"Thesis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... organization, whether it is principally of native English or of Roman origin, or hewn from still other materials, although not treated in this text-book, has been the subject of much interest and discussion. One view of the case is the thesis of Seebohm's book, referred to above. Other books treating of it are ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... stuff [he wrote] uphold it on the ground of its truthfulness. Taking the thesis into question, this truthfulness is the one overwhelming defect. An original idea that—to laud the accuracy with which the stone is hurled that knocks us in the head. A little less accuracy might have left us more brains. And here are critics absolutely commending ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... Seven for his poetical illustration of my thesis. There is great good to be got out of a squinting brain, if one only knows how to profit by it. We see only one side of the moon, you know, but a fellow with a squinting brain seems now and then to get a peep at the other side. I speak metaphorically. He takes new and startling views ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... reality wished the war, and which was upon the point of shutting him up in a state prison. Another man wrote to recommend the war: he was applauded, and his word taken for the science, the politeness, and importance of the Turks. It is true that he believed in his own thesis, for he has found among them people who cast a nativity, and alchymists who ruined his fortune; as he found Martinists at Paris, who enabled him to sup with Sesostris, and Magnetizers who concluded with destroying his existence. Notwithstanding this, the Turks were beaten by the Russians, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... the survival of the fittest, is one of the processes by which evolution takes place. According to this law, only the fittest survive in the struggle for life. Darwin was led to this discovery on reading Malthus's thesis regarding the disproportion between the rates of increase in population and food, and ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... Socialism"—ridiculous Lewisham!—had a thesis or so to maintain, but this night he was depressed and inattentive. He sat with his legs over the arm of his chair by way of indicating the state of his mind. He had a packet of Algerian cigarettes (twenty for ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... these in their turn have their common foundation in a simple primal principle pervading infinite space, we can regard this last (the cosmic ether) as all-comprehending divinity, and upon this found the thesis: "Belief in God is reconcilable with science." In this pantheistic view, and also in his criticism of a one-sided materialism, I entirely agree with Professor Schlesinger, though unable to concur with him in some of his biological, and especially ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... this same place was once part of the bottom or great depths of the sea." He then attempts to prove, and does so satisfactorily, that the shells he refers to are what he calls deep-water (pelagiennes). He proves the truth of his thesis by the ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... full and willing concession to the element of individuality in persons and of special character in actions, we are at liberty to resume the general thesis,—that orbital rest of movement furnishes the type of perfect excellence, and suggests accordingly the proper targe of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... dances with lively mockery on the fragments. If the authors of such arguments knew their own minds, they would be entirely on his side. He echoes the pet prejudices of his readers as the props and mainstays of his thesis, and boldly laughs away misgivings of which they are likely to be half ashamed. He makes no parade of logic; he is only a plain freeholder like the mass whom he addresses, though he knows twenty times as much as many writers of more pretension. ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... Salter, Carus, Lalande, Mentre, McTaggart, G. E. Moore, Ladd and others, especially not Professor Schinz, who has published under the title of Anti-pragmatisme an amusing sociological romance. Some of these critics seem to me to labor under an inability almost pathetic, to understand the thesis which they seek to refute. I imagine that most of their difficulties have been answered by anticipation elsewhere in this volume, and I am sure that my readers will thank me for not adding more repetition to the fearful amount ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... automatically fitted an adjustment, Mr. Burroughs says is impossible. He says it is impossible because it would be a non-instinctive act, and, as is well known animals act only through instinct. And right here we catch a glimpse of Mr. Burroughs's cart standing before his horse. He has a thesis, and though the heavens fall he will fit the facts to the thesis. Agassiz, in his opposition to evolution, had a similar thesis, though neither did he fit the facts to it nor did the heavens fall. Facts are ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... of eager questions from a mind topsy-turvy. I answered him slowly, deliberately, and gave him in some detail his father's thesis on education, explaining how and why I happened to be in sympathy with it and pointing out by the results attained the ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... principle that all corporal punishments whatsoever, and upon whomsoever inflicted, are hateful, and an indignity to our common nature, which (with or without our consent) is enshrined in the person of the sufferer. Degrading him, they degrade us. I will not here add one word upon the general thesis, but go on to the facts of this case; which, if all its incidents could now be recovered, was perhaps as romantic as any that ever yet has tried the spirit of fortitude and patience in a child. But its moral interest depends upon this—that, simply out of one brutal ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... shocking him, and nothing surely could shock him more at this time of night than the moth-like apparition that she presented. She even felt a wayward curiosity to know what he did with himself at night. For several years there had been whispers of a theological thesis that he was writing for his doctor's degree. She imagined him, with a reading lamp and red eyes, up to his ears in the minor prophets. It would be fun to see what ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... good sentiment and to ignorance of first principles. For they suppose that sufferings inflicted on brute animals are a violation of their rights. Now we maintain that brute animals have no rights in the true sense of the word. To prove this thesis we must explain what a right is and how men get to have rights. A right is a moral claim to a thing, which claim other persons are obliged to respect. Since every man has a destiny appointed for him by his Creator, and which he is to work out by his own acts, he must ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... fete, the Jesuit Fathers cleverly took the initiative, and whilst the Hotel de Ville was deliberating to obtain his Majesty's consent, the College of Clermont, in the Rue Saint Jacques, brought out its annual thesis, and dedicated it to the King,—Louis ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... after day I urge the old, old thesis— To reverence well the man of martial note, Nor treat as mere sartorial caprices The mystic marks he carries on his coat, And how to know what everybody is, The swords, the crowns, the purple-stained cards, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... speak favourably of that licentious poem, which is composed, as I have heard, for the sole purpose of casting ridicule upon the godly. I should as soon have expected to hear you praise the wicked and foolish work of Hobbes, with his mischievous thesis, "A ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... account we must take leave of the Negro farmer. Throughout the thesis I have attempted to keep two or three fundamental propositions constantly in sight. Briefly summarized these are that we have to do with a race whose inherited characteristics are largely of African origin; that these have been somewhat modified under American influences, but are still potent; ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... Nature tricks her creatures and the race lives on, and I am prayerfully grateful. The difference between us is that you are not. You are suffering from what has been well called, the sadness of science. You accept the thesis of a common origin only to regret it. You discover that romance has a history, and lo! romance has vanished! You are a Werther of science, sad to the heart with a melancholy all your own and dropping inert tears on the shrine of ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... from my thesis which is that the classics are needed as the fallow to give lasting and increasing fertility to the natural mind out upon democracy's great levels, into which so much has been washed down and laid down from the Olympic mountains ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... It is the thesis put forth and cleverly maintained by Mauclair that interests us more than his succinct notation of the painter's life. It is not so novel as it is just and moderate in its application. The pathologic theory of genius has been overworked. In literature nowadays "psychiatrists" ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... as the Eleatic Being and Not-being, alike admit of being regarded as verbal fallacies. The sophism advanced in the Meno, 'that you cannot enquire either into what you know or do not know,' is lightly touched upon at the commencement of the Dialogue; the thesis of Protagoras, that everything is true to him to whom it seems to be true, is satirized. In contrast with these fallacies is maintained the Socratic doctrine that happiness is gained by knowledge. The grammatical puzzles ...
— Euthydemus • Plato
... best of friends and I much objected to a joint meeting. The parties, however, would take no denial, and it was arranged that we should be given alternate dates. Then it appeared that the designated thesis read: "Which political party offers for the workingman the best solution of ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Private Property is its gradual separation from the co-ownership of kinsmen." The chapter on Contract, although it contains some of Maine's most suggestive writing, and the chapter on Delict and Crime, have a less direct bearing on his main thesis except in so far as they go to show that the reason why there is so little in early law of what we call civil, as distinct from criminal, law, and in particular of the Law of Contract, is to be found in the fact ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... No one argues now for the Divine Right of Kings, but in studying the old controversy we get light on the subject of government that is of all time. To the conception that kings held their power immediately from God, "Suarez boldly opposed the thesis of the initial sovereignty of the people; from whose consent, therefore, all civil authority immediately sprang. So also, in opposition to Melanchthon's theory of governmental omnipotence, Suarez a fortiori admitted the right of the people to depose those princes who would have shown themselves ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... and Second Editions and has added instead a bibliography. The student, he thinks, will find these changes of value, especially in the matter of reference. The author has also added certain data to the thesis of the work, as well as foot-notes; which, he thinks, will strengthen the deductions and conclusions therein enunciated. He has carefully and conscientiously edited and verified all notes and quotations to be found in the book ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... and Eusebius, to have in a manner suspected rather than believed, the immortality of the soul; yet we have no evidence of their ever having, by the finest process of ratiocination, so thoroughly convinced themselves as to introduce it generally as a tenable thesis on the portico. A beautiful thread of implicit belief and fervent hope, of after life, assimilating to the hunting-ground of our own American Indians, and though sensuous still, a step far in advance of the ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... letter under the above heading, for which you were so good as to find room in July last, I returned to the thesis which I had ventured to maintain some months previously, a propos of a question put in the House of Commons. My contention was that the establishment of an international prize Court, assuming it ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... universe—the history of the world. That this "Idea" or "Reason" is the true, the eternal, the absolutely powerful essence; that it reveals itself in the world, and that in that world nothing else is revealed but this and its honor and glory—is the thesis which, as we have said, has been proved in philosophy and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... instructive, invaluable piece of wrong-headedness, Dr Guest's English Rhythms, which does not bristle with them. But at no time are these difficulties so great as during our present period, and especially at the close of it. Let any man who has no "prize to fight," no thesis to defend, take any characteristic piece of Anglo-Saxon poetry and "Alison," place them side by side, read them aloud together, scan them carefully with the eye, compare each separately and both together with as many other examples of poetic ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... faire was sincerely convinced that his system ultimately benefited society as a whole. Andrew Carnegie, an iron and steel manufacturer, presented this thesis in an article in the North American Review in 1889. The reign of individualism, he held, was the order of the day, was inevitable and desirable. Under it the poorer classes were better off than ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... at large, perhaps, Mr. Huxley's share in moulding the thesis of NATURAL SELECTION is less well-known than is his bold unwearied exposition and defence of it after it had been made public. And, indeed, a speculative trifler, revelling in the problems of the "might have been," would find a congenial theme ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... to lessen your renown. However, it is not the business of impartial history to maintain a given thesis; it follows whither the facts lead it. I wish simply to question you upon the power of logic attributed to you. Do you or do you not enjoy gleams of reason? Have you within you the humble germ of human thought? That is the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... on with his companions to write a thesis on the downfall of Marius. Nothing more congenial to his convictions or more encouraging to the deep resolution growing in his heart could be selected. The picture he drew from the sad history of the conqueror ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... social life with which the Revolution was concerned—the political and the economic. With regard to the first there was practical unanimity; he would be a blind slave to theoretical formulae who sought to maintain the thesis that class interests divided masses and classes here. All classes, with the exception of the bureaucracy, wanted the abolition of Czarism and Absolutism and the establishment of a constitutional government, elected by the people on a basis of universal ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... conversation with the old Dutchman," Derville continued, "I sent in my thesis, and became first a licentiate in law, and afterwards an advocate. The old miser's opinion of me went up considerably. He consulted me (gratuitously) on all the ticklish bits of business which he undertook when he had made quite sure how he stood, business which ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... stirrings toward immortality are to bring us to restful and satisfying communion with God. To me this is a plausible explanation of all that is best out of Christ. But you can be a good Christian and not accept my thesis. ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... sentences amplifying his thesis, apparently engrossed in his subject, saw Paula make the aside, although no word of it reached his ears, saw her increasing nervousness, saw the silent sympathy of Graham, and wondered what had been the few words she uttered, while to the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... by consistent hypocritical premeditation; for his pose was not so much of set purpose as in obedience to a false education, an undisciplined temper, and a changing mind. He was guided by the impulse of the moment. I think it a supportable thesis that every age, every wide and popular movement, finds its supreme expression in a Poet. Byron was the mouthpiece of a certain phase of his time. He expressed it, and the expression remains and is important ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Bradley's college mates and other friends that her thesis would be on "Iodism," and that she had taken a year to write an elaborate book on the subject, which will soon be republished in England from the original French. For an hour and a half she was questioned with great shrewdness and ability by four of the leading ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... the Academy, which must continue till the end in its ignorance of the revolutionary significance of its oracles, has drawn aside the curtain in its commentary. What, then, so profound has it discovered in this Epicurean thesis? ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... for his Ph.D. examination, and worked on his thesis until it got to the point where he needed the British Museum. Then he took a room and worked during the week in London, coming down to us week-ends. He wrote eager letters, for the time had come when he longed to get the preparatory work and examination ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... in 1483, died in 1546; his father a slate-cutter: studied at Magdeburg and Erfurt; against the wishes of his family, became a monk; went to Rome in 1510; published on the church door at Wittenburg in 1517 his thesis against the sale of indulgences; summoned to Rome, he refused to go and published further attacks upon the Church; excommunicated in 1520 and his writings publicly burned, whereupon he publicly burned the papal bull of excommunication; made his speech ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... take four separate stations as illustrations of my thesis. Fortunately, all of these stations are now under the administration of Rochester men, whom I am proud to recognize as my former pupils. But before I proceed to describe our experiences with them, I must to some extent repeat what I have said in my last letter about Madras and the conference ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... is, that they cannot argue any question without getting into a rage and roaring at the top of their voice. This unsoundness exists in a good many educated men too. A peculiar twist of some minds is this—that instead of maintaining by argument the thesis they are maintaining, which is probably that two and two make five, they branch off and begin to adduce arguments which do not go to prove that, but to prove that the man who maintains that two and two make four is a fool, or even a ruffian. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... or defender in a thesis to be considered its author, except when it unequivocally appears to be the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... Socialists that honour and patriotism were ideologies bourgeoises and that the "economic interests" of Belgium would be best promoted by a submission. These pedantic barbarians got the answer which they deserved; but on their pettifogging thesis Raemaekers' cartoon is ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... useful lives in the American ministry. This young man became an ascetic. I gave him to read the life of Francis of Assisi, and he went to the extreme in emulation. He divested himself of collars and ties and on graduating read his thesis for his Bachelor's ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... more than generous. Because I have been so kindly treated, I am going to trespass on your kindness still further, and say a word or two about my own actions while I was President. I do not speak of them, my friends, save to illustrate the thesis that I especially uphold, that the man who has the power to act is to be judged not by his words but by his acts—by his words in so far as they agree with his acts. All that I say about peace I wish to have judged and measured by what I ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... tribune for the first time. M. Cuvier and I had been appointed, as Royal Commissioners, to support the proposed measures,—a false and weak position, which demonstrates the infancy of representative government. We do not argue politics as we plead a cause or maintain a thesis. To act effectively in a deliberative assembly, we must ourselves be deliberators; that is to say, we must be members, and hold our share with others in free thought, power, and responsibility. I believe that I acquitted myself ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... mass of the correlations, however, including all the indirect ones, Professor Huxley seems to us warranted in denying that they are necessary; and we now propose to show deductively the truth of his thesis. Let us begin with ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... so inexplicable, that I dare not say anything is wonderful because it is strange to me, or not wonderful because it is familiar. I have not the slightest idea how I compel my hand to write these words, or my lips to read them: and the question which was the thesis of Mr. Ward's very interesting paper, "Can Experience prove the Uniformity of Nature?"[175] is, in my mind, so assuredly answerable with the negative which the writer appeared to desire, that, precisely on that ground, the performance ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the French Revolution through a book, given to me by my mother, about la Vend['e]e. It was a dull book, but nothing, not even a bad translation, could dim the heroism of Henri de la Rochejaquelein for me, and I became a Royalist of the Royalists, and held hotly the thesis that if George Washington had returned the compliment of going over to France in '89, he would have done Lafayette a great service by restoring the good Louis XVI. and ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... his doctor's thesis. Taking up his position inside the human personality, in its inmost mind, he endeavoured to lay hold of the depths of life and free action in their commonly overlooked ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... tragedy is too independent and complete within itself for this; nevertheless, several tragedies may be connected together in one great cycle by means of a common destiny running through the actions of all. Hence the restriction to the number three admits of a satisfactory explanation. It is the thesis, the antithesis, and the synthesis. The advantage of this conjunction was that, by the consideration of the connected fables, a more complete gratification was furnished than could possibly be obtained from a single action. The subjects of the three tragedies might be ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... from the above-mentioned first stage to the second, and then again in the sequence from the second to the third, there will be found a helpful explanation of the rites and aspirations of human religion. It is this idea, illustrated by details of ceremonial and so forth, which forms the main thesis of the present book. In this sequence of growth, Christianity enters as an episode, but no more than an episode. It does not amount to a disruption or dislocation of evolution. If it did, or if it stood as ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... 'Yard,' lay down a first principle in the investigation of crime, I expect deference on your part. I tell you unhesitatingly that if Doris Martin didn't exist, Adelaide Melhuish would be alive now. That, as a thesis, is nearly as certain a thing as that the sun will rise to-morrow. I go farther, and hazard the guess, not the fixed belief, though my guesses are usually borne out by events, that if Doris Martin had not been in this garden at half ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... breach of courtesy, but this is a proper place to warn the student against skimming the prefaces and introductions of works for mottoes and embellishments to his thesis. He cannot learn anatomy by thrusting an exploring needle into the body. He will be very liable to misquote his author's meaning while he is picking off his outside sentences. He may make as great a blunder as that simple prince who praised the conductor ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Holland, speaks boldly of Confucius as a Taoist; and though I dislike many of this learned Dutchman's ideas, this one is excellent. His thesis is that Laotse was no more an innovator than Confucius; that both but gave a new impulse to teachings as old as the race. Before Laotse there had been a Teacher Quan, a statesman-philosopher of the seventh century, who had also ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... is the later Gnosticism, which took over many Christian and Greek elements, and the opinion of Tertullian that Gnosticism and Greek philosophy discussed the same questions and held the same opinions. (Cf. the thesis of Hippolytus in his Philosophumena, or the Refutation of All Heresies; see the Proemium, ANF, V, 9 f., and especially bk. VII.) Tertullian, although retaining unconsciously the impress of his former Stoicism, was violently ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... that Roman dignity and urbanity were accepted as models in the new code of manners; indeed, it was he who introduced the word URBANITE into the language. Armand du Plessis, who aimed to be poet as well as statesman, read here in his youth a thesis on love. When