"Ascribable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a very scientific account of his experiments in this crow's-nest, with a small compass he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the errors resulting from what is called the "local attraction" of all binnacle magnets; an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship's planks, and in the Glacier's case, perhaps, to there having been so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew; I say, that though the Captain is very ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... characteristics of the Utilitarian movement. Revolutions are the work of passion: the product of a social and political condition in which the masses are permeated with discontent, because the social organs have ceased to discharge their functions. They are not ascribable to the purely intellectual movement alone, though it is no doubt an essential factor. The revolution came in any case because the social order was out of joint, not simply because Voltaire or Rousseau or Diderot had preached ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... forth was far more radiant than any portion of the sea; ascribable perhaps to the originally luminous fluid contracting still more brilliancy from its passage through the spouting canal ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... delights in sunshine, it seems at all times impatient of glare, and spends the day in the thickest depth of the forests, devoting the night to excursions, and to the luxury of the bath, in which it also indulges occasionally by day. This partiality for shade is doubtless ascribable to the animal's love of coolness and solitude; but it is not altogether unconnected with the position of the eye, and the circumscribed use which its peculiar mode of life permits it to make ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... the opposite of this. Whether tacitly or expressly, it has always been assumed by both sides in the controversy between Science and Religion, that as soon as this that and the other phenomenon has been explained by means of natural causation, it has thereupon ceased to be ascribable [directly] to God. The distinction between the natural and the supernatural has always been regarded by both sides as indisputably sound, and this fundamental agreement as to ground of battle has furnished ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... green shadowed sanctuary, and the light shining down upon his smoked glasses created the odd illusion that he was looking over the tops of the lenses and not down at the table as his attitude suggested. However, it was probably ascribable to the weird chiaroscuro of the scene, although it gave the seated figure an oddly malignant appearance, and I passed out through the utter darkness of the outer room to the front door. Smith opening it, I was conscious of surprise to find dusk come—to meet darkness ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer |
