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More "Definition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the definition!" said Mrs. Merryweather. "In case of a false definition, the falsifier takes up the thread. ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... vessels to those concerned in hunting and collecting; from the simple, definite, uniform knee-jerk, which is very similar in all people and open to very little modification, to the capacity for scholarship, which is extremely complex, vague as to definition, variable both as to manifestation in one individual and amounts amongst people in general, and is open to almost endless modification. This fund of unlearned tendencies is the capital with which each child starts, the capital which makes education and ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... Aunt Sophy you would have to coin a term or fall back on the dictionary definition of a spinster. "An unmarried woman," states that worthy work, baldly, "especially when no longer young." That, to the world, was Sophy Decker. Unmarried, certainly. And most certainly no longer young. In figure she was, at fifty, what is known in the corset ads ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... whose common Vocation is staining of Paper, and spending his whole Time in a Coffee-house or in a Garret, give a just Definition of a Prince, a Courtier, or a fine Lady? He never sees those Persons but as he walks the Streets; and I can scarce think that the Mud with which he is often dash'd by their Equipages, communicates to him any Share of their Sentiments. ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... define pleasure in its highest sense; the definition involving a number of apparent paradoxes. For, from an inexplicable defect of harmony in the constitution of human nature, the pain of the inferior is frequently connected with the pleasures of the superior portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself, are often the chosen expressions ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... a minister, then widely known throughout the country, say in a public address, "Prayer is the power that moves the arm that moves the world." Can we accept that to-day as a definition of a rational view of the relation in which we stand to God? Many of you will remember that not long ago the churches and the scientific men of England and America were much stirred and roused over a discussion concerning ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... come over our pulpits," Arthur remarked, "since the time when Paley gave that utterly selfish definition of virtue, 'the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... as nearly as a human being may to Euclid's definition of a straight line. He was length without breadth. From boyhood's early day he had sprouted like a weed, till now in the middle twenties he gave startled strangers the conviction that it only required ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... Cove Campbell & Sons, Messrs. Camping "Cannonading," Canterbury Museum, Christchurch Cape Town Carbohydrates, definition of the term (note) Cardiff to Hobart, the journey Carnegie Institute Carnley Harbour Caroline Cove, Macquarie Island Carr, Cape Caruso, dog Castor, dog Cat, wild Catch Me Cave Cathedral Grotto, the 'Challenger' expedition Charcot, Jean .........Land Chetwynd, Captain Chocolate as barter ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... entire day and most of the night; indeed, sometimes all night through. On a warm spring morning, when the sunshine pours upon the willows, and even the white dust of the road is brighter, bringing out the shadows in clear definition, their lively notes and quick motions make a pleasant commentary on the low sound of the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... things adjusted into a regular whole, or a whole plan or scheme consisting of many parts connected in such a manner as to create a chain of mutual dependencies." It is not at all strange that Protestantism should protest against this definition, and should establish its own instead: An assemblage of things so adjusted and built up as that they may easily be rearranged or completely demolished as occasion may require, or a whole plan or scheme consisting of many parts so connected as to create ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... have indeed not scrupled to affirm that those of whom we speak are really Manicheans without knowing it; and build their systems upon assumptions secretly borrowed from the disciples of Zoroaster, without ever stating those assumptions openly in the form of postulates or definition. ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... pause so far further over the description of faith here as to point out that it is precisely this, a description, not a definition. To quote Heb. xi. 1 as a good definition of faith is to mistake its import altogether. I have often recalled, in speech or writing, a story told me forty years ago by an Oxford friend when we were masters together at a public school. He had attended a Greek Testament lecture ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... system and can be modified without a detailed understanding of the internal operation. This is achieved by means of a recursive definition facility based on a skeleton compiler with a small set of logical capabilities. The skeleton compiler acts as a bootstrap for ...
— Preliminary Specifications: Programmed Data Processor Model Three (PDP-3) - October, 1960 • Digital Equipment Corporation
... understood that this was equivalent to the declaration that the doctrine in question had been revealed to the Apostles, and had come down to us from them, either by Scripture or tradition. And as the acts of all the Councils, and the history of every definition of faith evidently show, it was never contended that a new revelation had been made, but every inquiry was directed to this one point—whether the doctrine in question was contained in the Sacred Scriptures or ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... he was a pupil of Titian, but for some unknown reason he soon left him, and struck out for himself. In the studio which he occupied in his youth he had inscribed, as a definition of the style he professed, "The drawing of Michelangelo, the colouring of Titian." He copied the works of the latter, and also designed from casts of Florentine and antique sculpture, particularly by lamplight—as ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... to the use of the book and the system of its construction may be given here. Each title or subject is defined once in the text. Where a title is synonymous with one or more others the definition is only given under one title, and the others appear at the foot of the article as synonyms. It may be that the reader is seeking the definition of one of these synonyms. If so a reference to the index shows him at once what page contains the information sought for. The use of an index ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... in which punishment is 'unprofitable'; upon such offences as drunkenness and sexual immorality, where the law could only be enforced by a mischievous or impossible system of minute supervision, and such offences as ingratitude or rudeness, where the definition is so vague that the judge could not safely be entrusted with the power to punish.'[410] He endeavours to give a rather more precise distinction by subdividing 'ethics in general' into three classes. Duty may be to oneself, that is 'prudence'; or to one's neighbour ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... a principle of which a limited definition is only current in this country,' said Sidonia, quitting the room with him. 'People may be represented without periodical elections of neighbours who are incapable to maintain their interests, and strangers ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... rise of Allegory. Lyric. The Romance and the Pastourelle. The Fabliaux. Their origin. Their licence. Their wit. Definition and subjects. Effect of the fabliaux on language. And on narrative. Conditions of fabliau-writing. The appearance of irony. Fables proper. Reynard the Fox. Order of texts. Place of origin. The French form. Its complications. Unity of spirit. The Rise of Allegory. The satire of Renart. ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... worldly prosperity, you cannot easily conceive that it would have produced more good than when it fell full on him, and was forthwith radiated to all around him. You may say that this was partly the result of genius. Be it so. Genius is, by the definition of it, one of the highest gifts. If, with humble means, we can produce some of its effects, it is great gain. Without, however, wishing to depreciate the attaching influence of genius, we must, I ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... as he had yearned for great thoughts and great achievements, but his spiritual capacity was as scanty and obscure as his intelligence. And where unkind Nature thus unequally yokes lofty objects in a man with a short mental reach, she stamps him with the very definition ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... prescribing penalties for its infringement. It was not the first time that Otasite had heard unfavorably of the influences of "nawohti," which, by the way, with the Cherokees signified physic, as well as spirituous liquor, a synonymous definition which more civilized people have sought to apply. He was content that he and the old chief were once more in affectionate accord, and he did not seek to interpret the flash of triumph ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... brings us back to the author himself. It is like a family resemblance between widely separated relatives, which suggests in the most opposite quarters the original type of feature of some strong, far-back progenitor. These characters, with far more vivid presence and clear definition than those of the other two writers, are at the same time based on large and elementary forces, like theirs. They are for the most part embodied moods, or emotions expanded to the stature of an entire human being, and made to endure unchanged for years ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... fourth edition of his Dictionary, published in 1773, Johnson introduced a second definition of patriot:—'It is sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government.' Gibbon (Misc. Works, ii. 77) wrote on Feb. 21, 1772:—'Charles Fox is commenced patriot, and is already attempting to pronounce the words, country, liberty, corruption, &c.; with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... of slave quality and careerist quality. As we are all caught in the net, as the unconscious memories of our slave and careerist ancestors flow in our blood and echo in our cells, all we can do is accept it and work with it. Human nature is an incurable disease. Like Jehovah's definition of Himself, it is, it has been, and ever will be. Everywhere the same, always the same, forever the same, there ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... things: first, the gathering of knowledge through observation; second, the classification of such knowledge, and through this classification, the elaboration of general ideas or principles. In the familiar definition of Herbert Spencer, science ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... be willing to write it down for me?" asked Bok, fearful that he should not remember Doctor Briggs's definition even ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... to study is one life; based on experience of one Reality, and manifested in the diversity of gifts and graces which men have been willing to call true, holy, beautiful and good. For the moment at least we may accept the definition of it given by Dr. Bosanquet, as "oneness with the Supreme Good in every facet of the heart and will."[6] And since without derogation of its transcendent character, its vigour, wonder and worth, it is in human experience rather than in speculation that we ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... most of us cannot grasp for very dizziness. He could write music as impalpable as that of the middle section of "Iberia," in which the very silence of the night, the caresses of the breeze, seem to have taken musical flesh. Before the body of his work, so clear and lucid in its definition, so perfect in its organization, one thinks perforce of a world created out of the flying chaos beneath him by a god. We are given to know precisely of what stuff the soul of Debussy was made, what its pilgrimages were, in what adventure it sought itself ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... challenges the sublime Epithets of Royal, Artificial, Manly, and Warlike, for its Stateliness, Cunning, and Indurance, claims above all other Sports the Precedency; and therefore I was induced to place it at the Head to usher in the rest; and of which take this concise Definition, viz. That since Nature has equally imparted unto every Beast a wonderful Knowledge of Offence and Security, herein we may observe, The curious Search and Conquest of one Creature over another, hurried on by an innate natural Antipathy, and performed or ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... means all who, consciously or unconsciously, are forwarding God's kingdom on earth. In the broad definition of the Master it means "all those who are not against us." The way in which men associate for worship, or in which they consider it most remunerative to invest their efforts to forward the kingdom, gives them no right to arrogate to themselves the title of God's ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... definition of the true purpose of comedy which I know is that it is to "chastise manners with a smile" (Ridendo castigat mores); and it has no better exemplification in the literature of opera than Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg." Wagner's mind ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... later Tokugawa Shogun—during the period immediately preceding the modern regime—that Japanese civilization reached the limit of its development. No further evolution was possible, except through social reconstruction. The conditions of this integration chiefly represented the reinforcement and definition of conditions preexisting,—scarcely anything in the way of fundamental change. More than ever before the old compulsory systems of cooperation were strengthened; more than ever before all details of ceremonial convention were ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... S'ENTEND; but there is no blot of heart's blood and the Old Night: there are no harmonics, there is scarce harmony to his music; and in Henley - all of these; a touch, a sense within sense, a sound outside the sound, the shadow of the inscrutable, eloquent beyond all definition. The First London Voluntary knocked me wholly. - Ever yours affectionately, my ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... affirmative idea. Or perhaps I shall better explain my meaning by substituting other terms with my own illustration of their value. I say, then, that the Greek idea of immortality involves only the nominal idea, not the real idea. Now, the nominal idea (or, which is the same thing, the nominal definition) is that which simply sketches the outline of an object in the shape of a problem; whereas the real definition fills up that outline and solves that problem. The nominal definition states the conditions under ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... accept the definition of Kultur which identifies it with "form," with the harmonious "rhythm" which, in the English, for example, permeates and unifies everything, from the highest spiritual life to clothes, footwear and table manners.... I am of opinion that we shall ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... "free from contact with that which weakens, impairs or pollutes." How forceful then is the converse of the definition: Impurity weakens, impairs, and pollutes. It weakens both mind and body. It impairs the health. It pollutes not only the thoughts but the conduct which inevitably has its beginning and its end ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... long enjoyed the advantages of a definite scale and notation. Should not the art of coloring gain by similar definition? The musical scale is not left to personal whim, nor does it change from day to day; and something as clear and stable would be an advantage in ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... slaves, unless we make a particular enumeration on this account; the collector may mistake, for he would not presume to apply the term goods, wares, and merchandise to any person whatsoever. But if that general definition of goods, wares, and merchandise are supposed to include African Slaves, why may we not particularly enumerate them, and lay the duty pointed out by the Constitution, which, as gentlemen tell us, is no more ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... for the timorous citizen, for all those for whom an "i" can never be too plainly dotted in definition, we repeat as an axiom: "Bohemia is a stage in artistic life; it is the preface to the Academy, the Hotel ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... know why. I will tell you. When St. Patrick first preached the Christian faith in Ireland, before a powerful chief and his people, when he spoke of one God, and of the Trinity, the chief asked how one could be in three. St. Patrick, instead of attempting a theological definition of the faith, thought a simple image would best serve to enlighten a simple people, and stooping to the earth he plucked from the green sod a shamrock, and holding up the trefoil before them he bade them there behold one in three. The ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... and on high authority, that the end of art is to please. But this is a very imperfect definition. It might as well be said that a library is only intended ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... Great Britain, was met by an adverse vote of the Senate on April 13 last, and thereupon negotiations were instituted to obtain an agreement with Her Britannic Majesty's Government for the promulgation of such joint interpretation and definition of the article of the convention of 1818 relating to the territorial waters and inshore fisheries of the British Provinces as should secure the Canadian rights from encroachment by the United States fishermen and at the same time insure the enjoyment by the latter ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... same time there was nothing hidebound. There was no attempt to draw lines too tight; indeed, there was little drawing of lines. Principles were stated, and applied. Description took the place of definition. ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... bare feet pattering swiftly down the stairs. He came flying back, still laughing, and laid a heavy dictionary in my lap. I hastily turned the leaves, Pola questing in each one like an excited little dog, till I found the definition of his word, "to fall squash like a ripe ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... mentioned symptom in merely a superficial way and dismisses it with a few cursory remarks, viz: "It may be defined a passion to possess books of which the edges have never been sheared by the binder's tools." This definition is vague and unsatisfactory. Mr. Adrian H. Joline (Diversions of a Booklover, Harper & Bros., New York, 1903,—a charming book that should be read by every book-fancier) discourses upon the subject more intelligently; he observes ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... has preached five special phases of belief, as follows: First, Religion by Definition; Second, Religion by Submission; Third, Religion by Substitution; Fourth, Religion by Culture; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... reason that Christ cannot be what He is and fail to suffer in and for a world like ours. What is the nature of Christ? Christ is like God. Christ is God. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." But what is God? There are many definitions. There is only one all comprehensive and all inclusive definition. That is that sentence of pure gold that fell from the lips of the apostle that leaned upon the bosom of his Lord. "What is God?" I ask this man who had such a wonderful knowledge of Him. And ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... himself so amiably in society, and so inoffensively among his fellow-bards, and versified his way so tranquilly into the good graces of his royal mistresses, distending the thread, and diluting the sense, and sparing the ornaments, of his passionless poetry,—if poetry, which, by the definition of its highest authority, is "simple, sensuous, passionate," can ever be unimpassioned,—that he was the oracle of feminine taste while he lived, and at his death bequeathed a fame yet dear to the school of Southey and Wordsworth. Daniel was no otherwise Laureate than his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... believe in a living God, or are we not? If we are not, then David's words are of course worse than nothing. If we are, I do not see why David was wrong in calling on God to exercise that moral and providential government of the world, which is the very note and definition ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of Oratory with a remark, that this Definition of the Tool-using Animal appears to us, of all that Animal-sort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is called a Laughing Animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt to do it; and is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher? Teufelsdrockh himself, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... OF JESUS.—The Council of Trent, by providing a clear definition of doctrine, cemented unity, and was the first great bulwark raised against Protestantism. Another means of defense, and of attack as well, was provided in new orders, especially the order of Jesuits. This was founded by Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish soldier ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the definition excludes brewers, distillers, biological supply houses, and others, such as zoo curators, who manage living things. Agriculture takes place on a piece of land widely and commonly known ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... years or so of life did he undertake this occupation which ruined him. Mr. Reade shows that he had been for thirty years engaged in this trade in parchment. Brother Birkbeck Hill quotes Croker, who hinted that Johnson's famous definition of Excise as "a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the Common Judge of Property but by wretches hired by those to whom Excise is paid," was inspired by recollections of his father's constant disputes ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... that God is a spirit," quickly corrected the professor. "That definition has already been given several times; but I am trying to ascertain your own conception of Deity. Why did you ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... to raise the question who were included in the general term "the royal family," which Lord Halifax, as Secretary of State, answered by saying that he regarded it as meaning "those only who were in order of succession to the throne." Such a definition would have excluded the Queen as effectually as the Princess Dowager; and when Mr. Grenville found the peers reluctant to accept this view (which, indeed, his own Lord Chancellor pronounced untenable), he then sent another of his colleagues to represent ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... Early Popularity of Heraldry in England— Origin of English Heraldry; Definition; Characteristics; Development; Early Uses; Not connected with Earlier Systems— Ancient Heraldry— Past and Present Treatment of ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... with the inferiority of others, or with our own formerly." Too cynical a view, declare many critics, but they usually end by admitting that there is a good deal in it after all. I am inclined to think that Hobbes's famous definition is more applicable to wit than it is to humor. Wit is more purely intellectual than humor. It rejoices in its little triumphs. It requires, as has been remarked, a good head, while humor takes a good heart, and fun good spirits. If you take Carlyle literally when he says that humor is love, ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... the power of observing every fact about all human beings at once, he might ask, as the newspaper editors are asking as I write, what that Socialism is which influences so many lives? He might answer himself with a definition which could be clumsily translated as 'a movement towards greater social equality, depending for its force upon three main factors, the growing political power of the working classes, the growing social sympathy of many members of all classes, and the belief, based on ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... Chrysippus deem every man mad, whom vicious folly or the ignorance of truth drives blindly forward. This definition takes in whole nations, this even great kings, the wise man [alone] excepted. Now learn, why all those, who have fixed the name of madman upon you, are as senseless as yourself. As in the woods, where a mistake makes people wander about from the proper path; one goes out of the way to the ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... ready I would not be wasting time talking to reporters. I am working on one. When it is found, by me or another, it will be a true counteragent, changing the very structure and habit of Cynodon dactylon as the Metamorphizer changed it originally. External weapons, by definition, can at best, at the very best, merely stop the grass—not render it innocuous. Equals fighting ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... multiform records accumulated during years of study, to define the various typical stages of the sidereal evolution; and not merely to define them but to illustrate them practically by citing stars which belong to each of these stages, and to give them yet clearer definition by naming the various elements which the spectroscope reveals ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... during a certain period of his development. Later, the mythic creations seem absurd, often immoral, because they are survivals of a distant epoch, cherished and consecrated through tradition, habits, and respect for antiquity. According to the definition that seems to me best adapted for psychology, the myth is "the psychological objectification of man in all the phenomena that he can perceive."[51] It is a humanization of nature according to ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... novel merely, this War and Peace, with the addition of another excellence, a comeliness of form. We might have had a novel that would be a finer, truer, more vivid and more forcible picture of life. The best form is that which makes the most of its subject—there is no other definition of the meaning of form in fiction. The well-made book is the book in which the subject and the form coincide and are indistinguishable—the book in which the matter is all used up in the form, in ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... that somebody might be fortunate enough to find in that instrument the clause which supported his theory. Mr. Johnson, however, though the most consequential of individuals, is the most inconsequential of reasoners; every proposition which is evident to himself he considers to fulfil the definition of a self-evident proposition; but his supporters at Philadelphia must have known, that, in affirming that insurgent States recover their former rights by the fact of submission, they were arraigning the conduct of their leader, who had notoriously violated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... the fewest words; then transpose your definition into a word or words equivalent to the ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... recognised that not every compound of oxygen is an acid, he taught that every acid is a compound of oxygen. We know now that many acids are not compounds of oxygen, but we have not yet sufficient knowledge to frame a complete definition of the term acid. Nevertheless it is convenient, indeed it is necessary, to place together many compounds which react similarly under certain defined conditions, and to give a common name to them all. The alchemists also classified substances, but their classification was necessarily more ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... let loose upon the country whenever they feel like it, to build what go by the names of railroads and bridges, but are in reality traps in which to lose both life and money. Indeed, any man (in the United States) who has carried a rod or chain is called an engineer; while the correct definition is, a man who has, first, a thorough knowledge of mechanics, mathematics, and chemistry,—second, the knowledge necessary for applying these sciences to the arts,—and last, the knowledge requisite to the correct adaptation of such arts to the wants of man, but more than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... distinguished between normal and abnormal worry, and directed his efforts against the latter. Webster's definition of worry (A state of undue solicitude) obviates the necessity of deciding what degree and kind of worry is abnormal, and directs attention rather to deciding what degree of solicitude may be ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... are the common laws of custom,"—he replied—"No more,—no less. And in this we are much like other nations. We believe in no actual Creed,—who does? We accept a certain given definition of a supposititious Divinity, together with the suitable maxims and code of morals accompanying that definition, ... we call this Religion, . . and we wear it as we wear our clothing for the sake of necessity ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... however, turn out that I have given a right definition, and a correct solution of this most interesting problem, I shall rejoice to know that I have rendered an essential service to a great number ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... scredoar, screetor, scrittore, scriptore, scrutoir, scritory, scrutore, escrutor, scriptoree, this useful piece of furniture appears constantly in the inventories of men of wealth in the colonies from the year 1669 till a century later. Judge Sewall tells of losing the key of his "scrittoir." The definition of the word in Phillips's "New World of Words," 1696, was "Scrutoire, a sort of large Cabinet with several Boxes, and a place for Pen, Ink and Paper, the door of which opening downward and resting upon Frames that are to be drawn out and put back, serves ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... The definition was not quite clear to him. He had proved that he could see farther and clearer than she could when looking at trees or chipmunks. He looked critically ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... come in. I shall want you to take the photograph of me as I stand there. I will select the spot from which the photograph is to be taken, and will focus the camera, stop down the lens to the extent required to get satisfactory definition, and generally arrange the picture; and all that you will need to do will be to remove the cap and give the proper exposure when I am ready. The light is not too good, and I intend to use the orange screen, so I guess the exposure will be rather a lengthy one, but I ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... NOTE K, p. 221. In some of these declarations, supposed to be penned by Lord Falkland, is found the first regular definition of the constitution, according to our present ideas of it, that occurs in any English composition; at least any published by authority. The three species of government, monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical, are there plainly distinguished, and the English government is expressly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... p. 47). Used in a vague way, mysticism stands for spiritual inwardness. Religion without mysticism, said Amiel, is a rose without perfume. This saying is no more precise and no more informing than Matthew Arnold's definition of religion as morality touched with emotion. Neither mysticism nor an emotional touch makes religion. They are as often as not concomitants of a pathological state which is the denial of religion. But if mysticism means a personal attitude towards God in which the heart is active as well ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... commonplaces of criticism which express vaguely and loosely a general impression gathered from the comparison of ancient with modern poetry. Like most of such generalisations it is not of much value unless defined more closely; and as the definition of the rule becomes more accurate, the exceptions and limitations to be made grow correspondingly numerous. The section which is here placed under this heading is obviously different from any collection which could be made of modern poems, professing ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... discovered a new definition of disloyalty. He considers my suggestion to boycott the visit of the Prince of Wales to be disloyal and some newspapers taking the cue from him have called persons who have made the suggestion 'unmannerly'. They have even attributed to these 'unmannerly' persons ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... love, justice, conduct of life—or what not. If it had come to crawling before Mr. Kurtz, he crawled as much as the veriest savage of them all. I had no idea of the conditions, he said: these heads were the heads of rebels. I shocked him excessively by laughing. Rebels! What would be the next definition I was to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, workers—and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked very subdued to me on their sticks. 'You don't know how such a life tries a man like Kurtz,' cried Kurtz's last disciple. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... accustomed to say that one could always tell an honorable man by his conduct to his wife, his children, and his servants; and I hope it will appear from these memoirs that the Emperor conducted himself as an honorable man, according to his own definition. He said, moreover, that immorality was the most dangerous vice of a sovereign, because of the evil example it set to his subjects. What he meant by immorality was doubtless a scandalous publicity given to liaisons which might otherwise have remained secret; for, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... time I imagine you are wondering how the stereoscopic camera was behaving itself as such. It is due to the psychic entities to say that whatever was produced on one-half of the stereoscopic plates was produced on the other—alike good or bad in definition. But, on a careful examination of one which was rather better than the other ... I deduce this fact, that the impressing of the spirit form was not simultaneous with that of the sitter.... This ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... its inventor. It remembered, compared, judged, reasoned: does the drowsy, digesting paunch remember? Does it compare? Does it reason? I defined the Capricorn-grub as a bit of an intestine that crawls about. The undeniable accuracy of this definition provides me with my answer: the grub has the aggregate of sense-impressions that a bit of an intestine ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... John Quincy, Airedale, America, appointment of non-elected officials in, Civil Service, science and politics in, tendency to electoral concentration in, Amos, Ampthill, Lord, Antigone, Aristotle, comparison of State to a ship, criticism of Plato's communism, definition of 'polity', maximum size of a State, on action as the end of politics, on political affection, Athens, glassmakers of, Sophocles' love ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... the proper sense, implying a considerable establishment of slaves, such as we afterwards meet with at Rome, cannot be supposed to have existed during this period. On the contrary, to this period we must refer the ancient definition, which represents the senators as called fathers from the fields which they parcelled out among the common people as a father among his children; and originally the landowner must have distributed that portion of his land ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... appointed Church deaconesses. "They were to form a female council of elder women, who were to counsel and care for the married women, widows, and young girls, to make peace between quarrelers, to prevent slandering, and to preserve purity and good morals,"[21] aims which keep close to the apostolic definition ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... The following is Fracastorius' definition of a man who not only writes verses, but is by nature a poet: "Est autem ille natura poeta, qui aptus est veris rerum pulchritudinibus capi monerique; et qui per illas loqui et scribere potest;" and he gives ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... if I understood you rightly, that we have had no poets, artists, or warriors; by which he meant, I suppose, to deny that we have had great men, the next most certain of the signs. A just consideration of this charge requires a definition at the commencement. A great man, O my boy, is one whose life proves him to have been recognized, if not called, by God. A Persian was used to punish our recreant fathers, and he carried them into captivity; another Persian was selected to restore their children to the Holy Land; greater than ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... alone understood it as science: which he could never have done by the mere study of the law, and without a previous acquaintance with the art which teaches us to divide a whole into its subordinate parts, to, decide an indeterminate idea by an accurate definition: to explain what is obscure, by a clear interpretation; and first to discover what things are of a doubtful nature, then to distinguish them by their different degrees of probability; and lastly, to be provided with a certain rule or measure by which we may judge what ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... "No doubt," he said. "Now understand me clearly. Very soon you will be killed. How quickly or slowly you die will depend largely upon the civility of your tongues. A civil tongue answers questions with the right answers. That is my definition of a civil tongue." He sat back coldly. "Now, shall we ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... doubt, however, if King Albert had in the field at anyone time more than 120,000 men—a very large proportion of whom were, of course, raw recruits. Now the Belgian army, when all is said and done, was not an army according to the Continental definition; it was not much more than a glorified police force, a militia. No one had ever dreamed that it would be called upon to fight, and hence, when war came, it was wholly unprepared. That it was able ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... taboo or system of taboos that, according to Reinach, religion arose. "I propose (he says) to define religion as: A SUM OF SCRUPLES (TABOOS) WHICH IMPEDE THE FREE EXERCISE OF OUR FACULTIES." (1) Obviously this definition is gravely deficient, simply because it is purely negative, and leaves out of account the positive aspect of the subject. In Man, the positive content of religion is the instinctive sense—whether conscious or subconscious—of ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... eminent as scholar, preacher, and translator, was born in 1324 in Spresswel, near Richmond, Yorkshire, England. Known as the "Morning Star of the Reformation" he was a vigorous and argumentative speaker, exemplifying his own definition of preaching as something which should be "apt, apparent, full of true feeling, fearless in rebuking sins, and so addrest to the heart as to enlighten the spirit and subdue the will." On these lines he organized a band of Bible preachers ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... and antipathy to Rouge extremism among them—kept Bleu and Castor in an uneasy alliance. This alliance began to disintegrate when Laurier rose to the command of the Liberals. There was a steady drift from the Bleu to the Liberal camp—by this time the old definition of "Rouge" was under taboo; and in 1896 the Bleus moved over almost in a body. This was not an altogether instinctive and voluntary movement; it was suggested, inspired, ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... which were forwarded under the same cover have been preserved. Ten days later (February 25) he reverts to these "extracts," and on February 28 he despatches a fair copy of the first act. On March 9 he remits the third and final act of his "dramatic poem" (a definition adopted as a second title), but under reserve as to publication, and with a strict injunction to Murray "to submit it to Mr. G[ifford] and to whomsoever you please besides." It is certain that this third act was written at Venice (Letter to Murray, April 14), and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... certain measure which is neither so small as to preclude us from distinguishing its parts, nor so extensive as to prevent us from taking the whole in at one view. This is, therefore, merely an external definition of the beautiful, derived from experience, and founded on the quality of our organs of sense and our powers of comprehension. However, his application of it to the drama is remarkable. "It must have an extension, but such ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... great complexity and peculiar composition which varies from organism to organism and from part to part. Life itself may be defined as a group of characteristic activities dependent upon the transformations in this system under appropriate conditions. According to this definition, life is determined not only by the physical and chemical attributes of the system, but by the fitness of its environment, which Henderson has recently done the important service of emphasizing.[1] Relatively trifling changes in the environment suffice to ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... sensibly asked for a definition of our respective duties, and it was settled that I was to be guide to the expedition; Higgs, antiquarian, interpreter, and, on account of his vast knowledge, general referee; and Captain Orme, engineer and military commander, with the proviso ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... in its turn, deals with human events; and, in the same way as science, by attending to causal relations, arrives at the conception of spiritual law as a similarly permanent principle in the order of the soul. This causal unity is the cardinal idea of plot which by definition is a series of events causally related and conceived as a unit, technically called the action. Plot is thus analogous to an illustrative experiment in science; it is a concrete example of law,—it ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... impersonal deities; presences to be felt and remembered, not clothed imaginatively with features and myths:—Cuba, who gave the new-born child its first breath; Anna Perenna of the recurring year; hosts of agricultural gods without much definition, and the unseen genii of wood, field, and mountain. Everything, even each individual man, had a god-side: there was something in it or him greater, more subtle, more enduring, than the personality or outward show.—To the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... physical passion remains at once its justification and its consecration. To use it in a relationship which must for ever be barren is "unnatural" and in the deepest sense immoral. It is not easy to define "immorality," because morality is one of the fundamentals which defy definition; but though it is not easy to define, it is not hard to recognize. All the world knows that it is immoral to prostitute the creative power of genius to mere commercialism, for money or for fame. No one can draw a hard and fast line. No one will quarrel with a great artist ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... a bright winter's day, before a glowing fire of anthracite, with one's feet on the fender, and one's form half-buried in the depths of a cushioned easy-chair, holding the uncut pages of the last novel, be indeed the practical definition of happiness, then Emma Leslie was to be envied as she sat thus cosily, one afternoon, listening to an animated discussion going on between an elderly lady and gentleman on the opposite side of the fire-place. The discussion ran on a grave subject—a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... useless to attempt opposition to your opinions, since, in fact, to read them was to recognise, almost point for point, a clear definition of objections I had already felt, but had found neither the power nor the will to express. Not the power, because I find it very difficult to analyse closely, or to criticise in appropriate words; and not the will, because ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... a definition of the crime committed by these negroes, and a more particular account of ...
— The Trial and Execution, for Petit Treason, of Mark and Phillis, Slaves of Capt. John Codman • Abner Cheney Goodell, Jr.
... his fourth letter, in the assumed character of M. B. Drapier, confronted the question of legislative independence. Alluding to the pamphlet of Molyneux, published thirty years before, he pronounced its arguments invincible, and the contrary system "the very definition of slavery." "The remedy," he concludes, addressing the Irish people, "is wholly in your own hands, and therefore I have digressed a little, in order to refresh and continue that spirit so seasonably raised among you, and to let you see, that, by the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... her slim little ankle so charmingly, that even those uninitiated into the mysteries of beauty would infallibly have sighed, if only from wonder. There was something maidenly in her easy, but aristocratic gait, something eluding definition yet intelligible to the glance. As she walked past us an indefinable perfume, like that which sometimes breathes from the note of a charming woman, ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... turning on a burner-tap causes some acetylene to be produced, and the act of turning it off brings the reaction to an end, thus obviating the necessity for storage. That, at any rate, is the logical definition of the two fundamentally different kinds of generator: in automatic apparatus the decomposition of the carbide is periodically interrupted in such fashion as more or less accurately to synchronise with the consumption of gas; in the non-automatic ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... burst out laughing: the captain himself laughed,—his case was so very nearly like everybody's who undertakes to talk about the wondrous, subtle element. By the by, his definition of it—viz., that it is "the stuff we telegraph with"—strikes me as being about the best one I ever heard. Kit and Raed, however, have got a theory,—which they expound very gravely,—to the effect that electricity and the luminiferous ether—that thin medium through which light is propagated from ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... harmony, which suggests that the weakness of the older art lay in the last of the three essentials of painting; form, color and composition. The low-toned harmonies of time-mellowed color we would be loath to exchange for aught else, except for that element of disturbance so vague and so difficult of definition, ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... Poll's sole trouble was lest Sally should take cold. The proprieties, those gods of modern social worship, as well as their progenitors, the improprieties, were unknown to these simple souls; they did things because they were right and wrong. They were not nice according to Swift's definition, nor proper in the mode of the best society, but they were good and pure; are the disciples and lecturers of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... get Mrs. Eddy's definition of God," said Robert. "'What is God? Answer—God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
... sensation is personal. My suffering and my enjoyments are not to be contested any more than my inclination for objects which procure me the one, and my dislike of objects which procure me the other. There is, therefore, no arbitrary definition of each one's particular interest; this exists as a fact independently of the legislator; all that remains is to show what this interest is, and what each individual prefers. Preferences vary according to race, time, place and circumstance. Among the possessions which are ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... sharper prominences are thus displayed, the great novelist is using his undoubted privilege of showing the large degree to which human intercourse is carried on, not by men's habits or ways at their commonest, but by the touching of their extremes. A definition of Fielding's genius has been made with some accuracy in the saying, that he shows common propensities in connection with the identical unvarnished adjuncts which are peculiar to the individual, nor could a more exquisite felicity of handling than this be any man's ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the case, the result had not been to lighten our labours. My rendering of the famous ballad had, in consequence, acquired a dolefulness not intended by the composer. Sung as I sang it, the theme became, to employ a definition since grown hackneyed as applied to Art, a problem ballad. Involuntarily one wondered whether the marriage would turn out as satisfactorily as the young man appeared to anticipate. Was there not, when one came to think of it, a melancholy, a pessimism ingrained ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Definition, nature, and value of folk-lore. Methods of its study. Relations to history and character of a people. Traditional customs. Traditional narratives. Folk-sayings. Superstitious beliefs ...
— Anthropology - As a Science and as a Branch of University Education in the United States • Daniel Garrison Brinton
... because he thought them bad lines in themselves (quamvis Delia Cruscam fortasse nimis redolere videantur), but because they diverted and retarded the stream of the thought, and injured the organic unity of the composition. Pi nel uno is Francesco de Sallez' brief and happy definition of the beautiful, and the shorter the poem the more indispensable is it that the Pi should not overlay the Uno, that the unity should be evident. But to sacrifice the gratification, the sting of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... recourse to them in his teaching when the precise Hebrew expression was lacking, or when he explained difficult terms, especially technical terms of arts and crafts. The use of a French word saved him a long circumlocution. Sometimes, the laaz followed a definition or description, in a striking manner giving the meaning of the word ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... of which Grandma Nichols said so much, that John, who was himself slightly avaricious, began to regret that he ever knew the definition of the word save. Lest our readers get a wrong impression of Mrs. Nichols, we must say that she possessed very many sterling qualities, and her habits of extreme economy resulted more from the manner in which she had been compelled to live, ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... thinks that he knows this: (1) 'He is courageous who remains at his post.' But some nations fight flying, after the manner of Aeneas in Homer; or as the heavy-armed Spartans also did at the battle of Plataea. (2) Socrates wants a more general definition, not only of military courage, but of courage of all sorts, tried both amid pleasures and pains. Laches replies that this universal courage is endurance. But courage is a good thing, and mere endurance may be hurtful and injurious. Therefore (3) the element of intelligence must ...
— Laches • Plato
... Statistical Society for September contains an elaborate paper by Mr. E. Foxwell on "English Express Trains; their Average Speed, etc. with Notes on Gradients, Long Runs, etc." The author takes great pains to explain his definition of the term "express trains," which he finally classifies thus: (a) The general rule; those which run under ordinary conditions, and attain a journey-speed of 40 and upward. These are about 85 per cent. of the whole. (b) Equally good trains, which, running against exceptional difficulties, only ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... reproductive force, arising alike from nutrition. Food to assure life and growth for the individual; reproduction, an extension of the same process, to ensure the continuance of the species. We thus see the truth of Haeckel's definition that "reproduction is a nutrition and growth of the organism beyond its individual mass," or in biological formula, "a ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... two tendencies you have a photographic reproduction of the two schools of criminology. The classic school, which looks upon the crime as a juridical problem, occupies itself with its name, its definition, its juridical analysis, leaves the personality of the criminal in the background and remembers it only so far as exceptional circumstances explicitly stated in the law books refer to it: whether he is a minor, a deaf-mute, ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... escape the clutches, fangs, or claws of a pursuing enemy, he was obliged to fly and leap over thorny briars and bramble-bushes or hornets' nests, or plunge through swamps alive with blood-sucking insects and leeches—Ricord's definition would certainly have been inapplicable. In those days, but for the protecting double fold of the preputial envelope that protected it from the thorns and cutting grasses, the coarse bark of trees, or the stings and bites of insects, the glans penis of primitive ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... for even when outward action is blameless, the motives may be mixed. "I desire men to be upright without paradise and hell." Religion seeks to crown morality, not to generate it; virtue is earlier and more natural than piety. In his definition of the relation between religion and ethics, his delimitation of morality from legality, and his insistence on the purity of motives (do right, because the inner rational law commands it), an anticipation of ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... summarizes theories of the malady.[16] A bibliographical study of such works would probably reveal a larger number of titles in the nineteenth century than in the previous one, but by this time the nature and definition of ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... person who has fallen into distress are of another kind. How can duty respecting seasons of distress be ascertained by reading the scriptures alone?[1129] The acts of the good, thou hast said, constitute righteousness (or duty). The good, however, are to be ascertained by their acts. The definition, therefore, has for its foundation, a begging of the question, with the result that what is meant by conduct of the good remains unsettled. It is seen that some ordinary person commits unrighteousness while apparently ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... formulated demands that of open trade with the colonies of belligerents does not appear, although there is found one closely cognate to it,—an asserted right to coasting trade, from port to port, of a country at war. The Rule of 1756 therefore remained, in 1793, a definition of international maritime law laid down by British courts, but not elsewhere accepted; and it rested upon a logical deduction from a system of colonial administration universal at that period. The logical deduction may be stated thus. The mother ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... creatures,' and it vexed her even more than her own ill behaviour. The stranger was certainly not coarse, far from gross. Even his talk about beer (she remembered every word of it) had been amusing rather than offensive. Was he a 'gentleman'? The question agitated her; it involved so technical a definition, and she felt so doubtful as to the reply. Beyond doubt he had acted in a gentlemanly way; but his voice lacked something. Coarse? Gross? No, no, no! Really, her father was very severe, not to say uncharitable. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... accept that definition, and you think it possible to be all that to each other without being lovers. I believe it, too, but I would like to make some further statements before we have the discussion ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... smart gentlemen who waste reams of good paper in establishing, to their own satisfaction, that even the mathematical surface itself has thickness! In the lesson on 'perpendicular and horizontal,' the definition of perpendicular is correct; but all the developing, before and after, unfortunately confounds the perpendicular with the vertical—a bad way toward future accuracy of thought, or toward making scientific ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... with them (Autobiography, p. 105, and also 244); as, of course, were other thinkers of an earlier date, Condorcet for instance.[4] In this as in other subjects Mr. Mill did not go beyond his modest definition of his own originality—the application of old ideas in new forms and connections (p. 119), or the originality 'which every thoughtful mind gives to its own mode of conceiving and expressing truths which are common property' (p. 254). Or shall we say that ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... of all animals, says that he alone has the prerogative of thought, and condemns the other animals to the meaner mechanical operation which he calls instinct. But as instincts are unerring and thoughts generally go wrong, man has not much to boast of according to his own definition. When you say you think, and take it for granted, that I am Yorkshire, you err. I am not Yorkshire. Confining yourself to instinct, can you divine when we shall sup? The cows you are about to visit divine to a moment ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... differentia of aesthetic pleasure not its disinterestedness 37 Sec. 9. The differentia of aesthetic pleasure not its universality 40 Sec. 10. The differential of aesthetic pleasure: its objectification 44 Sec. 11. The definition of ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... home, said: "Well, I'm going to suspend payment to-morrow. A few dollars would get me through, but I can't get the few dollars, and I'm going to ruin." That evening the wife said: "I wish you would hunt up the definition of the word 'independence' in Webster's Dictionary. Hunt it up for me." He opened Webster's Dictionary, and found the word "independence," and right opposite was a $100 bill. "Now," she said, "I would like to have you find the word 'gratitude.'" He ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... down slowly. "No doubt," he said. "Now understand me clearly. Very soon you will be killed. How quickly or slowly you die will depend largely upon the civility of your tongues. A civil tongue answers questions with the right answers. That is my definition of a civil tongue." He sat back coldly. "Now, shall we commence ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... in Chicago, 'What are we going to do to restore the primitive singing of poetry?' I find what Mr. Yeats means by 'the primitive singing of poetry' in Professor Edward Bliss Reed's new volume on 'The English Lyric'. He says in his chapter on the definition of the lyric: 'With the Greeks "song" was an all-embracing term. It included the crooning of the nurse to the child... the half-sung chant of the mower or sailor... the formal ode sung by the poet. ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... severe Joke upon 'em, in his way, which was this; He sent a Pudding to the King's Table, under the Name of a Court-Pudding, or Promise-Pudding. This Pudding he did not fail to set off with large Encomiums; assuring the King, That therein he wou'd find an Hieroglyphical Definition of Courtiers ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... again, to get a more comprehensive view of vacancy under the window-blind, and—with an asphyxiated appearance on him as one unaccustomed to definition—made no answer. ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... sums are derived is taxation. Taxes have been defined to be "the legally determined and legally collected contributions of individuals for meeting the necessary and general expenses of the State."[1] In the large majority of cases this is a good definition, but in a few instances it is too narrow. There are some taxes that are levied not primarily for the purpose of raising an income to meet the expenses of the government, but to subserve some other purpose. For instance, the maintenance ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... if there is such a word, were of less importance. He was restless, as though wanting to approach a subject which he did not quite venture to touch upon, and kept harping (he did this about every third day) on the wretched lack of definition concerning the limits of vice and virtue, and the way in which half the vices wanted regulating rather than prohibiting. He dwelt also on the advantages of complete unreserve, and hinted that there were mysteries into which Ernest had not yet been initiated, but which would ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... Mr. Hale limits the definition of a witch to the following: "Who is to be esteemed a capital witch among Christians? viz.: Those that being brought up under the means of the knowledge of the true God, yet, being in their right ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... Mr MacArthur. And what is a crock? I suppose what it comes to,' she added, as the Babe did his best to find a definition, 'is this, that you yourself dislike him.' The Babe admitted the impeachment. Mr Dacre had a finished gift of sarcasm which had made him writhe on several occasions, and sarcastic masters are ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... could not practice moderation. Their zealotry was sustained by political theories which made no distinction between partisanship and sedition. The constitutional function of partisanship was discerned and stated by Burke in 1770, but his definition of it, as a joint endeavor to promote the national interest upon some particular principle, was scouted at the time and was not allowed until long after. The prevailing idea in Washington's time, both in England and America, was that partisanship ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... say in Georgia; and I have one in my mind's eye. There the people do not live so fast as to have no time to enjoy their life, while they have all that makes life enjoyable. Successful effort is my nearest approach to a definition of what constitutes happiness. There, there is every scope for various effort. The city and country around are still in process of active growth. "Fecundity" is writ large across the surface of the State, on fields, in mills, ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... human, then by human agencies also a State may be overthrown. To be secure against such vicissitudes a throne must be based upon something superior to man's potentialities. Divine authority alone fulfils that definition, and it is because the throne of Japan had a superhuman foundation that its existence is perennial. Therefore the Jingi-kwan stands above all others in the State." In another, book (Jingi-ryo) we find it stated: "All the deities* of heaven and earth are worshipped in the Jingi-kwan. On the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... kindred subjects, from a different point of view. Love in particular began to appear to him as more than the sum total of approbation bestowed on an object to be acquired. Though he was not prepared to give it a new definition, it was clear that the old one was no longer sufficient for his needs. The mere fact that this woman, whom he had vainly tempted with gifts—whom he was still hoping to capture by prowess—could come to him of her own accord, had ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... phrase, "a beginning, a middle, and an end." That they are complete in themselves, although only parts of whole essays, is due to the fact that Huxley, in order to make succeeding material clear, often prepares the way with a long and careful definition. Such is the nature of the extract A Liberal Education, in reality a definition to make distinct and forcible his ideas on the shortcomings of English schools. Such a definition, also, is ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... every business man solves the problem practically according to his temperament and education, and I suppose that on first thoughts every business man would answer you accordingly. But perhaps the personal equation is something you wish to eliminate from the definition." ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... scientific topics it is well in the outset to establish definitions. I will, therefore, commence by looking our subject squarely in the face, and establishing a concise definition of Phrenology. ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... phrase is involved in some obscurity. Jacob, in his Law Dictionary, speaks of it as "from the French," and his definition is verbatim that given in The Termes of the Law (ed. 1598), with a very slight addition. Blackstone (book II cap. 12.) says, "which term I shall explain in the very words of Littleton: 'It seemeth that this word hotchpot is in English a ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... a curiosity; but he has been very shy of my conversation ever since I laughed at his asserting that the English tongue was spoke with more propriety at Edinburgh than at London. Looking at me with a double squeeze of souring in his aspect, 'If the old definition be true (said he), that risibility is the distinguishing characteristic of a rational creature, the English are the most distinguished for rationality of any people I ever knew.' I owned, that the English were easily struck with any thing that ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... that they and their friends have shot at me, ambushed me, beaten me, and starved me. They've been wanting to kill me ever since they got me here—at least one of them has—but they just didn't have the guts to do it. What is your definition of a criminal anyhow? Your friends here fill the specifications close enough to suit me. I ain't worried about their being too good for the company ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... Indeed, he held this study to be the duty of the perfect orator; a knowledge of the human mind was one of his essential qualifications. Nor could he conceive of real eloquence without it; for his definition of eloquence is, "wisdom speaking fluently".[1] But such studies were also suited to his own natural tastes. And as years passed on, and he grew weary of civil discords and was harassed by domestic troubles, the great orator turns his back upon the noisy city, and takes his parchments ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... of worship are the common laws of custom,"—he replied—"No more,—no less. And in this we are much like other nations. We believe in no actual Creed,—who does? We accept a certain given definition of a supposititious Divinity, together with the suitable maxims and code of morals accompanying that definition, ... we call this Religion, . . and we wear it as we wear our clothing for the sake of necessity and decency, though truly we are not half so concerned about it as ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... The next age, perchance, will write a book of 'Wits and Beaux,' in which Mr. Douglas Jerrold, Mr. Mark Lemon, and so on, will represent the wit of this passing day; and that future age will not ask so nicely what wit is, and not look for that last solved of riddles, its definition. Hook has been, by common consent, placed at the head of modern wits. When kings were kings, they bullied, beat, and and brow-beat their jesters. Now and then they treated them to a few years in the Tower for a little extra impudence. Now that the people are sovereign, the jester fares better—nay, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... "crowd upon the aching sense" too dazzlingly,—should never be confounded with that mere verbal opulence of style, which mistakes the glare of words for the glitter of ideas, and, like the Helen of the sculptor Lysippus, makes finery supply the place of beauty. The figurative definition of eloquence in the Book of Proverbs—"Apples of gold in a net-work of silver"—is peculiarly applicable to that enshrinement of rich, solid thoughts in clear and shining language, which is the triumph of the imaginative class of writers and orators,—while, perhaps, the net-work, without ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... was accustomed to say that one could always tell an honorable man by his conduct to his wife, his children, and his servants; and I hope it will appear from these memoirs that the Emperor conducted himself as an honorable man, according to his own definition. He said, moreover, that immorality was the most dangerous vice of a sovereign, because of the evil example it set to his subjects. What he meant by immorality was doubtless a scandalous publicity given to liaisons which might otherwise have remained secret; for, as regards these liaisons themselves, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... to answer this question by a thousand instances, than by one definition, which can comprehend them all. What is Love? It is anything you please. It is a prism, through which the eye beholds the same object in various colours; it is a heaven of bliss, or a hell of torture; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... of being the wisest man gives a special definition of wisdom. The old version runs, "he that winneth souls is wise."[12] This is a great statement from Solomon's pen. He had searched into all the avenues of men's pursuits. He was a great experimenter. ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... cannot be what He is and fail to suffer in and for a world like ours. What is the nature of Christ? Christ is like God. Christ is God. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." But what is God? There are many definitions. There is only one all comprehensive and all inclusive definition. That is that sentence of pure gold that fell from the lips of the apostle that leaned upon the bosom of his Lord. "What is God?" I ask this man who had such a wonderful knowledge of Him. And he answers, "God ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... on this point was most excruciating. Over and over I studied the hard names and measures, conned again and again the polysyllables; hoping to be able to arrive some time at an intelligible definition of the terms. I revolved in my mind the words Mukunguru, Ghulabio, Sungomazzi, Kadunduguru, Mutunda, Samisami, Bubu, Merikani, Hafde, Lunghio-Rega, and Lakhio, until I was fairly beside myself. Finally, however, I came ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... drama—and there are few gentlemen who are not attached to the most intellectual and rational of all our amusements—do not come within this definition. As we have no mean relish for theatrical entertainments ourself, we are disinterestedly anxious that this should ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... undercut ground stroke is the general definition of a chop. The slice and chop are so closely related that, except in stroke analysis, ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... this greatest of passions called love? There is no word harder to get a satisfactory definition of. Because, whatever you say about it, there comes quickly to your mind some one who loves you, or you think of the passion that burns in your own heart for some one. And, as you think of that, no words that anybody may use seem at all strong enough, or tender enough, to tell what ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... of Plato, why a picked chicken, which was clearly "a biped without feathers," was not, according to his own definition, a man? But I am not to be bothered by any similar query. Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man. It will take an entire hen-coop of picked chickens ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of the Kayans, the conception is only half-way on the road to a full anthropomorph; whereas with the Ibans the change has been completed and the hawk-god is completely anthropomorphic. Corresponding with this increased importance and definition of the anthropomorphic hawk-god, we find that for the Mans the virtue has departed out of the individual hawks, and that they are no longer consulted for omens; for the Ibans say that Singalang Burong never leaves his house, and that ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... upon you that this is not the time for religious controversy or for nicely calculating the scope and the extent of our service. The temper of the times requires unity of action and definition of purpose. Our people respect us. Whatever restrictions were lodged against us in the past have been broken down now before the battering ram of public opinion. The guarantees for the future given by our own brethren, that we shall be permitted the free and unrestricted exercise of our religious ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... howsoever the soul were fons et principium, the fountain, beginning and cause of motion in us, yet the first mover was the brain or heart, I was again urged to show my opinion, and hearing Sir Walter Raleigh tell of his dispute and scholarship some time in Oxford, I cited the general definition of Anima out of Aristotle (De Anima, cap. 2), and thence a subjecto proprio, deduced the special definition of the soul reasonable, that it was Actus Primus corporis organici agentis ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... spent the time thus hoarded in a profitable fashion, is a question of personal definition. It was usually expended in companies of twos or threes, with a pipe and a pot of beer and much spirited talk, in the warm corners of adjacent taverns; and, so long as you don't drink too much, there has perhaps been invented ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... science had taught me to distrust even the evidence of my five senses,' he replied, with a shrug of the shoulders. 'But I have seen many things in the East which are inexplicable by the known processes of science. Mr Haddo has given you one definition of magic, and I will give you another. It may be described merely as the intelligent utilization of forces which are unknown, contemned, or misunderstood of the vulgar. The young man who settles in the East sneers at the ideas of magic which surround him, but I know not ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... its bouquet. A subtle, teasing, elusive something that just tickles the senses instead of punching them in the ribs. So his speech was permeated with a will-o'-the-wisp, a tingling richness that evaded definition. You will have to imagine it. There shall be no vain attempt to set it down. Besides, you always ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... same Red Race in all the stages of advancement indicated by three great ethnical periods, namely the Status of savagery, the Lower Status of barbarism, and the Middle Status of barbarism, [Footnote: See ante, page 43, note, for a definition of proposed ethnical or culture periods, and Ancient Society, chapter 1, "Ethnical Periods."] more persons ought to be found willing to work upon this material for the credit of American scholarship. It will ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... not an artist. "Poeta nascitur, non fit," has long been accepted as a truism; and similarly, it is supposed that the artist also is born, not made. But seeing that the mechanical side of any art is learned by experience, study, or observation—still to quote the definition—without which an adequate manifestation of that art is impossible, then certainly the artist is made. He is born with certain qualities necessary for the artist, it is true; but failing his technical skill, these other gifts can never be ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... as an abnormal condition of the human body, and since there is no one condition of the human body which can be satisfactorily described as normal, there is, therefore, no exact definition of disease. ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... with republican ideas and ideals, for they will all be institutions for discovering and applying the principles of the common law. We shall only have to enlarge our conception of the common law, by adding to the definition of Coke, and saying that it is "the perfection of ...
— "Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? • Alpheus H. Snow
... instruments in the world should be among the most illogical compositions that ever were penned. The object of Somers, of Maynard, and of the other eminent men who shaped this celebrated motion was, not to leave to posterity a model of definition and partition, but to make the restoration of a tyrant impossible, and to place on the throne a sovereign under whom law and liberty might be secure. This object they attained by using language which, in a philosophical treatise, would justly be reprehended as inexact and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a stricter definition of the term "periodical," the privilege of sending as second-class matter books issued at regular intervals ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... boundaries of private property makes up a large part of the politico-economic problems which the people in each generation have to solve. A large share, possibly, in a certain sense, every one of the economic problems that are discussed involve change, limitation, definition, or, more radically, abolition of present laws of property. Broadly understood, as above, therefore, determination of the nature of private property is ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... one point of view the confutation of a celebrated but eccentric definition of poetry as a "criticism of life." If this were true it would be a greater work than "Paradise Lost," which must be violently strained to admit a definition not wholly inapplicable to the minor poem. ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... only one daughter, the Princess Mary, had survived), when one day he informed her that they had been living all those years in mortal sin and that their union was not true marriage. The queen could hardly be expected to agree with such a definition, and there ensued a legal suit between the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... superficial travellers. It was a calm, just estimate of his own capabilities—a well-grounded confidence in his own talents—a clear, manly understanding of his own individual rights, dignity, and relations. Such is the western definition of independence; and if there be anything of it in the western character at the present day, it is due to the stubborn and intense individuality of the first pioneer. He it was who laid the foundation of our social fabric, and it is his spirit which ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... eminent English practical writers does not afford evidence of any clear distinction of these diseases of the heart. Dr. Cullen, whose authority is of the highest estimation, evidently enumerates symptoms of them in his definition and description of the hydrothorax. In Sec. 1702 Th. and Pr. he places much confidence on a particular sign of water in the chest, and remarks, that the same sign is not produced by the presence of pus. Now, there is no sufficient reason, why this symptom should ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren
... office of the thing, the less of natural or perfect form you should have in it; a zigzag or a chequer is thus a better, because a more consistent ornament for a cup or platter than a landscape or portrait is: hence the general definition of the true forms of conventional ornament is, that they consist in the bestowal of as much beauty on the object as shall be consistent with its Material, its Place, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... February, 1830, and the author, decorated, pensioned, encouraged by Charles X., did not lose the royal favor, when, on the 9th of March following, he wrote in the preface of his work: "Romanticism, so often ill-defined, is nothing, taking it all in all—and this is its true definition, if only its militant side be regarded—but liberalism in literature. The principle of literary liberty, already understood by the thinking and reading world, is not less completely adopted by that immense crowd, eager for the pure emotions of art, that throngs the theatres of Paris every ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... of the brain by the law of vibration, in a manner somewhat analogous to etching on the cylinders of a phonograph, are capable of being reproduced by the will-force of the individual. From these premises, we have gained a new definition for the word memory. It is a process of refunctioning or reregistering, any sensation, image, concept, idea, or thought, which at any time has become a part of ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... for the benefit of all such that this little essay is intended. For the sake of clearness we shall consider the subject under the heads of Definition, Frequency, Causes, Dangers, Influence on Sexual Diseases, Wasting of the ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... when an instance was pointed out to him. A lady once asked him how he came to define Pastern the knee of a horse: instead of making an elaborate defence, as she expected, he at once answered, 'Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance[857].' His definition of Network[858] has been often quoted with sportive malignity[859], as obscuring a thing in itself very plain. But to these frivolous censures no other answer is necessary than that with which we are ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... States collectively and individually; and now, out of this concurring, cumulative, and unimpeachable testimony, constituting a speaking aggregation absolutely without precedent, I offer you the American definition of a republican form of government. It is in vain that you cite philosophers or publicists, or the examples of former history. Against these I put the early and constant postulates of the fathers, the corporate declarations of the fathers, the avowed opinions of the ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... path of definition, of which he was fond, Napoleon suddenly and unexpectedly gave a ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... concluded his definition of his own genius, the door opened and the servant announced ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... of France. The rise of Allegory. Lyric. The Romance and the Pastourelle. The Fabliaux. Their origin. Their licence. Their wit. Definition and subjects. Effect of the fabliaux on language. And on narrative. Conditions of fabliau-writing. The appearance of irony. Fables proper. Reynard the Fox. Order of texts. Place of origin. The French form. Its complications. Unity of spirit. ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... be satisfied by religious and, even more narrowly, by ecclesiastical observance. For there are many idealists to whom religion with its scientific creeds and definite dogmas seems only a dreary sort of metaphysic, an attempt to define what is beyond definition. But there are some idealists who find the sense of worship and the consciousness of an immortal power in the high passions and affections of life. To these the human form, the spirit that looks out from human eyes, are the symbols of their mystery. Others find it in ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... bitterness into the world and has been prominent amongst the causes which have retarded the true development of mankind. To accurately convey this conception in words, is perhaps, impossible, and to attempt definition is to introduce that very idea of limitation which is our object to avoid. It is a matter of feeling rather than of definition; yet some endeavour must be made to indicate the direction in which we must feel for this great truth if we are to find it. The idea is that of realizing ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... begins with definition. What, then, is conscience? Many misconceptions have prevailed. Multitudes suppose it to be a distinct faculty. The eye tests colors for beauty, the ear tests sounds for harmony, the reason tests arguments for truth, and ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Ancient Greece or Rome. What a bewildering retrospect! A period well summed up by Emerson:—"To-day, pasteboard and filigree; to-morrow, madness and murder." Tigre-singe, Voltaire's epigrammatic definition, describes his countrymen of the Reign of Terror ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... it is the right and the duty of the State to provide means of education for the common people. This proposition seems to me to be implied in every definition that has ever yet been given of the functions of a government. About the extent of those functions there has been much difference of opinion among ingenious men. There are some who hold that it is the business of a government to meddle with every part of the system of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the very best Dictionary of our language extant. Its great accuracy in the definition and derivation of words, gives it an authority that no other work on the subject possesses. It is constantly cited and relied on in our Courts of Justice, in our legislative bodies, and in public discussions, ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... seeming philosophical, indeed mutinous, stubbornness; but the chief thing he was ever heard to wish for was that Homer had been alive. He well found he received more bravery of mind by the pattern of Achilles, than by hearing the definition of fortitude. And, therefore, if Cato misliked Fulvius for carrying Ennius with him to the field, it may be answered that if Cato misliked it the noble Fulvius liked it, or else he had not done it; for it was not the excellent Cato Uticensis whose authority I would much more have reverenced, but ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... education is said to be the harmonious development of all the powers of the individual. Here no reference to social life or membership is apparent, and yet many think we have in it an adequate and thoroughgoing definition of the goal of education. But if this definition be taken independently of social relationship we have no way of telling what is meant by any one of the terms employed. We do not know what a power is; we do not ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... by definition. But that man was so in reality. His speech was not professional. I was not ill. But other people were, and that was the reason of his visiting ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... produced by the lighter species of matter; and yet imponderable agents, such as electricity, possess force sufficient to overturn the weightiest structures. Nothing can be farther from my meaning than to attempt any definition on this subject, nor would I ever embrace or give authority to that idea of Newton, who supposes that the immediate cause of sensation may be in undulations of an ethereal medium. It does not, however, appear improbable to me ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... in music, that is at once subtle and powerful, rests upon what might be termed the linear quality of melody. The famous old definition of a line as a "succession of points," tallies so accurately with that of melody (as a "succession of single tones"), that it is not only proper, but peculiarly forceful, to speak of melodies as tone-lines. Our conception of a melody or tune, our ability to ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... after labor. But if incessantly consumed, it keeps up a constant, but mild cerebral exhilaration. The mind acts more promptly and more continuously under its use. We think any tobacco-consumer will bear us out in this definition of its ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... selected to mark the beginning of a great school. Such a body of doctrine must have existed piecemeal and unauthorized before it was collected and recognized and some tenets are older than others. Enlarging I-Ching's definition we may find in the Mahayana seven lines of thought or practice. All are not found in all sects and some are shared with the Hinayana but probably none are found fully developed outside the Mahayana. Many of them have parallels in ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... contest between nations and states carried on by force." But this definition is by some considered defective, inasmuch as it would exclude all ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... the angel. He mistakes the ladders for scaffolding, or some temporary embarrassment in the street traffic; he orders their instant removal; he writes angry letters to the papers and invokes the police. After some time Ruskin's definition of Pre-Raphaelitism was generally accepted, and then the death of Rossetti produced other recipes for the Stilton cheese, Mr. Hall Caine being among the grocers. Whatever the correct definition may be, ungracious and ungrateful though it is to praise the dead at the expense of the living, it has ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... that the three classes of our population demanding unrestricted immigration are large employers of unskilled labor, transportation companies, and revolutionary anarchists. Since this is by definition an economic and not a philosophical question, we may neglect the third class. To the other two classes should be directed certain brief tests of economic good faith. Take at its face value their claim ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... the man from Tennessee, who had suddenly waked from a brown study, and dropped off into another as soon as he had given the definition. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... most minds is perhaps less the mere existence of the unseen than the want of definition, the apparently hopeless vagueness, and not least, the delight in this vagueness as mere vagueness by some who look upon this as the mark of quality in Spiritual things. It will be at least something to tell earnest seekers that the Spiritual World ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... we have a complete definition of unchastity. The seventh commandment, with the Saviour's commentary upon it, places clearly before us the fact that chastity requires purity of thought as well as of outward acts. Impure thoughts and unchaste acts are alike violations of the seventh commandment. As we shall see, also, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... his hat back and took a side-glance at her. "Success—what is success? I shall be interested to have your definition." ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Master's good-bye Olivet message, and notice just what it means? Listen to the very words: "Ye shall receive power." Let me ask you—what is power? Will some one give a simple definition of that word? There are four words, four of the commonest, most familiar in our language, for which I have not been able to find a definition. If some one here can help me I will be grateful. They are the words life, light, love, and power. What do they mean? I can find plenty ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... reports of the parliamentary debates, when a "Blue Book" happens to furnish matter for discussion, amply confirm Richardson's definition, that to garble is to pick out what may serve a purpose. In this sense, however, E. S. T. T. must admit that it would be as much garbling to quote all the good passages of a work as to quote all the bad ones. May we not then assume ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... others. None see it without being deeply moved—all to silence, some even to tears. It is charged to the rim with emotion; but the emotion of the first view varies. Some stand astounded at its vastness. Others are stupefied and search their souls in vain for definition. Some tremble. Some are uplifted with a sense of appalling beauty. For a time the souls of all ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... "We acknowledge, of course," he says, "that there is in criticism a certain difference from natural history, since we cannot eliminate the subjective element if the capacity works of art have of producing impressions on us makes a part of their definition. It is not in order to be eaten that the tree produces its fruit." But this is giving away his whole position! As little as the conformity of the fruit to its species has to do with our pleasure in eating it, just so little has the conformity of a literary work to its genre to do with the ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... champions symbolism may object that the definition of that term must not be taken so narrowly, and that there is the wider sense in which it is taken by writers on aesthetics. Some such definition as this may be attempted: A symbol is something which does not merely "stand for" something else, but one which, while it has a meaning of its own, points ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... The general definition of a Sacrament is given quite accurately, save for the superfluous words, "ordained by Christ Himself," in the Catechism of the Church of England, and even these words might be retained if the mystic meaning be given to the word "Christ." A Sacrament is there said to be: "An outward ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... there. In this was born Jean Jacques Rousseau, the virile type of Madame Roland. A portrait of her when a child represents a young girl in her father's workshop, holding in one hand a book, and in the other an engraving tool. This picture is the symbolic definition of the social condition in which Madame Roland was born, and the precise moment between the labour of her hands ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... included in Logic terms and propositions, and the Port Royal logicians spoke of it as equivalent to the art of thinking. Even popularly, accuracy of classification, and the extent of command over premisses, are thought clearer signs of logical powers than accuracy of deduction. On the other hand, the definition of logic as a 'science treating of the operations of the understanding in the search of truth,' though wide enough, would err through including truths known from intuition; for, though doubtless many seeming intuitions are processes of ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... boy robed in golden warmth, descending through the leaves, with a whisper, to her embrace. So the personifications of death in literature, thus far, give us no penetrative glance into what it really is, help us to no acute definition of it, but poetically fasten on some feature, or accident, or ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... has always been, and to-day is more than ever, a very elastic term. The Census Superintendent, himself a high caste Hindu, wrote: "The definition which would cover the Hindu of the modern times is that he should be born of parents not belonging to some recognised religion other than Hinduism, marry within the same limits, believe in God, respect the cow, and cremate the dead." There is room in its ample folds for ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... intention of remedying existing evils, abolishing abuses, and reforming society—in the same way as a surgeon performs an operation to remove an injured limb, inflicting temporary pain on his patient, with the prospect of ultimate good resulting from it. I have never seen this definition given anywhere; consequently, as it is but my own private opinion, you need only take it for what it ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... asked him for an exact definition, or any definition of Beauty in the abstract. I should have been satisfied if, for the moment, he had taken it on trust, as most of us take the law of gravity, the postulates of Euclid, and the evidence of our senses. I was not dismayed because a single Post-Impressionist ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... of the reader is called to the definition of "education" on the twentieth page. It is there stated, that, throughout this essay, education is not used in the limited sense of mental or intellectual training alone, but as comprehending the ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... evangelical, was upon the Creed, and the preacher explained the emotional quality of real belief. It was a goodish sermon. But the preacher had effectually stopped the very last of those exquisite vague prickings of hope. Hilda agreed with his definition of real belief, and she knew that real belief was impossible for her. She could never say, with joyous fervour: "I believe!" At best she could only assert that she did not disbelieve—and was she so sure even of that? No! Belief had been ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... of William Gillette's career is a good example of Frohman's definition of a successful theatrical manager, whose best skill and talents are employed largely in the matter of manipulating a hard-minded person ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... the Heavy Dragoons" was Mrs. Cryptic-Sparkler's famous definition of her. The County took it for final—an uncut gem with a fleck in the heart of it. Euphemia condoned the imagery. She had breadth. Heels that spread ample curves over the ground she stood on, and hands that might floor you with a clench of ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... definitions and standards of literacy. Unless otherwise noted, all rates are based on the most common definition—the ability to read and write at a specified age. Detailing the standards that individual countries use to assess the ability to read and write is beyond the ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a spirit," quickly corrected the professor. "That definition has already been given several times; but I am trying to ascertain your own conception of Deity. Why did you ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... explanation which I have been able to obtain from those most learned in such matters here. I gather from their remarks, that these bars are formed by deposits of earth rolling down from the mountains, crowding the river aside and occupying a portion of its deserted bed. If my definition is unsatisfactory, I can but refer you to some of ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... system is so clearly defined and so well known, at any rate in all our large centres of labor, that definition is hardly necessary. For England and America alike the sweater is simply a sub-contractor who, at home or in small workshops, undertakes to do work, which he in turn sublets to other contractors, or has done under his own eyes. The business had a simple and natural beginning, ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... The Navy League definition is at least possible of application to practical politics, because rough equality of the two parties would make attack by either dangerous. Mr. Churchill's principle is impossible of application to ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... are suspicious of civilization. The text from Ecclesiastes, "God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions," has been used to discourage any budding Edisons of the spiritual realm. Dear old Alexander Cruden inserted in his Concordance a delicious definition of invention as here used: "Inventions: New ways of making one's self more wise and ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... generally been defined by metaphysicians to be a change in the mind, of which we are conscious, caused by a correspondent change in the state of the body. This definition, however, leaves the matter where they found it, and throws no light whatever on the nature of sensation; nor can we say any thing more concerning it, than that, when the organs are in a sound state, certain sensations ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... difficult. A little attention will show that science, as the word is commonly used, implies these things: first, the gathering of knowledge through observation; second, the classification of such knowledge, and through this classification, the elaboration of general ideas or principles. In the familiar definition of Herbert Spencer, science is ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Quedy, who said to him: "Lady Clarinda tells me, sir, that you are anxious to talk with me on the subject of exchangeable value, from which I infer that you have studied political economy, and as a great deal depends on the definition of value, I shall be glad to set you right on that point." "I am much obliged to you, sir," said the Captain, and was about to express his utter disqualification for the proposed instruction, when Mr. Skionar walked up and said: "Lady Clarinda informs me that you ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... characterized by its representation of thought contents, i.e., of contents that are worked out in a train of thoughts (arranged thought, imagined), whether they are mere images or groups of images, concepts that are somewhat drawn out into comparisons and definition processes, or indeed judgments, trains of reasoning, which serve as analytic or synthetic operations, etc. Since, as we know, the phantasies (dreams, reveries, even poems) are mostly inspired by wishes, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... of authority and liberty is perfectly expressed in Lincoln's famous definition: "A sane democracy is one of the people, by the people and for the people." The reason of this law of the political order is that liberty is previous to authority, for authority only exists to protect liberty against tyranny and to safeguard ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
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