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Constructive   /kənstrˈəktɪv/   Listen
Constructive

adjective
1.
Constructing or tending to construct or improve or promote development.  "A constructive attitude" , "A constructive philosophy" , "Constructive permission"
2.
Emphasizing what is laudable or hopeful or to the good.



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"Constructive" Quotes from Famous Books



... step was purely constructive; an attempt to build, upon the description given by President Galbraith and the teller Johnson, a likeness which would fit some notorious "strong-arm man" known to the criminal records and the rogues' galleries. Broffin was not greatly disappointed ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... a daily newspaper or the sound of a passing band. To come back again.... So it was with Benham. Sometimes he was set clearly towards this world-state that Prothero had talked into possibility. Sometimes he was simply abreast of the patriotic and socially constructive British Imperialism of Breeze and Westerton. And there were moods when the two things were confused in his mind, and the glamour of world dominion rested wonderfully on the slack and straggling British Empire of Edward the Seventh—and Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Mr. ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... reconciliation and reunion before the supreme farewell was said. But it had become natural to Katherine's mind, so unsparingly self-trained in humble obedience to the divine ordering, not to stay in the destructive, but pass on to the constructive stage. She would not indulge herself in rebellion, but rather fashion her thought without delay to that which should make for inward peace. And so now, turning her eyes, in thought, from the present, she went back on the baby-love, the child-love which, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... every sentimental impulse—that is why they weep so easily. Watch them at a murder trial—they weep for the victim, then they weep for the murderer. Half their tears are useless. If women would put into constructive thinking some of the vital power they waste in weeping and talking ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... power should not be confounded with ample ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis. The constructive or combining power, by which ingenuity is usually manifested, and to which the phrenologists (I believe erroneously) have assigned a separate organ, supposing it a primitive faculty, has been so frequently seen in those whose intellect ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... information on external facts from a writer's conceptions forms part of the theory of constructive reasoning. ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... I call constructive oratory," presently continued the Secretary in a low voice. "You will notice that what he says is always calculated to strengthen the mind, although the soldiers ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... 383. Q.—Can any constructive precautions be taken to prevent the furnaces and tube plates of the boiler from being burned by the intensity ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... including relatives who may have been lodgers, 72.6 per cent of Negro families had three members or less, if the lodgers are excluded—a fact of almost startling social significance. All this is a cause for serious concern, and any constructive steps for social betterment should give attention to the causes and remedies for this condition as one of the first ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes

... women of education, wealth and leisure, free as the winds of heaven to do as they wish. In no country are there more interesting problems to be solved and one would think such work would appeal to this very class, especially as most of them are the daughters of men who by their large constructive minds have created conditions and opportunities and developed them into the great industries for which America is justly famous; and it would seem by the law of cross inheritance that these daughters would inherit some of the great creative ability of their fathers ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... Austro-Hungarian frontier. The disruptive tendencies which had hitherto been so marked in Croatian politics began to weaken. The so-called Serbo-Croat Coalition round which all the younger elements speedily rallied, put forward an ambitious programme of constructive democratic reform as the basis of joint political action on the part of both races, and held stubbornly together when the inevitable breach with the Magyar oligarchy occurred. The Magyar Government felt that every effort must be made ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... purpose or ability to effect the change with the least damage to material prosperity. Meantime the fitting attitude for the public was one not of criticism but of forbearance and assistance. This was equally true of journalism. The "Clarion" admitted seeing a new light. Constructive rather than destructive effort was called for. And so forth, and so on. No intelligent reader could have failed, reading it, to understand that the "Clarion" had hauled ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... won for them a new party name, "Whig." But neither their opposition nor any other circumstance had given them party solidarity. National Republicans, anti-Masons, converted Jacksonians, state rights men—upon what broad and constructive platform could they hope to unite? They had no lack of able presidential aspirants. There was Clay, the National Republican candidate in 1832; there was Webster, of whom Jackson once said that he would never be President because he was "too far east, knows too much, ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... out of my work, which it distressed me to touch upon in a stupid haphazard way, and which no one, so far as I knew, had handled in a manner to satisfy my needs. But Anticipations did not achieve its end. I have a slow constructive hesitating sort of mind, and when I emerged from that undertaking I found I had still most of my questions to state and solve. In Mankind in the Making, therefore, I tried to review the social organisation in a different ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... were old and familiar when Jefferson wrote them. The American Revolution, which led up to the Declaration, is especially significant in this: that it began as a struggle not for new privileges but for old rights. So the constructive character of that Revolution, which ended with a democracy and a noble constitution, was due largely to the fact that brave men stood ready to defend the old freedom, the old manhood, the old charters, "the good old cause" for which other brave men had lived or died ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... deaf-blind persons. Her dexterity is not notable either in comparison with the normal person, whose movements are guided by the eye, or, I am told, with other blind people. She has practised no single constructive craft which would call for the use of her hands. When she was twelve, her friend Mr. Albert H. Munsell, the artist, let her experiment with a wax tablet and a stylus. He says that she did pretty well and managed to make, after models, some conventional ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... two novels, 'Clara Howard: In a Series of Letters,' and 'Jane Talbot.' They are a departure from his previous work: instead of dealing with uncanny subjects they treat of quiet domestic and social life. They show also a great advance on his previous books in constructive art. In 1799 Brown became editor of the Monthly Magazine and American Review, and contributed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... relief from the consciousness of social maladjustment in the "anodyne of work" afforded by philanthropic and civic activities, their former experiences had not thrown them into company with radicals. The decade between 1890-1900 was, in Chicago, a period of propaganda as over against constructive social effort; the moment for marching and carrying banners, for stating general principles and making a demonstration, rather than the time for uncovering the situation and for providing the legal measures and the civic organization through which new ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... in reality none of these can be affirmed of the phenomena. The second category consists of that habit of the mind by virtue of which it constructs diversities and arranges them (created in their turn by its own constructive activity—parikalpa) in a logical order of diverse relations of subject and predicate, causal and other relations. He who knows the nature of these two categories of the mind knows that there is no external ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... session of the new parliament of Canada a 'do-nothing-but-talk' session. There was indeed a flow of eloquence in various kinds during the first few weeks until the different parties found the proper relations and the serious work of legislation began. Constructive measures of the first importance became law in due course. Sydenham's own words sum up his achievement. 'With a most difficult opening, almost a minority, with passions at boiling heat, and prejudices such as I never saw, to contend with, I have brought the Assembly by degrees ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... of life; it is full of hard, scientific, prose thought about conduct, which has its own quality as long as it sticks to fact and remains satire; but when the prose curvets and tries to lift, when criticism turns constructive, we find no more than bubbles and children's balloons, empty and coloured, that soar and evaporate. There is, in this farce of the intellect, a beginning of social drama; realism peeps through the artificial point and polish of a verse which has some of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... conjunction with the rest—we have then no right to expect any intrinsic continuity between them; and all that continuity which we now find must be of extraneous origin. Where are we to look for the origin? Lachmann follows Wolf in ascribing the whole constructive process to Peisistratus and his associates, at the period when the creative epical faculty is admitted to have died out. But upon this supposition, Peisistratus (or his associate) must have done much more than omit, transpose, and interpolate, here and there; he must have gone ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... curriculum. In so far as the school represents, in its own spirit, a genuine community life; in so far as what are called school discipline, government, order, etc., are the expressions of this inherent social spirit; in so far as the methods used are those that appeal to the active and constructive powers, permitting the child to give out and thus to serve; in so far as the curriculum is so selected and organized as to provide the material for affording the child a consciousness of the world in which he ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey

... He saw nothing in its society that equalled that of Hawkeye, he sat down to no table that could not be unfavorably contrasted with his own at home; the most airy scheme inflated in the hot air of the capital only reached in magnitude some of his lesser fancies, the by-play of his constructive imagination. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... King, The High School Age. Bobbs-Merrill & Co., $1.00 net. A study of the nature and needs of boys and girls in the first period of adolescence. Written for all who are alive to the problems of this period as well as for school people; gives constructive suggestions for educational problems. ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... prides itself upon its patriotism, so long as the caste system dominates them and their ideas. The only tie which binds together these people is the spirit of opposition to this foreign government. Among the classes and the masses there is absolutely no coherence or unity of sentiment in any line of constructive activity. So that in the matter of self-government they would prove themselves ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... despondingly, instruction still pertinent. The actual course of the several campaigns, or of the particular battles, I worked out as one does any historical conclusion, by comparison of the individual witnesses presented in the several accounts; but the result of this constructive process became to me something more than a narrative. Both the general outcome and the separate incidents passed through tests which formed in me an habitual critical habit of mind. My judgments, one or all, might be erroneous; but, right or wrong, what I brought ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... position upon the sea. While pointing out causes underlying the decadence of the merchant marine, he enumerated also the conditions which at that time favored its certain development.... He was, therefore, committed to a vigorous prosecution of any constructive plan leading ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... stops digestion and poisons the secretions of the body. Worry does the same. It takes the mind from constructive thoughts and deeds and centers it upon ourselves. An effective mind must be tranquil, otherwise it upsets the body and fails to give proper direction to ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... of the Affirmative; and therefore the only limitation implied by conformity to it is that of being prevented from running on lines the opposite of those of the Creative Process, that is to say, from calling into action causes of disintegration and destruction. In the truly Constructive Order, therefore, the Divine Standard of Personality is as really the basis of the development of specific personality as the Universal Mind is the necessary basis of generic mentality; and just as without this generic ultimate of Mind we should none of us see the same world ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward

... of no great merit from a constructive or literary point of view. We hear a good deal nowadays of the "decline of the drama," but perhaps in no civilised country has it declined so far as it had descended in Rome by the year A.D. 64. The regular and classical drama—that is to say, literary tragedy ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... meantime, we have our work too—the five children. But it is a little constructive work—not a great one. For in this beautiful, safe island, there is not much that we can do besides feed them. And so, here we sit day after day, five women who could once fly, big, strong, full-bodied, teeming with various efficiencies and abilities—wasted. If ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... fitness of the nomination was universally conceded) was opposed by several Southern Senators on the ground that he had expressed an interest in the success of West India emancipation. If Original Democrats have their way, it will not be long before it is made constructive treason to have read that chapter of the Acts of the Apostles which relates the misguided philanthropy of Philip in endeavoring to convert an Ethiopian into anything but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... given to serious conversation; indeed, he was rather casual, as a rule, but Harding, who was shrewd, saw beneath the surface a love of order, and what he thought of as constructive ability. ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss

... luck, energy, and ambition, while everything was possible, nothing was secure. It seemed, therefore, as if the soulless official must eventually assume the duties of the two sympathizing friends who had originated them, and had stood in loco parentis to the constructive orphan. The mother, Mrs. Howard, had disappeared a year after the Trust had been made—it was charitably presumed in order to prevent any complications that might arise from her presence in the country. With these facts before him, Paul Hathaway was more concerned ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte

... heroes; where the parallel totally fails is in what followed. There were features in which the campaigns of the Mexican and South American insurgent leaders resembled at least the partisan warfare so often waged by American Revolutionary generals; but with the deeds of the great constructive statesman of the United States there is nothing in the career of any Spanish-American community to compare. It was the power to build a solid and permanent Union, the power to construct a mighty nation out of the wreck of a crumbling ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... does render it unnecessary and indeed absurd that they should be abundant or gigantic. The danger which always impends over the sea-power of any country is that, after being long unused, it may lose touch of the sea. The revolution in the constructive arts during the last half-century, which has also been a period of but little-interrupted naval peace, and the universal adoption of mechanical appliances, both for ship-propulsion and for many minor ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge

... together the thinkers (including Voltaire) associated with the Encyclopaedia, who represented a critical and consciously aggressive force against traditional theories and existing institutions. The constructive thinker Rousseau was not less aggressive, but he stands apart and opposed, by his hostility to modern civilisation. Thirdly, we must distinguish the school of Economists, also reformers and optimists, but of more conservative temper than the ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... physical damage as would destroy his body that man unconsciously avoided thinking of the chance of his own death: hence his belief in the continuance of life cannot be regarded as the outcome of an active process of constructive thought. ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... as the necessary precedent of Enki's activities, the latter creates the Deep, vegetation, mountains, seas, and mankind. Moreover, in his character as God of Wisdom, he is not only the teacher but the creator of those deities who were patrons of man's own constructive work. From such evidence we may infer that in his temple at Eridu, now covered by the mounds of Abu Shahrain in the extreme south of Babylonia, and regarded in early Sumerian tradition as the first city in ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... the growing country which, like a boisterous growing boy, needed restraint and guidance in reaching the fullness of its powers. They were not party men, politically or socially, but they saw that every person and every organization that was sane and law-abiding and constructive, got fair play without interference from anyone. The Police did not as a body engage in commercial activities themselves, but they made it possible for the settler and the miner and the railroad-builder and others ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... a superstitious terror of complexity as the sink of facts. Nothing came out as it should. In principle, according to figures, any one could set up or pull down a society. One could frame no sort of satisfactory answer to the constructive doctrines of Adam Smith, or to the destructive criticisms of Karl Marx or to the anarchistic imprecations of Elisee Reclus. One revelled at will in the ruin of every society in the past, and rejoiced in proving the prospective overthrow of every society that seemed possible ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... limbless there Was more than the K.K. could bear "In mercy silence with all speed That mouth there are no hands to feed; What cruel sentimentalist, O Jones, would doom thee to exist— Clinging to selfish Selfhood yet? Weak one! Such reasoning might upset The Pump Act, and the accumulation Of all constructive legislation; Let us construct you up a bit—" The head fell off when it was hit: Then words did rise and honest doubt, And four Commissions sat about Whether the slash that left him dead Cut off his body ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton

... President has a right to name one, without the approval of the Senate. In no case can a minister appoint one legally, for the Constitution gives him under no circumstances any such authority; and our system does not admit of the constructive authority that is used under other governments, unless it can be directly referred to an expressly delegated power. Now the power of appointment to office is expressly delegated; but it is to another, or rather to another through ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... processes and methods in laundry work, cooking, or housekeeping. It is time some fundamental things were agreed upon, and although standardising must not be allowed to become stereotyping, at present constructive generalisation is needed, as well as the upsetting of out-grown traditions. In this context it would be well to discuss a question more properly to be taken at the end of this paper—the connection between the teaching in elementary schools ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... reproduced in the mind of man, and the temple of truth is silently rising. We may not as yet be able to connect wing with wing, or to declare definitely the law of the whole. The logical order of the hypotheses of the various sciences, the true connection of these categories of constructive thought, may yet be uncertain. But, still, there is such an order and connection: the whole building has its plan, which becomes more and more intelligible as it approaches to its completion. Beneath all the ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... interests and a fine, free spirit—all this is the pride of France. And we have, too, a little band of musicians; among them, in the first rank, that great painter of dreams, Claude Debussy; that master of constructive art, Dukas; that impassioned thinker, Alberic Magnard; that ironic poet, Ravel; and those delicate and finished writers, Albert Roussel and Deodat de Severac; without mention of the younger musicians who are in the vanguard of their art. And all this poetic force, though not the ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... Not merely will they lessen its ultimate chance of achievement; their hardships will always distress and preoccupy minds,—fine, generous minds,—that might have done great things if free: that might have done something constructive at least, for their era, instead of being burned ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... nor religion. He bases his assertions on the fact that he does not find altars or writings among their possessions. But appearances are against him. They apparently had both, from the structure of their skulls. The Cliff Dweller is largely endowed with the artistic and constructive organs of the brain with an unlimited capacity for invention and designing. Savage races far below him in these qualities have literature, and it is unreasonable to suppose that having these qualities both large and active, he did ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... posterity has reversed that of {396} the great historian, [Sidenote: Constructive work] at least as far as the value of the work done at Trent to the cause of Catholicism is concerned. If the church shut out the Protestants and recognized her limited domain, she at least took appropriate measures ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... process that has made all the lowlands at the mouth of Great Slave and Athabaska Rivers. And the lines of tree trunks to-day, preparing for the next constructive annexation of the lake, are so regular that one's first thought is that this is the work of man. But these are things that my sketches and photographs will ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... found. A dignified, judicial equanimity of tone is preserved from first to last. Moreover, though the title and direct purpose of the volume is negative and critical, yet the destructive criticism is pervaded by many copious veins of constructive exposition, embodying Mr Mill's own views upon some of the ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote

... he said, "I've yet to see a beginning. But, anyway, if you give in a grudging spirit, or the spirit of a schoolmaster, what can you expect? If you offer out of real good-will, so it is taken." And suddenly conscious that he had uttered a constructive phrase, Felix cast down his eyes, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... used to create turmoil. The population of the continent was confined to the staffs of research-bases established during the International Geophysical Year. In theory the bases were an object-lesson in co-operation for a constructive purpose, which splendid spirit of mutual trust and confidence must spread through the world and some day lead to an era of ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster

... my own included, the conception of a universe that would come to a man's aid the minute a man came to his own was too much like a fairy tale. It may indeed be a fairy tale. All I know is that in my own case it is the way in which it seems to have worked. I think I have caught a glimpse of a constructive use for that which I had previously thought of as only destructive ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... impartial estimate upon either the theological position of the man or the influence resulting from him. "We have seen," says this author, "how completely he caught the influences of his time, absorbed them and transmitted them. If his teaching was defective in its constructive side; if he did not attain the firm grasp of objective verity which is implied in perfect doctrinal, not to say critical, orthodoxy, he at least gave the death-blow to the old Rationalism, which either from an ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... Pictorial and Presentative. It presents to the author's mind, and through him to the minds of his readers, all the elements of human experience and life (drawing from his actual experience or his reading). 2. Selective, Associative, and Constructive. From the unorganized material thus brought clearly to the author's consciousness Imagination next selects the details which can be turned to present use, and proceeds to combine them, uniting scattered traits and incidents, perhaps from widely different sources, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... initiated in the earliest phases of Gothic, there is something like Greek Love. The simple trefoil aperture seems a fair architectural version of the clover-leaves. But the propriety of the use of these clover-lines was hinted by a constructive exigency, the pointed arch. The inevitable assimilation of the natural forms of leaves with this feature was too evident not to be improved by such active and ardent worshippers as the Freemasons. Thus originated Gothic tracery, which afterwards branched ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... and penitential psalms which give full expression to the heights and depths of religious devotion. An "infidel" bold enough to deny the existence, or to doubt the influence, of these deities probably did not exist in all Mesopotamia; and even constructive rebellion against their authority was apt to end in the deprivation, not merely of the good name, but of the skin of the offender. The adherents of modern theological systems dismiss these objects of ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... their acceptance; difficulties which would appear to be insurmountable to Professor Kolliker, inasmuch as he proposes to replace Mr. Darwin's Theory by one which he terms the 'Theory of Heterogeneous Generation.' We shall proceed to consider first the destructive, and secondly, the constructive portion of the essay. ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... of a steam plant, the piping system should receive the most careful consideration. Aside from the constructive details, good practice in which is fairly well established, the important factors are the size of the piping to be employed and the methods utilized in avoiding difficulties from the presence in the system of water of condensation and the means employed ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... to tell how it was reached from the house. You could hardly have found the way to it, even had you set yourself seriously to the task, without having in you a good share of the constructive faculty. The whole was my uncle's contrivance, but might well have been supposed to belong to the troubled times when a good hiding-place would have added to the value of ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald

... this point of view the reader is advised to consult the writings of the late R.A. Proctor, who has brought to the task of interpreting the planetary conditions the skill of a well-trained astronomer and a remarkable constructive imagination. ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... there appears to be good ground for laying this charge of constructive plagiarism against the memory of William Jones. It is true the building was on a scale somewhat smaller than that erected at the order of Henry VIII, for its circumference was limited to four hundred and fifty feet, while its greatest diameter was but ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... Observation by Suppression of Sides and Corners) Orpheus and Eurydice—Corot (Figures outside the natural line of the picture's composition); The Holy Family—Andrea del Sarto (The circle overbalanced) The Herder—Jaque Alone—Jacques Israels (Constructive Synthesis upon the Vertical); The Dance—Carpeaux (The Cross Within the Circle) Sketches from Landscapes by Henry Ranger; Parity of Horizonatals and Verticals; Crossings of Horizontals by Spot Diversion Sketch from the Book of Truth—Claude Lorrain (Rectangle Unbalanced); The Beautiful ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... one of the many great works of the same kind executed at that time, it was almost enough of itself to be the achievement of a life. Compare it, for example with Napoleon's military road over the Simplon, and it will at once be seen how greatly it excels that work, not only in the constructive skill displayed in it, but also in its cost and magnitude, and the amount of labour employed in its formation. The road of the Simplon is 45 miles in length; the North Midland Railway is 72.5 miles. The former has 50 bridges and 5 tunnels, measuring ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... that the original unsophisticated man was by no means constructive. He lived in the open air, under ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... The essential constructive difference between water-tube and fire-tube boilers lies in the fact that the former is composed of parts of relatively small diameter as against the large diameters necessary in ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... Prisoner of Chillon,' or with some of his shorter poems—would be like comparing the most perfect mechanical device with a graceful animal—say the mechanical imitation of a tiger or a gazelle with the living original; the first a wonderfully moving piece of machinery, illustrating the limit of human constructive power; perfectly under control, the movements smooth, unvarying, rhythmical, charming, excelling in agility and power its living prototype—but still, scientific—to the discerning eye, artful. The other, something more than rhythmical, more than smooth, beyond the control of ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... higher plane this tremendous question which is facing us, to lift this tremendous relationship from regulation to the life of the spirit. We want this church to face reality." Nevertheless, the Commission marched from one defeat to another, but it still marches! There was passed in 1931 one constructive piece of legislation bearing on instruction in Christian marriage which was enacted largely through the extremely forceful ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick

... powers, working with intense fervour and concentration, could have achieved the sustained brilliancy of the result. "What a genius I had when I wrote that book!" Swift is said to have exclaimed in his old age when he re-read The Tale of a Tub, and certainly the book is a marvel of constructive skill, all the more striking because it makes allegory out of history and consequently is denied that freedom of narrative so ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... truth the book gripped her, too, in most intimate and novel fashion, revealing to her the enchantments of an art in process of being actively realized in living, constructive effort. Herein she found, not the amazement of a new thing, but of a thing so natural that it appeared just a part of her very self, though, until now, an undiscovered one. To read other people's books is a joyous employment, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... was over and he had done all he could, Johnny found himself dreading the time of waiting to follow. He would have time for thinking, and thinking wasn't profitable under the circumstances unless it were something definitely constructive and applicable to his present and future well-being. Waiting was ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor

... attacks are directed, and also to estimate the character and force of the weapons employed. With or without design, they are, each in their way, assailing one or other of the principles upon which we rest our demonstration of the being of God. As we proceed, we shall find that Mill and the Constructive Idealists are really engaged in undermining "the principle of substance;" their doctrine is a virtual denial of all objective realities answering to our subjective ideas of matter, mind, and God. The assaults of Comte and the Materialists of his school are mainly directed against "the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... any symphony, overture, string quartet, or cantata. The major portion of his work is as elastic and emancipated in form as it is unconfined in spirit. He preferred to shape his inspiration upon the mould of a definite poetic concept, rather than upon a constructive formula which was, for him, artificial and anomalous. Even in his sonatas the classic prescription is altered or abrogated at will in accordance with the requirements ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman

... writing, the redoubtable DORA (Defence of the Realm Act) forbids any but the vaguest references to what is going forward in the way of additions to our air forces. But it may be stated that air-ships are included in the great constructive programme now being carried out. It is not long since the citizens of Glasgow were treated to the spectacle of a full-sized British "Zep" circling round the city prior to her journey south, and so to regions unspecified. And ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... one of us what we are able to receive of it in "wise passiveness," and then are able by the constructive force of our individuality to shape into coherence and completeness. As the landscape which an artist paints is the landscape visioned in imagination, though composed of forms given in nature, so life furnishes us the elements of experience, and out of these elements ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... a man or animal, vertebrate or invertebrate, is based upon either reason or hereditary instinct. It is a mistake to assume that because an organism is small it necessarily has no "mind," and none of the propelling impulse that we call thought. The largest whale may have less intelligence and constructive reasoning than a trap-door spider, a bee or an ant. To deny this is to deny the ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... children in the garden, and Cherry was in that world of joy and something like inspiration known to spirits imbued with any of the constructive poetry of art, always endeavouring to fulfil an ideal, never indeed satisfying themselves, but never so at ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... assortment of materials needed in small amounts for the body welfare, partly for constructive and partly for regulating purposes. These are rather irregularly distributed in other kinds of food materials. When eggs, vegetables, and cereals are freely used, we are not likely to suffer any lack; but when war conditions limit the number of foods which we can get, it is well to ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose

... contact with its natural Eastern market. To this end, the Pennsylvania Railroad was incorporated on April 13, 1846, with a franchise permitting the construction of a railroad across the State from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh. An added incentive to constructive expansion was given by an act of the Legislature authorizing the Baltimore and Ohio to extend its line to Pittsburgh if the Pennsylvania Company failed to ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody

... necessary, however, to take account of the combining or constructive aptitudes of the mind. We can go a certain length in putting together our alphabet of sensation and experience into many various compounds. We can imagine a paradise or a pandemonium; but only as made up of our own knowledge of things good and evil. The limits of ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... you will, to form a committee of advice and publicity for the Sunday School; look it over and make any suggestions for its betterment, and then, perhaps, see that the press gives us some attention—give the public some really helpful and constructive news instead of all these murders ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... to elaborate upon his tremendous energy, sagacity and constructive enterprise, as though these were the exclusive qualities by which he got his fortune. Such a glittering picture, common in all of the usual biographies of rich men, discredits itself and is overthrown by the actual facts. The times in which Vanderbilt lived and thrived were not calculated ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... "self-poised," the "well-balanced" man, of whom you can safely predict what he will do under given conditions; the man who never bitterly disappoints you and makes you weep for very pity of his weakness, will never appall you by exhibitions of his strength. He may possess constructive talent, but never that creative power which we call genius because it suggests the genii. "No man is a hero to his valet," says the adage. Carlyle assumes this to be the fault of the latter—due to sawdust or other cheap filling in the head of the menial. Yet, may not the valet be wiser in this ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... to be in company with this highly distinguished man of science, whose social qualities are as pleasing as his constructive talent is marvelous, when another eminent savant, Count Strzelecki, just returned from his Oriental and Australian tour, observed that he found among the Chinese, a great desire to know something more of Mr. Babbage's calculating machine, and especially whether, like their own swampan, it ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett

... prodigals, and we have seen the deadly dangers and perils, both physical and moral, which the soldier must face. We have spoken of the enormous sums voted to carry on a great war of destruction. Is there not a yet more urgent need that we should supply the great constructive forces for fortifying the physical and moral manhood of our nation? Two organizations have been recognized by our own and the other allied governments in the war zone—the one bearing the symbol of the red ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... neither poet nor philosopher enjoys it in monopoly; the chemist may have it, and the inventor must; it has been proved the mainspring of the mathematician, and I have hinted it the property of at least two of the Murchisons. Lorne was indebted to it certainly for his constructive view of his client's situation, the view which came to him and stayed with him like a chapter in a novel, from the hour in which Ormiston had reluctantly accounted for himself upon the night of the burglary. It was a brilliant view, that perceived the young clerk the victim ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... than this, that ship, with all her mournful career, has been a useful lesson and a useful warning to all naval architects who seriously study their profession—a lesson of what can be done in the safe construction of huge floating structures, and a warning that the highest flights of constructive genius may prove abortive if not strictly subordinated to the practical conditions and commercial requirements of the times. The Sirius and Great Western crossed the Atlantic in 1838, and in 1840 the first ship of the since celebrated ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various

... saw and handled the results of their toil, great freight-trains speeding over the trestles they had built, vast bands of cattle, and leagues of splendid wheat. After all, the genius of London is administrative and not constructive, and it is the latter that appeals most directly to the Colonial. One can see the forests go down or the great rocks rent, but the results that merely figure in the ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... him to abdicate, and made himself emperor. The Ch'en dynasty which thus began was even feebler than the preceding dynasties. Its territory was confined to the lower Yangtze valley. Once more cliques and rival pretenders were at work and prevented any sort of constructive home policy. Abroad, certain advantages were gained in north China over the Northern Ch'i dynasty, but ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... this mood of mind that I became a constructive microscopist. After another year passed in this new pursuit, experimenting on every imaginable substance—glass, gems, flints, crystals, artificial crystals formed of the alloy of various vitreous materials—in short, having constructed ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien

... Garcia Moreno, who became President of that republic in 1861. In some respects the counterpart of Francia of Paraguay, in others both a medieval mystic and an enlightened ruler of modern type, he was a man of remarkable intellect, constructive ability, earnest patriotism, and disinterested zeal for orderliness and progress. On his presidential sash were inscribed the words: "My Power in the Constitution"; but is real power lay in himself and in the system which ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd

... which now masquerade as verities."[23] "Socialism is of the character of a historical discovery."[24] "Socialism, the inspiring principle of all Labour Parties, whether they know it or not, is the next world movement—the movement of the constructive intellect."[25] ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... of the Mutakallimun, gives an adequate outline of the essentials of their teaching and administers a crushing blow to their principles as well as their method. He then follows up his destructive criticism with a constructive method, in which he frankly admits that in order to establish the existence, unity and incorporeality of God—the three fundamental dogmas of Judaism—beyond the possibility of cavil, we must make common cause with the philosophers even though it be only ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... tried upon a pretended charge of high treason, at the Old Bailey in London; but this premeditated cold-blooded attempt of the ministers to destroy these innocent men, their political opponents, by setting on the plea of constructive treason, was frustrated by the verdict of an honest London jury. Messrs. Tooke and Thelwall were very able, and perhaps the most powerful, advocates of liberty in England at that time; and the ministers of the day might, with some ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... destructive critic that ever appeared, had the merit which in his day was somewhat novel among reformers, and marked him out as something very different from Continental radicals—of being also highly constructive. Indeed, his labors in providing substitutes for what he sought to overthrow are among the most curious, and, we might add, valuable monuments of human industry and ingenuity. His proposed reforms ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... accordance with inherent leaning and capability; and, third, equip them with the tools of knowledge and give such knowledge facts and develop such points of view as will enable each to become a self-directing, constructive, and contributing member ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... many-sided. To make it truly educative it must be pursued from both theoretical and practical standpoints. It should include technical training which affords facility to express whatever a person may have for expression; intellectual training which enables a person to grasp the constructive laws of the art, its scope, history and aesthetics, with all that calls into play the analytic and imaginative faculties; and spiritual development which imparts warmth and glow to everything. Even those who do not advance far in music study would do well, as ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... a peculiarity of Owen's treatises, which is at once an excellence and a main cause of their redundancies. So systematic was his mind that he could only discuss a special topic with reference to the entire scheme of truth; and so constructive was his mind, that, not content with the confutation of his adversary, he loved to state and establish positively the truth impugned: to which we may add, so devout was his disposition, that, instead ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... The constructive genius of Rome devised a different method of dealing with the political problems involved in expanding relations. Roman citizenship was extended till it included all Italy and, later on, till it comprised the whole free population of the Mediterranean basin. But this extension was even ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse

... given up the popular stage when he turned to the amusement of King James. In 1605 "Volpone" was produced, "The Silent Woman" in 1609, "The Alchemist" in the following year. These comedies, with "Bartholomew Fair," 1614, represent Jonson at his height, and for constructive cleverness, character successfully conceived in the manner of caricature, wit and brilliancy of dialogue, they stand alone in English drama. "Volpone, or the Fox," is, in a sense, a transition play from the dramatic satires of the war of the theatres to the purer comedy represented in the plays ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... the gipsies and the discovery of the spring seemed to them little less than supernatural. Besides which, in innumerable little ways Felix's superior knowledge had told upon them. His very manners spoke of high training. His persuasive voice won them. His constructive skill and power of planning, as shown in the palisades and enclosure, showed a grasp of circumstances new to them. This was a man such as ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... a zoologist was estimated by the number of specific names, natural habitats, &c., which he could retain in his memory, rather than by any evidences which he might give of intellectual powers in the way of constructive thought. At the most these powers might legitimately exercise themselves only in the direction of taxonomic work; and if a Hales, a Haller, or a Hunter obtained any brilliant results in the way of observation ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... time signs of flagging constructive energy began to appear. Pedro Minio and the plays after it reveal a certain slothfulness of working out. The writer shrinks from the labor required to extract their full value from certain situations and characters, and he is prone to ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos

... was partly attributable to their custom of pursuing their trade not only in factory hours, but outside the factory, at home. Within the last year, the most widely constructive effort to abolish sweated home labor from the needle trades ever undertaken in this country has been initiated by the New York cloak makers, to whom we next turned for an ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt

... or race, like the individual, must have intelligent organization and live in harmony with the laws of nature in order to survive. Opposition to them means destruction Cooperation is constructive. ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... The class struggle was to be won in the capitalist legislatures. Step by step concessions were to be wrested from the state; the working class and the Socialist parties were to be strengthened by means of 'constructive' reform and social legislation; each concession would act as a rung in the ladder of Social Revolution, upon which the workers could climb step by step, until finally, some bright sunny morning, the peoples would awaken to find the Cooperative Commonwealth functioning ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... to change from the opposition to the leadership in a Government,—from critical to constructive politics. Carl Schurz was a fine orator and an effective speaker on the minority side, but he commenced life as a revolutionist and always remained one. If he had once attempted to introduce legislation, he would ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... in real life; but it cannot be used in a novel to clear up a tangled web of circumstance, without betraying something of a poverty of invention in the writer. He is the best artist who makes least use of incidents which lie out of the beaten path of observation and experience. In constructive skill Cooper's rank is not high; for all his novels are more or less open to the criticism that too frequent use is made in them of events very unlikely to have happened. He leads his characters into such formidable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... environment and circumstance and fate; that rises and rebukes facts, reshapes destiny. And then the speaking began: the bishop, the rabbi, the financier, the philanthropist, the social worker. They spoke eloquently, they showed pity, they were constructive, they were prepared to act; they represented the "better classes" and promised the "poor," the toilers, that they would see that relief and protection were given; but somehow their eloquence did not carry; somehow that mass of commonest men and women refused to be stirred and ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... rendered to the citizen in the mode prescribed by the measure we now have under consideration? If not, a perpetual state of constructive war would be a great blessing to very many American citizens. If a suspension of martial law and a restoration of the ordinary forms of civil law are to result in a subjection of our people to the outrages under the operation of State laws and ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... was the smallest man of the three. His reputation rests, not upon constructive statesmanship, but upon his ability as a party leader, in which respect he has had few equals in American history, and upon his success in proposing compromises. Born in Virginia, and admitted to the bar in 1797, he moved the same year to Lexington, Kentucky, where his practice brought him ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... table. "Andrew Sevier was a loss to us all at the time and to you for whom we builded. The youngest and strongest and best of us had been mowed down before a four-years' rain of bullets and there were few enough of us left to build again. And of us all he had the most constructive power. With the same buoyant courage that he had led our regiment in battle did he lead the remnant of us in reconstructing our lives. He was gay and optimistic, laughed at bitterness and worked with infectious spirits and superb force. We all depended ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... the action of the southern government was hardly less than heroic. This renunciation is the most sensational act of the Canton government, but one soon learns that it is the accompaniment of a considerable number of constructive administrative undertakings. Among the most notable are attempts to reform the local magistracies throughout the province, the establishment of municipal government in Canton—something new in China where local officials are all centrally appointed and controlled—based upon ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey

... people for the people as by the barristers for the barristers. They set the tone of political life. And since they are the most specialised, the most specifically trained of all the professions, since their training is absolutely antagonistic to the creative impulses of the constructive artist and the controlled experiments of the scientific man, since the business is with evidence and advantages and the skilful use of evidence and advantages, and not with understanding, they are the least ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... boyish voice were negated by the intelligence of his words, the size of his vocabulary, the clarity of his statements. Now that he was silent, he became no more than an eight-year-old lad who could not possibly be doing anything constructive with this mad array of equipment. The messiness of the place merely made the madness of the whole program ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... modern spirit finds usages and systems of thought more inconsistent with modern ideas. As a consequence, where in India the modern spirit has come, it has stripped men barer of belief. Listen to the following curious conglomeration, showing the influences at work, constructive and destructive. It is a passage from the pamphlet already referred to, The Future of India; the author is arguing for what he calls "practical recognition of the Fatherhood of God"—one new positive idea. That idea he takes ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... and has therefore inevitably become the subject of a ramified and extensive administration, an administration, however, which no longer aims at extinguishing it, but at disciplining and perpetuating it. This administration has abandoned all thought of stopping up the source of pauperism by constructive measures; it is content to dig a grave for it with official gentleness whenever it breaks out on the surface of the official country. Instead of going beyond the administrative and charitable measures, the English ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... the constant reminiscence of the natural proportions of his first forest-dwelling, the Greek would be restrained from all inordinate exaggeration of size—the Egyptian was from the first left without hint of any system of proportion, whether constructive, or of visible parts. The cavern—its level roof supported by amorphous piers—might be extended indefinitely into the interior of the hills, and its outer facade continued almost without term along their flanks—the solid mass of cliff above ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... accompaniment, if not the direct exponent, of a bad and remorseless heart. The expression of his mouth was at the same time both hard and wanton, and his eyes, though full of a lively lustre, resembled in their brightness those of a serpent or hyena. His forehead was constructive but low, and, we may say, rather unintellectual than otherwise. He was without whiskers, a circumstance which caused a wound on the back part of his jaw to be visible, and one-half of the left-hand little finger had been shot off in defence ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... assert are acting "unconstitutionally" whenever they choose to assert the undeniable principles of the Constitution. Thus to-day we have this paradoxical situation; that although Japanese Liberalism must from its very essence be revolutionary, i.e., destructive before it can hope to be constructive, it feigns blindness, hoping that by suasion rather than by force the principle of parliamentary government will somehow be grafted on to the body politic and the emperors, being left outside the controversy, become content to accept a ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... plea had its influence in securing the adoption of the Federal Constitution. Among other difficulties in the way, a constructive guarantee of slavery seemed necessary to secure the assent of some of the Southern States. How strong the plea! Slavery was wrong to be sure, but the terrible seven years' war was ended, and a great nation was ready to come into existence! The ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various

... stores, all our horse vehicles and vans and lorries had to be erased. . . . But I have said enough now perhaps to give some idea of the bulk and quality of our great bonfires, our burnings up, our meltings down, our toil of sheer wreckage, over and above the constructive ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... to feel and will feel that in order to amount to anything, it is necessary to have a constructive, {355} and not merely a destructive, nature; and if he can keep this feeling as he grows up he has taken his first step toward good citizenship. The man who tears down and criticises and scolds may be a good citizen, but only in a negative sense; and if he never does anything else he is ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... view in which the mass was regarded by statesmen like Cecil, and generally by many men of plain straightforward understanding, who believed transubstantiation as little as he. In Protestantism, as a constructive theology, they had as little interest as in Popery; when the alternative lay between the two, they saw no reason to sacrifice themselves ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... gasoline mixtures, to increase its combustibility by a hundred per cent or more. For that is what thyroid will do to our food. Nor has it only this destructive or combustion side. Withal there is at the same time a constructive action, for the process frees energy to be used for heat, motion or other need. The thyroid, therefore, in addition to its role as an accelerator, acts, too, as the efficient lubricator for energy transformations. So we see it ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... basilicas and of St. Mark's in Venice will know; but, indeed, we have only to look at the illuminated manuscripts which are to be found in all our libraries. And in that great art in which, above all perhaps, they expressed themselves, in their great architecture, we see the growth of a constructive genius which is only overshadowed by the superb beauty of ...
— Progress and History • Various

... in books. It must learn to believe things that cannot be proved, or perhaps even definitely formulated as truth. The soul of the nation must be subjected, in a word, to some kind of spiritual leadership. Constructive statesmanship must be felt as an influence in the school. The problem is really nothing less than that of educating and forming national character. Now that we stand less alone as a nation our character cannot safely be left so much to chance and to the effects of our favorable ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... INSURANCE is the surrender of the ship or goods insured to the insurers, in the case of a constructive total loss of the thing insured. For the requisites and effects of abandonment in this ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of the most difficult parts of our selection, namely, how to present enough excitement for the child and yet include enough constructive element which will satisfy him when the ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... all that has gone before. If it is so it is here to stay. If in the process of transportation evolution we have reached the normal use of the highway, together with the waterway and the railway, then you are doing a constructive work for your country. But if that work is not normal, if you are trying to impose upon the body politic something strange and artificial, then your work will, and ...
— Address by Honorable William C. Redfield, Secretary of Commerce at Conference of Regional Chairmen of the Highway Transport Committee Council of National Defence • US Government

... of an actual spiritual environment in vitalizing contact with the human spirit than there now is of an external world with which we correspond. There is a priori no reason against the reality of such an inner spiritual universe. It is precisely as conceivable that constructive and illuminating influences should stream into our inner selves from that central Light with which our inmost self is allied, as that objects in space and time should bombard us with messages adapted to our senses. The difference is that we all experience the outer ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... more in the aggregate? Since then it has grown with our growth. Or would you believe that a larger sum is assessed in the city of New York, than would cover the expenses of the general government at Washington? Constructive mileage may be considered as the principle of the party, and literally ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... your friend. He means something there. You may depend upon it, Judah means something there. He has a motive, and of course his motive is a dark motive. Now, whatever his motive is, it's necessary to his motive'—Mr Fledgeby's constructive powers were not equal to the avoidance of some tautology here—'that it should be kept from me, what he has done with her. So I put it to you, who know: What HAS he done with her? I ask no more. And is that asking much, when you understand ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... of the work which has given this notion the strength of a tradition. The greater part of the Union Pacific route was over comparatively even ground, and it was not until the Salt Lake region was being approached that any serious constructive difficulties presented themselves. It was otherwise with the company advancing eastward. The line had to be carried over the Sierra Nevada, the ascent beginning almost from the starting point, and rising seven thousand feet in a hundred miles. On the other side of the mountain range, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... only Greek ritual and art we might well despair. The Greeks are a people of such swift constructive imagination that they almost always obscure any problem of origins. So fair and magical are their cloud-capp'd towers that they distract our minds from the task of digging for foundations. There is scarcely a problem in the origins of Greek mythology and religion that has been solved within the ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... child wantonly pulling the flower to pieces and throwing away the fragments; not the botanist, also pulling the flower to pieces, but building up in his mind from those carefully studied fragments a vast synthesis of the constructive power of Nature, embracing the laws of the formation of all flower-forms. The value of analysis is to lead us to the original starting-point of that which we analyse, and so to teach us the laws by which its final ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... opposite side of the advancing army leads the great apostle of individual culture, Goethe. Swedenborg makes organization and union the necessary results of solitary thought. Fourier, whose nature was, above all, constructive, looked to them too exclusively. Better institutions, he thought, will make better men. Goethe expressed, in every way, the other side. If one man could present better forms, the rest could not use them ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... that these very elements appear most openly in the parable. In Sec. 14 the wanderer has the freest opportunity to do as he likes. Still the question arises, what is the prohibited tendency? No very great constructive ability is required to deduce the answer. The wording of the parable itself furnishes the information. In Sec. 14 we read, "Now I do not know what sin these two have committed except that although they were brother and sister they were so united in love that they could not again be separated and ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer



Words linked to "Constructive" :   rehabilitative, reconstructive, formative, inferential, constructive eviction, creative, destructive, plastic, structural, positive, shaping



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