did a Frenchman ever fail to write with facility upon this fertile theme? After he became Cardinal de Richelieu he feared the influence of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and sent a request to its hostess to report what was said ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... first-rate importance. But nobody need be frightened of it on that account. Unlike most important works on the theory of art, it is thoroughly entertaining from beginning to end. Its main thesis is a generalization which, if true, is applicable to all schools and all epochs. The book ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... gentry of the nineteenth. Through the first half of the nineteenth century there were some real disputes between the squire and the merchant. The merchant became converted to the important economic thesis of Free Trade, and accused the squire of starving the poor by dear bread to keep up his agrarian privilege. Later the squire retorted not ineffectively by accusing the merchant of brutalizing the poor by overworking them in his factories to keep up ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... Scroderus of an indecent sophism in this—and Prignitz cried out aloud in the dispute, that Scroderus had shifted the idea upon him—but Scroderus went on, maintaining his thesis. ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... you suppose me to mean that Lysias has altogether missed the mark, and that I can make a speech from which all his arguments are to be excluded. The worst of authors will say something which is to the point. Who, for example, could speak on this thesis of yours without praising the discretion of the non-lover and blaming the indiscretion of the lover? These are the commonplaces of the subject which must come in (for what else is there to be said?) and must be allowed and excused; the only merit is in ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... that their servitude was justified by the Bible; that a majority of the clergy and the churches of the country approved of the institution; that the slaves were well treated, much better housed and fed than the workers of Europe; better than the free laborers even in America. His thesis was that the business of life was the obtaining of the means of life; that all the uprisings in Europe, the French Revolution included, were inspired by hunger; that the struggle for existence was bound to produce oppression; that the strong would use and control the ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... pioneers, having few books and no newspapers, had cultivated the art of story-telling for their own entertainment and that the soldiers returning from the Civil War had developed it further. Having made this note of his thesis I hasten to run away from it. Let others, prone to interminable debate, tear it to pieces if they must. This kind of social intercourse, with its intimate talk, the references to famous public characters, as though they were only human beings after ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... scene of Moliere or any work of Michael Angelo? "I once answered this question, but rather too lightly. Every moment I am apt to make a mistake, because language does not furnish me with the right expression for the truth at the moment. I abandon a thesis for lack of words that shall supply my reasons. I have one thing in the bottom of my heart, and I find myself saying another. There is the advantage of living in retirement and solitude. There a man speaks, asks himself questions, listens to himself, and listens in silence. His secret sensation ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... among them as a smoking brand; and Snarley on his part never lost a chance of denouncing them as liars and rogues. One of the most violent scenes ever witnessed in the tap-room of the Nag's Head had been perpetrated by Snarley on a certain occasion when Shoemaker Hankin was defending the thesis that all forms of religion might now be considered as done for, "except spiritualism." Even Hankin, who reverenced no thing in heaven or earth, had protested against the unprintable words which with Snarley greeted his logic; ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... questions which I proposed at the outset of my thesis. If I have failed to justify the expectations which I may have raised, at least I have thrown into strong relief the cause of my failure, to wit, the utter and incredible neglect which, up to this hour, has prevailed with regard to the ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... Harderwyk in Holland and got his degree at the university there on the strength of a thesis on the cause of malarial fever, with the conclusions of which the learned doctors did not agree; but they granted the diploma for the clever way in which he defended it. On the way down he tarried in Hamburg ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... earliest ages, had continually retarded the progress of humanity, and that influence was religious belief. Thus his book, though far more brilliant and far more modern than that of Bossuet, was nevertheless almost equally biased. It was history with a thesis, and the gibe of Montesquieu was justifiable. 'Voltaire,' he said, 'writes history to glorify his own convent, like any Benedictine monk.' Voltaire's 'convent' was the philosophical school in Paris; and his desire to glorify it was soon ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... inexplicable psychological phenomena in the constitution of man, and the inexplicable absence of the phenomena in the state of death, inexplicable upon any known materialistic ground, and I shall laugh at his inability to maintain his thesis beyond the poor shred of a hypothesis. If a man shall tell me as the result of pure reasoning that he concludes for the endless existence of the soul after death, and shall do this even upon the plane of induction, I shall turn and tell him that all his ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... medical studies. Perhaps he may have hoped by hard work to finish his course in four years instead of the expected five. At any rate he now bent to his toil and allowed the play to lie dormant in his mind. In 1779 he submitted a thesis on 'The Philosophy of Physiology', but it was judged unfit for print. The professors condemned it variously as tedious, florid, obscure, and, worst of all, disrespectful toward recognized authorities such as Haller. In these judgments the duke concurred. He found that Eleve Schiller had said ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... A.M., of Leland Stanford University, California, and Jesus College, Oxford, has received an honorary degree from the latter university for his thesis, "The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries: Its Psychical Origin and Nature", a most laborious as well as ingenious work, whose object is to prove "that the origin of the fairy faith is psychical, and that fairyland, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... the superiority of their spiritual over his temporal, nor even admit their 'imperium in imperio', which is the least they will compound for, it becomes meritorious not only to resist, but to depose him. And I suppose that the bold propositions in the thesis you mention, are a return for the valuation ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... "splendid! And just in line with my thesis. You shall tell it before the Council of the Rhamdas. It will be the greatest day since the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... separate from this real material universe, and hence unworthy of practical consideration. But granted that mind is not a sort of independent and foreign entity, we must admit that what exists in it has a place in reality, and requires, like the rest of reality, to be dealt with. But to return to my thesis: that we require occasionally to live in the Past (and I shall go on to state that it may be a Past of our own making); Do we not require to travel in foreign parts which know us not, to sojourn for our welfare in cities where we can ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... knowledge of the scholar, but the warmth and alacrity of the advocate. With M. Renan the monotheistic character of the descendants of Shem is not only a scientific tenet, but a moral conviction. He wishes that his whole work should stand or fall with this thesis, and it becomes, therefore, all the more the duty of the critic, to inquire whether the arguments which he brings forward in support of his favourite idea are ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... diesis, dieses; ellipsis, ellipses; emphasis, emphases; fascis, fasces; hypothesis, hypotheses; metamorphosis, metamorphoses; oasis, oases; parenthesis, parentheses; phasis, phases; praxis, praxes; synopsis, synopses; synthesis, syntheses; syrtis, syrtes; thesis, theses. In some, however, the original plural is not so formed; but is made by changing is to ides; as, aphis, aphides; apsis, apsides; ascaris, ascarides; bolis, bolides; cantharis, cantharides; chrysalis, chrysalides; ephemeris, ephemerides; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of the Campaign on the Marne and the Aisne with Caesar's battles against the Belgian Confederacy." He had a paper edition of the Gallic Wars which he carried round with him. One day he explained his thesis to me. He drew a plan with a green pencil on a piece ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... genealogies, and that means a mass of letters. The veriest trifles, of course, they will seem to a man like yourself; but I fail in mental grasp—I keep hammering away at details; that is my line; and after all it keeps one alert and alive. You know my favourite thesis—it is touch with human nature that I value, and I am brought into contact with many minds. I don't exaggerate the importance of my work, but I enjoy it; and after all, that is the point! I daresay it would be more dignified if I pretended to be a disappointed man," said the Vicar, ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... is my thesis. It is not, however, unchallenged. Jonathan has challenged it when, from time to time, as occasion offered, I have lightly sketched it out for him. Sometimes he argues that my instances are really isolated cases and that their evidence is not cumulative, at others he takes ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... obeyed my will. Since then I have experienced death, and with the resulting increased knowledge comes the loss of all hope, with keener pangs than I supposed could exist. Oh, that I had now their opportunities, that I might write a thesis that should live forever, and save millions of souls from the anguish of mine! Inoculate your mortal bodies with the germs of faith and mutual love, in a stronger degree than they dwelt in me, lest you lose ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... detail:—namely, the gift of clear and interesting writing, and the gift of generalization. Ameghino rendered marked services to paleontology. But he generalized with complete recklessness from the slenderest data; and even these data he often completely misunderstood or misinterpreted. His favorite thesis included the origin of mammalian life and of man himself in southernmost South America, with, as incidents, the belief that the mammalian-bearing strata of South America were of much greater age than the strata with corresponding remains elsewhere; that in South America various species ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... than to do the work Landis does. What one of us likes to do, the other one don't. So we fit fairly well as roommates. This noon when she was complaining about the mending she must do, I told her I'd do it all if she'd get my thesis ready for to-morrow. We have a discussion on the Literature of the Elizabethan Period. As though I could write a thousand words on that! ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... ought to make a special note of that case of No. 25, for your thesis. She was in your ward for about ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... construction, but in his choice of words; and so continually are these Latin words used, with a critical respect to their earliest (and, where that happens to have existed, to their unfigurative) meaning, that, upon this one argument I would rely for upsetting the else impregnable thesis of Dr. Farmer as to Shakspeare's learning. Nay, I will affirm that, out of this regard to the Latin acceptation of Latin words, may be absolutely explained the Shakspearian meaning of certain words, which has hitherto baffled all his critics. For instance, the word modern, of which Dr. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... there is evolution here as well as in science. The artist must hunt out new forms of expressing his world-old emotions, or he will not impress his hearers, and there is no gainsaying Beck's thesis that the Chinese puzzle of to-day will be the antique simplicity of a later epoch. But it must never be forgotten, that art should be complex only to avoid the greater evils of inadequacy and triteness. A high simplicity of plan and an ultimate popularity of appeal ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... important thing, is not this to fall into the time-worn heresy of art for art's sake, that is, art for form's sake—art for the sake of mathematics? To this objection there is an answer, and as this answer contains the crux of the whole matter, embraces the proposition by which this thesis must stand or fall, it must be ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... which he endeavoured to prove that many passages in Shakspeare, which were originally written in verse, have been "degraded" into prose, and quotes several passages from the plays {53} in support of his thesis. Professor Hilgers says that emendation of the text, by means of such a mode of correction as would restore the corrupted verses to their original form, has hitherto been almost entirely neglected by commentators, or else employed by them with very little ability and success. I have not ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... excluded therefrom;—this being, as you will recollect, precisely the argument which Jack had borrowed from Peter, when the latter construed their father's will in the question as to the lawfulness of their wearing shoulder-knots; and very much of the same kind with that celebrated thesis which Peter afterwards maintained in the matter of the brown loaf. And though he was obliged to admit (what indeed from the very look of the book he could not well dispute) that no such rule had ever been known or acted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... comprised the work of the Department. Even this very slender medical preparation was not required of college graduates, or of students who had already practised medicine four years, for whom one course was deemed sufficient. A thesis was also necessary for graduation, and tradition has it that in a few cases during the earlier days of the Department, they were actually written and delivered in Latin. Special attention was given to laboratory work in chemistry and anatomy, though for the most part the training was ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... like any good orator, while her main thesis gained impressiveness from silence. It was only too evident that her ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... Ablatio, the takynge awaye of a letter or sillable from the begynnynge of a worde, of a letter, when we say: The p[en]thesis of thys house is to low, for the epenthesis. Wher note this y^e word p[en]thesis is a greke worde, & yet is vsed as an englishe, as many mo be, and is called a pentis by these figures, Sincope and Apheresis, the whole word beynge as is before, epenthesis, so called ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... long, and would weary the indulgence of the reader to establish in a conclusive manner this thesis which had long been a subject of inquiry on the part of political students. Chinese society, being essentially a society organized on a credit-co-operative system, so nicely adjusted that money, either coined or fiduciary, was not wanted save for the petty daily purchases of ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... of the gifted savante's position is at once apparent. The more convincingly she argues that the primeval mud-hens and she mackerel had to be anesthetized with spectacular decorations in order to "endure the caresses" of their beaux, the more she supports the thesis that men have to be decoyed and bamboozled into love today. In other words, her argument turns upon and destroys itself. Carried to its last implication, it holds that women are all Donna Juanitas, and that if they put off their millinery and cosmetics, and abandoned the shameless sexual ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... With Mr. Chamberlain the thesis of vital competition, the morality of force, the judgment of history against little nations, the civilizing mission imposed upon greater Germany by its very greatness, by its economic, scientific and artistic superiority, everything tends to the glorification of the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... and jealousy, of incrimination and recrimination, of intrigue and counter-intrigue. The atmosphere is realistic, but the actuality implied is sharply limited and largely superficial. There is little attempt at getting down to the roots of things. There is absolutely no tendency or thesis. The story is told for the sake of the story, and its chief redeeming quality lies in the grace and charm and verve with which it is told. These were qualities that immediately won the public's favor when "Anatol" ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... certain of the Western French went on in this metaphysical manner: thus a Breton, a Basque, and a man in Ecclefechan (I hope I spell it right) and another in Jedburgh had already each of them sent me to my bed confused upon the matter of free will. So this Western innkeeper refused to leave his thesis. It was incredible to him that a Sentient Being who perpetually accumulated experience, who grew riper and riper, more and more full of such knowledge as was native to himself and complementary to his nature, should ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... case the whole thing is a mere question of pleasure; and I return to my thesis, which is that the only possible theory is for every one to find and create the kind of society that he or she may like. Depend upon it, congenial society is the only kind of society to, and in ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and Works of Chatterton gave Scott an opportunity to discuss the characteristics of Middle-English poetry, but his general thesis, that the Rowley poems exhibit graces and refinements which are in marked contrast to the tenuity of idea and tautology of expression found in genuine works of the period, is supported by an argument which seems to be based on a characterization of the romances rather ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... the Lancaster fever prevailed in 1835. A fatal fever also visited Lancaster in 1836, caused by the grading of the public square. Dr. Luther Buford discovered the origin of the malaria and wrote a thesis ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... is no plan for fixing hat-pegs in a passage, nor is it a mode of treating neuralgia with treacle." How true and appropriate this is. Mutatis mutandis we may add the further statement that it is "the truest and tenderest thesis that can occupy the most calculating cosmopolite." The corporate pursuit of a granulated conglucination is perhaps the highest achievement of which ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... of responsibility shown by this excessive care led him also to confine himself to a single issue, upon which he could speak most effectively, out of several that might be raised. He will not trespass upon the ground of military experts, but, upon the grounds of general policy, supports a thesis which goes to the root of the matter. The advance of the Russian power in Central Asia makes it desirable for us to secure a satisfactory frontier. The position of the Russians, he urges, is analogous to our own position in India in the days of Wellesley. It is idle to denounce them for acting as ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... This thesis I had outlined already in my earlier work, Social Equality, but in Labor and the Popular Welfare it is urged with more precision, and the general argument is, as in the earlier work it was not, supported by a skeleton of more or less precise ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... theorists, while common-sense vibrates back and forward in a maze of inconsistent compromise. The need of getting theory and practical common-sense into closer connection suggests a return to our original thesis: that we have here conditions which are necessarily related to each other in the educative process, since this is precisely one ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... and claw," rather than the equally pervasive Nature of the brooding wing and the flowing breast. Had not Professor Drummond unfortunately mixed it up with a good deal of extraneous sentiment, his main thesis would scarcely ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... based upon a faith in the perfectibility of man and the possibility of the regeneration of society. It leads from a desire to live one's own life according to high principles to a desire to establish similar principles in human institutions. It rejects the thesis of Reinhold Niebuhr that social groups can never live according to the same moral codes as individuals, and also the belief of such groups as the Mennonites that, since the "world" is necessarily evil, the precepts of high religion apply only to those who have accepted the Christian way ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... original work. He was engaged on his Essai sur les donnees immediates de la conscience. This essay, which, in its English translation, bears the more definite and descriptive title, Time and Free Will, was submitted, along with a short Latin Thesis on Aristotle, for the degree of Docteur-es-Lettres, to which he was admitted by the University of Paris in 1889. The work was published in the same year by Felix Alcan, the Paris publisher, in his series ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... to every collection of dogmatical propositions. By antithetic I do not understand dogmatical assertions of the opposite, but the self-contradiction of seemingly dogmatical cognitions (thesis cum antithesis), in none of which we can discover any decided superiority. Antithetic is not, therefore, occupied with one-sided statements, but is engaged in considering the contradictory nature of the general cognitions of reason and its causes. Transcendental antithetic is an investigation ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... retracted before minds less powerful but more intrepid than his own. Of his money allowance he was always so good a manager, 70that he could lend to him who was in need. The famous exercise which Nicois made such a rout about, was in praise of abundance: an English theme on this thesis, from Horace— ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... philosopher. His work De Ira must be referred to the commencement of this period, shortly after Caligula's death. It bears all the marks of inexperience, though its eloquence and brilliancy are remarkable. He enforces the Stoic thesis that anger is not an emotion, just in itself and often righteously indulged, but an evil passion which must be eradicated. This view which, if supported on grounds of mere expediency, has much to recommend it, is here defended ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... falling, in a word, from one extreme into the other. To that rule the present case offers no exception; it is, on the contrary, very distinctly one of the pendulum swinging as far in one direction as it previously swung to the other. Let us then at once state the thesis which many of the following pages will serve to elaborate: when the indwelling of God in the universe is interpreted as meaning His identity with the universe; when the indwelling of God in ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... the firing line in education for many a long day. True, none of these later men ignored social relationships as did Rousseau. True, a strong case could be made out, if one should wish to defend the thesis, that these distinguished followers of Rousseau, even tho carrying out his program in the main, were likewise inaugurating the new sociological movement. But yet it was not sufficiently clear to dominate even in their own minds. The individual stood out beyond the mass. He filled the stage. ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... 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 of leaving his thesis a dry demonstration, he was anxious to suffuse its doctrine with those spiritual charms which it wore to his own contemplation. All this adds to the bulk of his polemical writings. At the same time it adds to their value. Dr. Owen makes his reader feel that the point in debate ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... to remind ourselves that as late as the middle of the eighteenth century Mesmer's thesis on "The Influence of the Stars on Human Constitutions" was accepted by the faculty of the University of Vienna as a satisfactory evidence not only of his knowledge of medicine, but of his power to reason about it. At the end ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... "Our forebears affect my thesis only in so far as they did not forbear. At most, they touched the button. The rest—the adventurous, uncertain, interesting rest—we must do ourselves. We must earn our life; and then we should spend it—lavishly, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Billy said, reverting to his thesis, "is that they don't realize instantly that we wouldn't hurt them for any thing—that that's a thing ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... the heavens; the shriek of "the cok, comune astrologer," is heard; the lovers sing their song of dawn.[519] All the virtues of Troilus are increased and intensified by happiness; it is the eternal thesis of poets who are ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand |
