning stars sang together for joy," and the planets were guided in their courses by celestial hands. Now, the harmony of the stars has resolved itself into gravitation according to the inverse squares of the distances, and the ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... as between "Tristan und Isolde" and "Siegfried," notwithstanding that in the love tragedy Wagner took as uncompromising a stand as ever did a Greek poet, and hewed to the lines of his theoretical scheme with unswerving fidelity. In the subject-matter of the drama lies the distinction. Despite the absence of the ethical element which places "Tannhuser" immeasurably higher than "Tristan" as a dramatic poem, the latter drama contains an expression of the universal passion which is so vehement, so truthful, and so sublime ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to an Harmonic Lodge. 'Let him go back to Eurydice,' they said, 'whom he is pretending to regret so.' But the history is given in Dr. Lempriere's elegant dictionary in a manner much more forcible than any this feeble pen can attempt. At once, then, and without verbiage, let us take up this subject-matter of Clubs. ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the leaders who are definitely the masters in those numerous discussions, with regard to the subject-matter of which the members of an assembly ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... said about her father, and yet he did not at all agree with her. He wanted her to understand that he tendered his assistance because her father was a soft, good-natured gentleman not sufficiently knowing in the ways of the world; but he could not say this to her. So he had to rush into the subject-matter of his proffered counsel without any acknowledgement on her part that she could need it, or would be ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... volumes out of which a couplet of verse, a period in prose, may cling to the rock of ages, as a shell that survives a deluge. But the orator, whose effects are immediate—who enthralls his audience in proportion as he nicks the hour—who, were he speaking like Burke what, apart from the subject-matter, closet students would praise, must, like Burke, thin his audience, and exchange present oratorical success for ultimate intellectual renown—a man, in short, whose oratory is emphatically that of the DEBATER is, like an actor, rewarded with ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Neither the physician says that health is a good thing, nor the builder that a house is a good thing: but the one announces that he produces health and how he produces it, and the builder in like manner a house." The professor of Ethics indeed, from the very nature of his subject-matter, says in pointing out happiness that it is the rational sovereign good of man: but to any one unmoved by that demonstration Ethics can have no more to say. Ethics will not threaten, nor talk ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... perfectly lawful to all the world alike on Tuesdays and Saturdays. These were the curious questions he had come so far to investigate, for which the fakirs and dervishes of every land gave such fanciful reasons: and he saw he would have no difficulty in picking up abundant examples of his subject-matter everywhere in England. As the metropolis of taboo, it exhibited the phenomena in their highest evolution. The only thing that puzzled him was how Philip Christy, an Englishman born, and evidently a most devout observer of the ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... me, that I might discover, if possible, by what processes of 'that which he was pleased to call his mind' he had arrived at the conclusion that such a thing could be done. Clearly, he could not plead unavoidable ignorance of the subject-matter, as might the old cook at San Josef, who, the first time her master brought home Wenham Lake ice from Port of Spain, was scandalised at the dirtiness of the 'American water,' washed off the sawdust, and dried the ice in the sun. His was a ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... poetry more profundity of thought and forced it to submit to a more rigid intellectual unity than it had ever had before. This he did in a two-fold manner—by binding it into a more strictly artistic form, and by treating every poem in such a way that its subject-matter readily broadened its individuality until ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... would be at an end. We know that the business of an artist is not to tell the public what to feel about the visible world, or anything else, but to express his own interest in the visible world or whatever may be the subject-matter of his art. We do not condemn art because of its failures. Those who know anything at all about the nature of art know that it has value because it expresses the common interests of mankind better than ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... play of thought and feeling on an incident, or series of incidents, compensates for the absence of a more perfect art in the ballads; using the word "art" in its true sense as including complete, adequate, and beautiful handling of subject-matter, and masterly working out of its possibilities. These popular songs, so dear to the hearts of the generations on whose lips they were fashioned, and to all who care for the fresh note, the direct word, the unrestrained ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... were to show itself reluctant to give to a select committee so large a power as this of preparing an agenda paper, it still would be possible to refer to such a committee the subject-matter of so many of the resolutions as might chance, when put upon their passage, to fail by a ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... way, the Bible is an exceedingly practical book, and that is why I want the reader to get at some general principles which he will find, mutatis mutandis, equally applicable all round, whether to electricity, or to life, and whatever may be the subject-matter, it will always be found to resolve itself into a question of the relation between Law and Personality. If now we read the Bible Promises in the light of the general principles we have considered in the earlier pages, we shall find that they are all Promises according to Law. They are statements ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... mother and sisters had left the house. This information was given him by Mrs. Gresham, whom he found dealing with her own voluminous budget at one of the tables in the library. She was a lady who received thirty letters a day, the subject-matter of which, as well as of her punctual answers in a hand that would have been "ladylike" in a manageress, was a puzzle to ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... text was obliterated forever, indeed the art of reading lost, the illustrations remaining, as also the memory to many persons of the ballad. The illustrations kept in order would supply always the order of the stanzas and also the general subject-matter of each particular stanza and the latter would be a reminder of the words. This is what the rolls of birch bark do to the initiated Ojibwa, and what Schoolcraft pretended in some cases to show, but what for actual understanding requires that ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... attacked and rejected by Clemen (Stud. und Krit., 1898, 211 sqq.). He fails, however, in many cases to recognize the difficulties at issue, and those which cannot be ignored he sets down to the conflicting apocalyptic traditions, on which the author was obliged to draw for his subject-matter. Though Ryssel (Kautzsch, Apok. u. Pseud. des A. T. ii. 409) has followed Clemen, neither has given any real explanation of the disorder of the book as it stands at present. Beer (op. cit.) agrees that xxxvi.-xl. and liii.-lxx. are of different authorship from the rest of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... to enter at all on the subject-matter itself, or to say whether I agree, or not, with your conclusions: but merely to examine, from a logic-lecturer's point of view, your premisses as relating ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... in by both without question or disturbance for thirty- four years. The memorable controversy that arose in the 31st Congress in 1850 in respect to the territory acquired from Mexico did not in the least affect or relate to the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas. The subject-matter of the several bills originally embraced in Mr. Clay's report of the committee of thirteen, defined the northern boundary of the State of Texas on the line of 36 deg. 30 min. north latitude, provided for the addition of the State of California, for territorial governments ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... United States itself, separately or in partnership, falls within the scope of the taxing power of the State. Nothing comes more fully within it than banks and the business of banking, by whomsoever instituted and carried on. Over this whole subject-matter it is just as absolute, unlimited, and uncontrollable as if the Constitution had never been adopted, because in the formation of that instrument ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... readers have heard a poetic interpretation of it by a fine orchestra. The salient features of Debussy's style are found in Pelleas et Melisande—by far the most important operatic work since Wagner. Maeterlinck's play deals with legendary, mysterious, symbolic beings, and the entire subject-matter was admirably suited to Debussy's genius. As Maeterlinck says, "The theatre should be the reflex of life, not this external life of outward show, but the true inner life which is entirely one of contemplation." This opera is quite different from any previously written, ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... useful or necessary to us, or affects us in any way, either for pain or for pleasure, or appeals strongly to our sympathies, or is a vital part of the environment in which we live, it is outside the proper sphere of art. To art's subject-matter we should be more or less indifferent. We should, at any rate, have no preferences, no prejudices, no partisan feeling of any kind. It is exactly because Hecuba is nothing to us that her sorrows are ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... science—psychology—should be placed highest up in the scale; but under another it would rank later in point of development than even biology itself, because it is not every being that thinks. This twofold aspect is accounted for by the peculiarity of its subject-matter—viz., mind. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... prince himself, he was bound to listen to his confessor, not merely when he exhorted him on the subject-matter of his confessions, but also in matters relating to the prevention of injustice, oppression, or other scandals such as often came about through the fault of officials, and which were unknown ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... now a second conference upon the subject-matter of the last conference. He laid his business very home indeed; he protested his affection to me, and indeed I had no room to doubt it; he declared that it began from the first moment I talked with him, and long before I had mentioned leaving my effects with him. ''Tis no ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... snuff-box did no harm to the opinion the abbot had conceived of me. As for the library, if I had been alone it would have made me weep. It contained nothing under the size of folio, the newest books were a hundred years old, and the subject-matter of all these huge books was solely theology and controversy. There were Bibles, commentators, the Fathers, works on canon law in German, volumes of annals, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... than this it is unsafe to say. The composition itself is a poem—a romance—an epic. This is against the historical value of its subject-matter. Then, it has taken its present form under the hands of a Christian. This is against its value as cotemporaneous evidence. Thirdly, it has the character, to no small extent, not only of a rhapsody, but of a rhapsody of which the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... an important cup. A long bridge. You are now in comprehensive touch with a subject-matter that ought to lead you with your family into ease and prominence. Have patient care after you have reached the seeming goal, for, see here still the danger signal from the broken cart of past obstruction with the cross-ties. Do not retreat in dismay. A bridge is of good significance unless ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... companion to Miss Strickland's admirable 'Queens of England.' In one respect the subject-matter of these volumes is more interesting, because it is more diversified than that of the 'Queens of England.' That celebrated work, although its heroines were, for the most part, foreign Princesses, related almost entirely ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... story of Cupid and Psyche has not only been retold by poets from Apuleius to William Morris, but also drawn out in a series of frescoes by Raphael, and sculptured in marble by Canova. Even to enumerate the works of art of the modern and ancient world which depend for their subject-matter upon mythology would be a task for a book by itself. As we have been able to give only a few illustrations of the poetic treatment of some of the principal myths, so we shall have to content ourselves with a similarly limited view of the ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... the restraint of each topic treated to its appropriate part, and the systematic development of the parts into a symmetrical whole, are as markedly present in the latter as they are absent in the former. The process of selection has therefore been progressively more difficult as the subject-matter has approached contemporary times. In our earlier orations, the distinction and separate treatment of the parts is so carefully observed that it has been comparatively an easy task to seize and appropriate the parts especially desirable. In our later orations, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... this did he keep from his mother. The record of his likes and dislikes which formed the subject-matter of his daily letters was an absorbing study with her, and she let no variation of the weather-vane of his tastes escape her. Nor did she keep their contents from her intimate friends. She had read to Colonel Clayton one of his earlier ones, in ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... than Hals, for instance, had ever dared to show. The still more critical, while admitting the beauty and the grace of this art, must have often asked themselves what, after all, has this painter invented, what new subject-matter has he introduced ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... was in the man that struck me as eccentric at that time I have never been wholly able to define, but I recall accurately the most trivial occurrences of our meeting and the very subject-matter of our conversation. I even remember the very words in which he declined a drink from my traveling-flask—for "It's a raw day," I said, by way of gratuitous excuse for offering it. "Yes," he said, smilingly motioning the temptation aside; ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... current interest; his line of thought too intricate. These failings, from our point of view, are the more to be regretted because there has never been an English essayist more entertaining or suggestive than De Quincey. His works cover a very wide range of subject-matter,—from the 'Knocking on the Gate in Macbeth' to the 'Casuistry of Roman Meals' and the 'Toilet of a Hebrew Lady.' His topics are always piquant. Like Poe, De Quincey loved puzzling questions, the cryptograms, the tangled ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... fuoss: fueesse develop? We have now reached what is probably the most central problem in linguistic history, gradual phonetic change. "Phonetic laws" make up a large and fundamental share of the subject-matter of linguistics. Their influence reaches far beyond the proper sphere of phonetics and invades that of morphology, as we shall see. A drift that begins as a slight phonetic readjustment or unsettlement may in the course of millennia bring about the most profound structural changes. ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... of getting a true picture of psychology, and of reaching an adequate definition of its subject-matter, would be to inspect the actual work of psychologists, so as to see what kind of knowledge they are seeking. Such a survey would reveal quite a variety of problems under process of investigation, some of them practical problems, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... plain from these last Words, that the Subject-matter, Monosyllables, is not so much to be complain'd of; what is chiefly to be requir'd, is of the Poet, that he be a good Workman, in forming them aright, and that he place them artfully: and, however Mr. Dryden may desire to disguise himself, yet, ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... employers' liability law of 1906. In the cases arising under that law, four out of six courts of first instance held it unconstitutional; six out of nine justices of the Supreme Court held that its subject-matter was within the province of congressional action; and four of the nine justices held it valid. It was, however, adjudged unconstitutional by a bare majority of the court—five to four. It was surely a very slovenly piece of work to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... that day. It was a new figure on the platform, a man with a new method. As to his manuscript, the item might have said that he never consulted it at all. He learned his lecture; what he consulted was merely a series of hieroglyphics, a set of crude pictures drawn by himself, suggestive of the subject-matter underneath new head. Certain columns represented the Parthenon; the Sphinx meant Egypt, and so on. His manuscript lay there in case of accident, but the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... am half-moved to leave my small secret undivulged. I shall encounter, I think, in the course of this copious commentary, no better example, and none on behalf of which I shall venture to invite more interest, of the quite incalculable tendency of a mere grain of subject-matter to expand and develop and cover the ground when conditions happen to favour it. I say all, surely, when I speak of the thing as planned, in perfect good faith, for brevity, for levity, for simplicity, for jocosity, in fine, and for an accommodating irony. I invoked, for my ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... ever dreamed of such ovation before: an ovation not due to any incisive thought, not due to any novelty of his subject-matter,—but due to the fact that a man born overseas had suddenly appeared among British writers, who could lay hold upon their own resources of sentiment, and inwrap it in language which charmed them by its grace and provoked them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... broken. She unfolded it. On the outside it was addressed in a hand that, had she thought, she would have recognised for Tom Mocket's, to an undistinguished person at Marietta upon the Ohio; within, the writing was her husband's and the address was to Aaron Burr. The date was last August, the subject-matter the disruption of the Republic and the conquest of Mexico, and the detail of plans included the arrangement by which Rand was to leave Albemarle, ostensibly to examine a purchase of land beyond the mountains He would leave, however, not to return. ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... for these blanks; as they must depend, in a great measure, upon local circumstances, no general directions can be given, other than, in all cases, the shortest forms that can be drawn up, consistent with perspicuity, are recommended; and that the subject-matter of each particular or single return, may be so disposed as to be easily transferred to such general tables, or general accounts, as the nature of the return and other circumstances may require. Care should likewise be taken to make them of such ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... the fairy-like loveliness of this tropical clime, and only those who have partaken of the aromatic sweetness of its fields and shores can fully realize the delight that may be shared in these low latitudes. A brief residence upon the island afforded the author the subject-matter for the following pages, and he has been assiduous in his efforts to adhere strictly to geographical facts and the truthful belongings of the island. Trusting that this may prove equally popular with ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... the well-known feats of the weird sisterhood on the broomstick; but it is affirmed that on these occasions the spirit left its earthly abode, the body being previously anointed with the ointment we have described. We cannot better illustrate this question (the possibility of which has been the subject-matter of many grave dissertations amongst the literati of those times) than by giving the substance of the following singular "Confession," which with many others equally interesting, was made in 1664, (the later days of the profession) before Robert Hunt, Esq., a "justice with fat capon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various
... to the number of official decorations, Edward Trumbull's wall paintings in the unique Pennsylvania building are of great interest. Thoroughly dignified in their composition, they are most descriptive in their subject-matter. The "Pennsylvania Industries" are on the west side and "Penn's Treaty with the Indians" on the other. It is evident that Trumbull is a disciple of Brangwyn, though a personal note is not lacking ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... too. Allow us anyhow to make the attempt. Give us a fair field. Let those who prefer the materialistic hypothesis by all means develop their thesis as far as they can; but let us try what we can do in the psychical region, and see which wins. Our methods are really the same as theirs—the subject-matter differs. Neither should abuse the other for ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... interests of the Church. He developed ways and means for raising the necessary funds, enlisting artists, overcoming the difficulties presented by the mise en scene and the polyphonic character of the choral music, and set forth his aim in respect of the subject-matter of the dramas to be a representation in chronological order of the chief incidents described in the Old and New Testaments. He would be willing to include in his scheme Biblical operas already existing, if they were not all, with the exception of Mehul's "Joseph," made unfit ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... old Tories. Of course, when hard-pressed, he was willing to recognize a difference in the motives which prompted individuals and in the degrees of their turpitude. Mr. Sabine gives us in his introductory essay a most admirable analysis of the whole subject-matter, with an accurate and instructive array of all the facts bearing upon it. No man has given more thorough or patient inquiry to it, or has had better opportunities for gathering materials of prime authority ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... of John Hamilton, Lord Belhaven, "On the subject-matter of a union betwixt the two kingdoms of England and Scotland," was so amply dispersed in its day that if a collector of pamphlets on the union buys them in volumes he will generally find this speech in each volume. It is, no doubt, an effort of genius; but what will confer ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... however, for each chapter, and may be read in class or be assigned to the catechumens to be read at home. The Scriptural illustrations are cited for the convenience of the pastor in his oral exposition. The division into chapters has been regulated by the subject-matter, and will, it is hoped, aid in the survey of the contents of the book as a whole. It is not intended that each chapter shall necessarily constitute one lesson. Some lessons will doubtless include only a part of a chapter, while others will include ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... which, as his work manifests them, will satisfy all his readers that the theme belongs to him and he to it, had not his native tastes, his training, and his actual experience brought him into a most intelligent sympathy with his subject-matter. Without being an adventurer, in the modern sense of the term, he has the spirit which filled the best old sense of the word. He has been a wide traveller and an explorer. Familiar by actual observation with the scenes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... the argument, though clear and precise, is hardly what we should call subtle, and this for the simple reason that the subject-matter does not call for subtle treatment. But what cannot fail to strike the most cursory reader is the tone of submission to authority and to the teachings of the Fathers which characterizes every page: "Summe ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... problems are evolutionary. Notwithstanding that requirements for teachers certificates have been raised the country over, the universities are not generally making very rapid strides in affording opportunities for better preparation in subject-matter and special methods. In corroboration, witness the recent criticisms of the departmental courses in special methods now given in universities generally (Swift, 1918; Taylor, 1918). The length of time or the number of units of work required for certification may be increased but that does ...
— Adequate Preparation for the Teacher of Biological Sciences in Secondary Schools • James Daley McDonald
... complete this preliminary demarcation of our subject-matter, it is necessary to distinguish between an introspection (apparent or real) of a feeling or idea, and a process of inference based on this feeling. The term introspective knowledge must, it is plain, be confined to what is or ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... this volume was written (with the exception of the campaign in the Wilderness, which had been previously written) by General Grant, after his great illness in April, and the present arrangement of the subject-matter was made by him between the 10th and 18th ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... potteries; on the other hand, the inscriptions in Ionian characters and written in the Ionian dialect on vessels prove their origin in the manufactures of the Ionian Euboea and her colonies. The pictures on these vases, also painted in stripes, extend the mythological subject-matter beyond the Trojan cycle to the oldest epical myths, each story being ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... next paragraph she weighed its subject-matter pensively. It was not necessary to her letter; it was nothing her mother was obliged to know. She decided to say it, however, from an instinct resembling that of self-preservation. If her mother were ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... antes, before—in point of time asunto (not sujeto), the subject-matter Bolsa, the Exchange calcular, to calculate celebrarse, to be celebrated, to take place compania anonima, limited company *concebir, to conceive conjuncion, conjunction desfavorable, unfavourable donde, where emision, issue, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... who have fallen in the great war." Selections in this instance are more odious than comparisons; there should be one book for one hero. Thirdly, I disapprove the dedication to the Americans; and, lastly, I found in the author's prose a certain affectation that is unworthy of the subject-matter. An instance is the reference to HARRY BUTTERS' "joyous" quotation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... grip of my Russian vocabulary, and, as Price would say, "sailed in." But I soon struck another snag. This young woman, too, began to show symptoms of shock, which, in her case, took the form of amazement. I was absolutely sure that there was nothing in the subject-matter of my remarks to bring a blush to the cheek of innocence, or give a shock to the virgin mind of feminine youth, and yet it was perfectly evident that there was something wrong. As soon as I could make my escape, I went to General Kukel and said: "Will ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... was sent to the mayor and aldermen of London in Richard's name, calling upon them to appear at Richmond before the king, together with the Duke of Lancaster and his friends, in order that both sides might be heard in respect to the subject-matter of the dispute, and that the question might be properly decided. The Duke of Lancaster, they were informed, had agreed to this course, and was ready to appear. They were accordingly summoned to ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... forward to the evening lecture as the crown and guerdon of the toilsome day. And assuredly never was there a more suitable setting, a more admirable mise-en-scene for The Nights than the landscape of Somali-land, a prospect so adapted to their subject-matter that it lent credibility even to details the least credible. Barren and grisly for the most part, without any of the charms gladdening and beautifying the normal prospects of earth, grassy hill and wooded ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Was it all to fall in ruin? No answer came when he looked forth on humanity over whose landscape the irony of the gods, a bitter mist, seemed to brood. At what then shall he aim as a poet? What shall be his subject-matter? How is ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... some of each is always present in our consciousness. The nature of these different elements in our mental stream, their relation to each other, and the manner in which they all work together in amazing perplexity yet in perfect harmony to produce the wonderful mind, will constitute the subject-matter we shall consider together in the ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... this production has endeavoured to condense all the most important subject-matter of the whole science, and present it in so small a compass that the learner can become familiarly acquainted with it in a short time. He makes but small pretensions to originality in theoretical matter. Most of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown |
