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More "Solidity" Quotes from Famous Books



... and I to part till we had spent an hour in talking over this amiable family, with whom he could not help being much delighted, though he observed they were very deficient in the bon ton, there was too much solidity in all they said, they would trifle with trifles indeed, but had not the art of treating more weighty subjects with the same lightness, which gave them an air of rusticity; and he did not doubt, but on a more intimate acquaintance we should find their manners much rusticated, and their heads ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... arranged these boys so that their slender limbs intertwine in graceful patterns, making a decorative background to fill in the picture. The lightness and delicacy of the design heighten the effect of solidity in the figures of the foreground, giving them the prominence of ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... magazine of old clothes, old furniture, china, umbrellas, guns, fishing-rods, dirty fiddles, and split flutes. Entering the right-hand room, which had originally been that of an independent house, he was in an ordinary photographer's and print-collector's depository, to which a certain artistic solidity was imparted by a few oil paintings in the background. Charlotte made for the latter department, and when she was inside Mr. Ray appeared in person from the lumber-shop adjoining, which, despite its manginess, contributed by far the greater share ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... gaiters, and a diminutive round frock, while each doorpost was appropriately garnished with a model of a coal-sack. The two eating-house keepers exhibited joints of a magnitude, and puddings of a solidity, which coalheavers alone could appreciate; and the fruit-pie maker displayed on his well-scrubbed window-board large white compositions of flour and dripping, ornamented with pink stains, giving rich promise of the fruit within, which made ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... Owny's cars and men were sent for this purpose; but when they came to take the haystack to pieces, the solidity of its centre rather astonished them—and instead of the cars going back loaded, two had their journey for nothing, and went home empty. Previously to his men leaving the widow's field, they spoke to her on the subject, ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... you feel anxious about the solidity of the British connection, till the twelfth of the month, when everybody is wearing an orange streamer in his coat and the Orangemen (every man in town) walk in the big procession. Allegiance! Well, ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... founded on smallness, a pyramid standing on a point. Or, to vary the metaphor, the new mercantile oligarchy might be symbolized even in the externals of its great sister, the mercantile oligarchy of Venice. The solidity was all in the superstructure; the fluctuation had been all in the foundations. The great temple of Chatham and Warren Hastings was reared in its origins on things as unstable as water and as fugitive as ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... The inhabitants write it Kambayat. The ancient city is 3 miles from the existing Cambay, and is now overgrown with jungle. It is spoken of as a flourishing place by Mas'udi, who visited it in A.D. 915. Ibn Batuta speaks of it also as a very fine city, remarkable for the elegance and solidity of its mosques, and houses built by wealthy foreign merchants. Cambeth is mentioned by Polo's contemporary Marino Sanudo, as one of the two chief Ocean Ports of India; and in the 15th century Conti calls it 14 miles in circuit. It was still in high prosperity in the early part of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... clear night, with a young moon, and the stars set deep in blue so dark that the sky gave an impression of solidity. The air was full of scents and of a soft balminess, with the faint nip of an early May in the ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... Koenigsberg, the founder of the Critical Philosophy, more than any other work, at once invigorated and disciplined my understanding. The originality, the depth, and the compression of the thoughts; the novelty and subtlety, yet solidity and importance of the distinctions; the adamantine chain of the logic; and I will venture to add—(paradox as it will appear to those who have taken their notion of Immanuel Kant from Reviewers and Frenchmen)—the clearness ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... attacked every door he could put his hands on; and gradually he lost his respect for decency and the conventions proper to Halls, knocking loudly and more loudly. He banged. Nothing but sheer solidity stopped his sturdy hands from going through the panels. He so far forgot himself as to shake the doors ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... already about to undo the fastenings of the gate, in order to enter within the 'dock.' March had no other motive in landing than a senseless bravado, and having shaken the door in a manner to put its solidity to the proof, he joined Hutter in the canoe and began to aid him in opening the gate. The reader will remember that this mode of entrance was rendered necessary by the manner in which the owner of this singular residence habitually secured it, whenever it was left empty; more ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... mother, and for the next twelve years, 1828-1840, the two lived together, chiefly in Paris. There, as a child, he had been a nine days' wonder, but the solidity of his reputation was now destined to go hand in hand with his stormy and interrupted mental and moral development. Such a plant could not come to maturity all at once. No drawing-room or concert-room ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... moderation and in measured language. They said that they had tried to support Mr. Grayson; they had given him every chance; they had always been ready with advice; they had sought to instil in him a full sense of his responsibility, and to impart to his mind the breadth and solidity so necessary in a Presidential nominee; they were strong in party loyalty, and they hesitated long before taking such a momentous step; but they knew that in every great crisis brave men who would not hesitate at great risk to lead must be found; therefore they stepped into ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... a dialectician as Douglas found this compact structure of history and argument a serious matter. Its simple solidity was not so susceptible to treatment by the perverting process as had been the figurative and prophetic utterance about the "house divided against itself." Neither could he find a chink between the facts and the inferences. One aspect of the speech, however, could not be passed over. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... ware is very handsome, and its ornamentation is strikingly artistic in its simplicity. See, for instance, Plate V., e. D, f, and g represent pottery from Casas Grandes, distinguished by a certain solidity and a ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... former clothing), a pair of soldier's trousers which by Karataev's advice he tied with string round the ankles for warmth, and a peasant coat and cap. Physically he had changed much during this time. He no longer seemed stout, though he still had the appearance of solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard and mustache covered the lower part of his face, and a tangle of hair, infested with lice, curled round his head like a cap. The look of his eyes was resolute, calm, and animatedly alert, as never before. The former slackness which had ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... which seemed too small to carry the weight of his academic distinctions, preceded him by a few seconds, and then he entered himself—so large, so pompous, and so dignified that he was the very embodiment of self-possession and solidity. And yet his first action, when the door had closed behind him, was to stagger against the table, whence he slipped down upon the floor, and there was that majestic figure prostrate and insensible ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... spark of the stubborn courage which bore Cortez and his paladins through the hosts of Montezuma might have made of that stately city a second Saragossa. It was eminently defensible. The churches, the convents, the public buildings, constructed with that solidity which is peculiarly Spanish, formed each of them a fortress. The broad streets, crossing each other at right angles, rendered concentration at any threatened point an easy matter, and beyond the walls were broad ditches and ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... in the picture—the small area occupied by the Madonna and Child—and by the subordination of the free play of other elements. The contrast between the broad base and the apex gives a feeling of solidity, of repose; and it seems not unreasonable to suppose that the tendency to rest the eyes above the center of the picture directly induces the associated mood of reverence or worship. Thus the pyramidal form serves two ends; primarily that of giving unity; and secondarily, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... drama which consists in the intimate union of poetry and the stage." Following in the footsteps of Schiller in his Intrigue and Love and of Hebbel in his Maria Magdalena, he has not attained, it is true, the massive solidity of the latter, nor has he breathed into his drama that lofty spirit of social challenge that wings the former. On close inspection, the construction of Ludwig's drama shows undeniable flaws of motivation. The playwright has allowed ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... and less valuable, as the medium in which they were paid was less valuable; it was not possible that the small part of society which may be called the sober and reasoning part, should not be so struck with the sudden fortunes and extravagant enthusiasm which prevailed, as not to doubt of the solidity of a system, unphilosophical in itself, and which, after all, had to depend on the profits of a commercial company, the good faith of the regent, and the skill of Law; it was impossible, on these and other accounts, but that gold and silver should be at last preferred to paper notes, of ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... distance, with the sun playing on it and the sea gulls swooping about its top, it seemed something slender and ethereal. It was only when one was close at hand that its real strength and solidity could be appreciated. ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport

... diameter of the earth, we get the diameter of the circle, or orbit, in which the moon moves around the earth. In other words the diameter of this orbit is about 480,000 miles. Now could the sun be brought in contact with this orbit, and had the latter solidity to mark its circumference, it would be found that this circumference would include but a little more than half the surface of one side of the sun, the diameter of which orb is calculated to be 882,000 miles! The sun is one million three hundred and eighty-four ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

... they want better things. The cheap article, I will admit, ministers to a certain grade of intellect; but if the man grows, there will come a time when, instead of a great many cheap and shoddy things, he will want a few good things. He will want things that symbol solidity, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... band by this time had regained their usual solidity. The leader seemed immensely relieved. He had evidently expected the next apparition to be a bluecoat with ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... building, although different in design. The place assigned this exhibit in the Palace of Agriculture covered a space 35 by 45 feet 6 inches, with aisles on three sides. The facade fronted on the three aisles and in its architectural lines presented a solidity characteristic of the State's exhibits. Cane stalk and corn in red colors were used to form the base of the facade, being put on in transverse sections, which gave at a distance as well as by close inspection a very pleasing effect. ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... chiefly by parcel post to friends. The butter, although it commanded rather a better price than ordinary quality, was considered not only by them but by the villagers more economical, as owing to its solidity and freedom from butter milk, it would keep good indefinitely, and "went ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... two forefeet over the edge of the descent and clung to solidity and sanity with her ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall

... The high-spirited and gifted youth, scarcely more than a boy in years, whom he had sent to the Capital with no small misgivings, must have led a far less lawless life than might have been expected; of this the ruddy tinge in his sunburnt cheeks was ample guarantee, the vigorous solidity of his muscles, and the thick waves of his hair, which was artificially curled and fell in a fringe, as was then the fashion, over his high brow, giving him a certain resemblance to the portraits of Antinous, the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... excellent mathematician, geometrician, and musician; he was equally skilful in painting and sculpture; and in poetry few of his time could equal him. In short, such were his talents, and such the solidity of his judgment, that though but sixteen years of age, he was considered equal in wisdom to a ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... head and shoulders maintained their normal connection during the last minute of my drive, I leave naturalists to explain. Fortunately, the children had struck on their heads, and the Lawrence- Burton skull is a marvel of solidity. I set them on their feet, promised them all the candy they could eat for a week, and hurried them to the other side of the depot. Budge rushed at Tom, exclaiming, "See ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... of this artist, which will be apparent to any one acquainted with his work, is the weakness of his outline, and the singular absence of solidity, stability, and even of vitality in his figures. There is no lack of powerful situations in Frank Smedley's novel of "Lewis Arundel," but Browne's illustrations are characterised by an utter absence of vitality, while shadow usurps the place ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... which doubtless once suffused the whole, has, alas! disappeared under cruel restorations, and flatness of tone has inevitably resulted, but we may still admire the play of light on horizontal surfaces, and the chiaroscuro giving solidity and relief ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... and dignified expression. It was thus, he thought, that diplomatists ought to play. It was thus, in all probability, that he used to play with some influential dignitary at St. Petersburg, whom he wished to impress with a favorable idea of his solidity and perspicacity. "One hundred and one, hundred and two, heart, hundred and three," said the measured tones of his voice, and Lavretsky could not tell which it expressed—dislike ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... only accepted arrangement for sporting purposes, and much attention is necessary in its construction, as the greatest strength should be combined with lightness. There ought to be no doors, as they weaken the solidity of the whole. The weight of a good roomy howdah should not exceed two hundredweight, or at the outside 230 pounds. It must be remembered that the howdah is not adapted for travelling, as there is a disagreeable ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... waiting-maid and her cabinet of rarities were her boasts, and equally shewn to every visitor: for besides the beauty of her figure, and the genteel air of her person, the dear girl had a surprising memory, a solidity of judgment above her years, and a docility so unequalled, that she took all parts of learning which her lady, as fond of instructing her as she of improving by instruction, crowded upon her; insomuch that she had masters to teach her to dance, sing, and play on the spinnet, whom ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... even if the Hebrew writer had any mistaken or confused notions in his own mind, that would not afford any just ground against revelation itself. But I would point out that many of the expressions which may be quoted to show the idea of solidity, are clearly poetical. And if we go to the poetic or semi-poetic aspect of things, may I not ask whether there is not a certain sense in which the earth-envelope may be said to be solid? The air has a considerable density, its uniform and inexorable ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell

... action in voting for the bill and his own in signing it on the ground that "the interests of the country, the interests of the party" required the sacrifice of the accomplishment of certain things in the revision of the tariff which had been hoped for, "in order to maintain party solidity," which he believed to be much more important than the reduction of rates in one or two schedules of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... Europe and America, China appears the most stationary of nations. She has moved less in centuries than western peoples have in decades. The restless Anglo-Saxon is alternately irritated and awed by this massive solidity, not to say stolidity. There is, after all, something impressive about it, the impressiveness of a mighty glacier which moves, indeed, but so slowly and majestically that the duration of an ordinary nation's life appears insignificant as compared ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... was a busy man. He investigated the Montana's wound, first of all. He found her flooded forward—her nose anchored into the sand with a rock-of-ages solidity. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... hotly. She felt the smarting pain of a file drawn over the skin. The table was very old; for generations it had been a family treasure. As a child she had loved its polished surface and revered its massive solidity. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... it is the only form thus far spoken of wherein the tapering surfaces rise directly from the tower-cornice, without mutilating the tower or violating the pure outlines of the spire. The heavenward aspiration, as it were, ascends without effort from the solidity of the tower. It seems to typify a certain fitness and adaptability to heavenly things even in the gross and earthly nature of man. One cannot fail to admire its unaffected dignity, its harmonious balance, its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... the ground, while the two ends of it rested upon the end walls. The walls themselves were constructed of thick mud plaster, overlaying a foundation of laced willow branches. The whole construction was of unusual solidity, and the smoke-blackened thatch yielded two holes, Indian fashion, through which the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... Whigs was more universal and more violent in its effects, it must be allowed, on the other, that the advantages gained by the Tories were, on account of their alliance with the crown, more durable and decisive. There is a superior solidity ever belonging to the power of the crown, as compared with that of any body of men or party, or even with either of the other branches of the legislature. A party has influence, but, properly speaking, ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox

... that he could guard the interval between those two rivers and their courses, which the ice would speedily efface. He placed no reliance on a sea of snow six feet deep, with which winter would speedily cover those parts, but to which it would also give solidity: the whole then would be one wide road for the enemy to reach him, to penetrate into the intervals between his wooden cantonments, scattered over a frontier of two hundred leagues, and to ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... in solid crude color with a medium that hardened like stone, and to leave them months and even years to dry before finishing them with the glazing colors, which worked in his hands like magic over such a well-hardened surface. By this method of working he was able to secure solidity of appearance, richness of color, unity of effect, and atmospheric repose and tenderness enveloping all objects in the picture. Many of his unfinished works are left in the first stage of this process, showing precisely how far he relied on the use of solid color; and by comparing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... of a firm, condensed texture, especially at the lower part, where their solidity was nearly equal to that of a healthy liver. They ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren

... Hungary, and all that that meant in the Balkans, from the Teutonic alliance. Even without the loss of Cracow, that of the rest of Galicia was serious enough; her oil-wells were the main sources of the German supply of petroleum, and her Slav population, once assured of the solidity of Russian success, would throw off its allegiance to the Hapsburgs and entice the Czecho-Slovaks on its borders to do the same. These prospects were not visionary in September 1914. Jaroslav fell on the 23rd and Przemysl was invested. Russian cavalry rode ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... She became somebody in his eyes. He discovered many merits in her. He perceived she was remarkably well-informed for a woman, and prodigiously so for a French woman. She understood half a word—knew a great deal—and guessed at the remainder. She had, in short, that blending of grace and solidity which gives to the conversation of a woman of cultivated mind an incomparable charm. Habituated from infancy to her mental superiority as to her pretty face, she carried the one as unconsciously as the other. She devoted herself to the care of his household as if she had no idea ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... presents no such complete panorama of phases of social life in England as it does of those in Italy, perhaps, because there is a poise and solidity about the English character which does not lend itself to so great a variety of mood as one may find in the peculiarly artistic temperament of the Italians, especially those of the Renaissance period. Even such irregular proceedings as murders have their philosophical ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... refined argumentation, and glowing imagery; and been forced to acknowledge, that all delights were meagre and contemptible, compared with those connected with the audience and sight of you. I have contemplated your principles, and been astonished at the solidity of their foundation, and the perfection of their structure. I have traced you to your home. I have viewed you in relation to your servants, to your family, to your neighbours, and to the world. I have seen by what skilful arrangements you facilitate ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... seals which he resigned were given to the Duke of Richmond. When he resigned he declared that he had no fault to find with his colleague's, except that they wanted strength, and that his opinion was, Mr. Pitt alone could give vigour and solidity to any administration in the present state of affairs. Under him, his grace said, he was "willing to serve in any capacity, not merely as a general officer, but as a pioneer: under him he would take up a spade or a mattock." Such was the situation in which the ministers found themselves at ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... of the mode in which the Gauls constructed their walls of earth, stone, and logs,[684] and it resembles the ruins of Gallic fortifications which have been discovered in France, though it is said to surpass them in the strength and solidity of its structure. No similar walls appear to be known in Britain. A great part of this interesting prehistoric fortress was barbarously destroyed in the early part of the nineteenth century, much of it being ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... and good-breeding which the exquisite polish of his compositions would lead us to expect. He was always cheerful and animated, often, indeed, boisterous in his mirth; entered with spirit into convivial society; contributed largely to its enjoyments by solidity of information, and the naivete and originality of his character; talked often without premeditation, and laughed loudly ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... we have received also the support of the Apostle's aid, which assuredly does not cease from its operation; and the strength of the foundation, on which the whole lofty building of the Church is reared, is not weakened by the weight of the temple that rests upon it. For the solidity of that faith which was praised in the chief of the Apostles is perpetual; and, as that remains which Peter believed in Christ, so that remains which Christ instituted in Peter. For when, as has been read in the Gospel ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... by Bessas, and the siege of Petra was recommenced. The strength of the place had been considerably increased since the former attack upon it. A new wall of great height and solidity had been built upon a framework of wood in the place which Dagisthaeus had so nearly breached; the Roman mines had been filled up with gravel; arms, offensive and defensive, had been collected ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... display of ingenuity, for the most part, is and always has been it. I must here offer you an opinion of my own, which, if you think well of me, you will pardon, though you should disbelieve its solidity. My opinion then is, that truth is not reasonably the main and ultimate object of philosophy; but that philosophy should seek truth merely as the means of acquiring and of propagating happiness. Truths are simple; wisdom, which is formed by their apposition ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... his last round of the church. He had not noticed, that at the moment when he was closing the doors, the archdeacon had passed close to him and betrayed some displeasure on seeing him bolting and barring with care the enormous iron locks which gave to their large leaves the solidity of a wall. Dom Claude's air was even more preoccupied than usual. Moreover, since the nocturnal adventure in the cell, he had constantly abused Quasimodo, but in vain did he ill treat, and even beat him occasionally, nothing disturbed the submission, patience, the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... her Swedish ally to transport supplies to the British army in the Peninsula without infringing the duties of neutrality towards the United States. As to his opinion in the case of "The Venus," Chancellor Kent declared that there was "no doubt of its superior solidity and justice;" and it must be admitted that his opinion in the case of the "Commercen," rested on strong logical grounds, since the United States and the allies of Great Britain in the war on the Continent never ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord

... visions of youth! I could not banish them from my mind. I knew them to be crude; but believed that deliberation would bestow upon them solidity and shape. Meanwhile I imparted ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown

... which another is impelled, to assert that it is rarer in great bodies than in small ones; it must be further asserted that this fluid is rarer or denser in the same body, whether small or great, according as the body to which that is impelled is itself small or great. But whatever may be the solidity of this objection, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... much capacity, built, like the Grange, by the monks of the convent, which had been the germ of the cathedral, and showing the grand old monastic style in the solidity of its stone barns and storehouses, all arranged around a court, whereof the dwelling-house occupied one side, the lawn behind it with fine old trees, and sloping down to the water, which was full ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... instance, so accurately the reflection of the father, that an acquaintance with either of the two Pedgifts was almost equivalent to an acquaintance with both. Add some little height and size to the figure of Pedgift Junior, give more breadth and boldness to his humor, and some additional solidity and composure to his confidence in himself, and the presence and character of Pedgift Senior stood, for all general purposes, revealed ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... everyone was like her. On the whole the ladies from Bross profited rather than lost by the new frame they stepped into in the house of Dr Drummond, of Elgin, Ontario. Their special virtues, of dignity and solidity and frugality, stood out saliently against the ease and unconstraint about them; in the profusion of the table it was little less than edifying to hear Mrs Kilbannon, invited to preserves, say, "Thank ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... course of classical learning at the grammar school and college, taught philosophy in the university of St. Andrews, where for several years he gave abundant proof that he was an able scholar. His temper was very steady and composed; he could reason upon the most subtle points with great solidity, and when every one else was warm his temper was never ruffled. At any time when indecent heats or wranglings happened to fall in when reasoning, it was his ordinary custom to say, "Enough of this, let us go to some other subject; we are warm, and can dispute no longer ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... of this cane were exceedingly thick, giving it great stiffness, and solidity to resist storms of wind. It proved to be hardly so juicy as ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... is also brought before us in this prayer—"Stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness." The Apostle prays that they may be steadfast, not weak and vacillating. The great need was for solidity and steadfastness, as it is in the present day, for it is only when the heart is established by grace and in holiness that it can in any true sense serve God. This emphasis on a fixed or stablished heart is brought before us several times in Holy Scripture ...
— The Prayers of St. Paul • W. H. Griffith Thomas

... that question to the common consciousness of our race. If all men do not believe in a permanent reality—a substance which is external to themselves, a substance which offers resistance to their muscular effort, and which produces in them the sensations of solidity, extension, resistance, etc.—they believe nothing and know nothing at all about ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... term, although, owing to the incorporation of the steadying hollow "mattress" (as it is called by its inventor), the strength of the suspension system, and the substantial character of the car, it conveys an impression of great solidity. The thinnest rope, both manilla and steel, in the suspension system is as thick as a man's finger, while the car, measuring 30 feet in length by 6 feet in width, carried out in wood, is a striking example of the maximum of strength with the minimum of weight, ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... blessed with good, sound sense. Call him." They took my advice, called Dr. Jordan, and I found him at the university. My three weeks' stay interested me more and more. Evening after evening I walked through the cloisters of the great quadrangle, admiring the solidity, beauty, and admirable arrangement of the buildings, and enjoying their lovely surroundings and the whole charm ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... me. My friends, I know, expect that I shall see yet again. They think it necessary to the existence of divine truth, that he who once had possession of it should never finally lose it. I admit the solidity of this reasoning in every case but my own. And why not in my own? For causes which to them it appears madness to allege, but which rest upon my mind with a weight of immovable conviction. If I am recoverable, why am I thus?—why crippled ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... little eminence in the principal valley of a brook, (which I had been following nearly from its outlet,) when suddenly the mountains, of which I had lost sight for a time, rose up before me in sublime strength, no longer of translucent purple, but revealing, under the direct light, their rugged solidity. On my right, in the foreground, were lofty black cliffs, made darker by being seen lying in their own shadow. On my left, green hills, in varying forms, stretched almost an interminable distance, varying also in their color and depth of shade. At the foot of the cliffs, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... remaining for the sake of her unpaid wages. She was a young girl, and pretty for one of her sisterhood, who perpetuate, as a rule, the hard and strenuous lineaments and forms held to hard labor, until they have attained a squat solidity of ungraceful muscle. This little Hungarian Marie was still not overdeveloped muscularly, although one saw her hands with a certain shock after her little, smiling face, which still smiled, despite her wrongs. Nothing could exceed the sweetness of ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... nature to act as a spring. And this is easy to conceive as regards water and other transparent liquids, they being composed of detached particles. But it may seem more difficult as regards glass and other transparent and hard bodies, because their solidity does not seem to permit them to receive movement except in their whole mass at the same time. This, however, is not necessary because this solidity is not such as it appears to us, it being probable rather that ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens

... exquisite than the other—the ancient halls of the corporations of Brussels, among which that of the brewers shows supreme by reason of the luxury of its carvings and the care wherewith its beauty and solidity have been maintained throughout the centuries. In one of the simplest houses of the square Victor Hugo first took refuge after the great catastrophe of the coup d'etat. It bore the number 27. A tobacco-shop occupied the ground floor. The poet's parlor was furnished in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... communities with the same fixed but free organisation, with the same canon and the same conception of the essence of Christianity, pre-eminent for the strictness of their morals and their joy in martyrdom.[401] The Catholic Church was then only in process of growth, and it was long ere it reached the solidity won by the Marcionite church through the activity of one man, who was animated by a faith so strong that he was able to oppose his conception of Christianity to all others as the only right one, and who did not shrink from making selections from tradition instead of explaining it away. He was ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... to infer the great extent and solidity of the public resources from the prosperous state of the finances, notwithstanding the unexampled embarrassments which have attended commerce. When you reflect on the conspicuous examples of patriotism and liberality which have been exhibited by our mercantile fellow citizens, and how great a proportion ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... effect an entrance. They contented themselves with strolling around it once again, admiring its shingles that were weather-beaten to a silvery gray, enthusing over the quaintly-gabled windows of its upper story, calling each other's attention to its palpable solidity of structure. ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... now arrived at the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. "Extension, Figure, Solidity, Gravity, Motion, and Rest" are the attributes of an external substance which is the cause of sensations. But the same epistemological principle readily reduces these also to dependence on mind, for, like the secondary qualities, their content is given ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... with its markings of magenta, red, and blue. These palm-leaf designs extend over the entire rug, which is of enormous size. The border is in harmony with the field, and in coloring has the same deep, rich hues. The texture is firm and the rug is very heavy and imposing, with an air of solidity and strength. The illustration shows a section of this rug, giving a clear ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt

... with difficulty from the claws of the Covenanters, now mantled, some with ale, some with mead, and some with generous wine of various qualities and descriptions. The appetites of the guests were in correspondence to the magnificence and solidity of the preparation—no piddling—no boy's-play, but that steady and persevering exercise of the jaws which is best learned by early morning hours, and by occasional ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... out of the car at Abingdon Square he tottered, in his slow, old way, to a neat structure which combined modern jauntiness with old-time solidity, and which was labelled simply: "Office of the Van Riper Estate," and there he told the smilingly indulgent clerk that he thought he would "take it in cash, this time," and, taking ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner

... "My corps is as solid as a rock—a great rock. I will strike the blow, and win, if the other troops gather the fruits of victory." How confident the old "War Horse," as General Lee called him, was in the solidity and courage of his troops. Little did he know when he made the assertion that so soon his seventeen thousand men were to be pitted against the whole army of the Potomac. Still, no battle was ever considered ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... think they're solid everywhere," she laughed. "It's only a question of degree; solidity here means a ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood

... is a view of vast extent over the Netherlands. The cathedral of Aix is a large Gothic structure, but many of its decorations are trifling, and inconsistent with the solidity of its massy columns of marble and granite. Its doors are of bronze highly wrought, but full ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard

... and ability. From time to time, as the business went on, he wrote to his father in good spirits, saying that he had excellent hopes they should succeed, notwithstanding the unfortunate loss of the deed; that the more he considered the case, the more clearly the justice of their cause and the solidity of their right appeared. Alas! Alfred showed himself to be but a young lawyer, in depending so much upon right and justice, while a point of law was against him. It is unnecessary, and would be equally tedious ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... Parents. Wants of Children.—In the human brain, intelligence and sentiment are intimately connected with one another, and from their combination arise volitions, which in their turn, react more or less strongly on cerebral activity, according to their solidity and duration. It is thus a great mistake to think that we can treat separately, by the aid of theoretical dogmas, the three great domains of the human mind—intelligence, sentiment and will. It is a fundamental error to imagine that the intelligence can be educated only ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... planned a whole, inevitable disaster overtakes the man who would behave as though it were a thing of shreds and fragments. Now this law of what we may call the Divine unity is equally valid in the purely intellectual order. That, likewise, refuses to admit schisms and divisions to break in on the solidity of its unbroken ranks. An attempt to view life and its problems exclusively from our own standpoint, is to fail to grasp truth; our shadow gets projected over the surface, and the light is partially concealed, if not wholly confused. No better illustration of this fact, I believe, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... charming,—far more charming than the nave, as the beautiful woman is more charming than the elderly man. One need not quarrel about styles of beauty, as long as the man and woman are evidently satisfied and love and admire each other still, with all the solidity of faith to hold them up; but, at least, one cannot help seeing, as one looks from the older to the younger style, that whatever the woman's sixteenth- century charm may be, it is not the man's eleventh-century ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... and perseverance of Mr. McAdam, not only the road in question, but nearly all the roads of Great Britain have been made, within the last five-and-twenty years, to resemble in appearance, but really to exceed in solidity and strength, the roads one formerly saw in the grounds of private gentlemen. These roads are almost flat, and when they have been properly constructed, the wheel rolls over them as if passing along a bed of iron. Apart from the levels, which, of ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... of the footpath was the stile, between two fields; no frail and temporary structure, but betokening the permanence of this rustic way; the ancient solidity of the stone steps, worn into cavities by the hobnailed shoes that had pressed upon them: here not only the climbing foot had passed for ages, but here had sat the maiden with her milk-pail, the rustic on his way afield or homeward; here had been lover meetings, cheerful chance chats, song as ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... there seemed nothing at all strange in this extraordinary experience; he was by no means excited, remained merely if deeply interested. And he could detect in his physical sensations no trace of that qualmish dread he always experienced in high places: the sense he had of security, of solidity, was and ever remained wholly ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... thus early, a certain solidity was apparent in Scott's studies. "To the romances and poetry which I chiefly delighted in," he writes, "I had always added the study of history, especially as connected with military events." He interested himself, for example, in the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... boast. He only makes some additions to the doctrine of Democritus, altering very little, and that in such a way that he seems to me to make those points worse which he endeavours to correct. He believes that atoms, as he calls them, that is to say bodies which by reason of their solidity are indivisible, are borne about in an interminable vacuum, destitute of any highest, or lowest, or middle, or furthest, or nearest boundary, in such a manner that by their concourse they cohere together; by which cohesion everything which exists and which is seen is formed. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... self came less to the front with her than usual? It was that now first she was face to face with reality. Until this moment her life had been an affair of unrealities. Her selfishness had thinned, as it were vaporized, every reality that approached her. Solidity is not enough to teach some natures reality; they must hurt themselves against the solid ere they realize its solidity. Small reality, small positivity of existence has water to a dreaming soul, half consciously gazing through half ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... of the shore, retreating again and ever returning to the assault, covering the obstacles thrown in the way of their progress with thin sheets of licking tongues at least. And if such a high crest wave had suddenly been frozen into solidity, its outline would have mimicked to perfection many a one of the snow shapes that ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... antiques a bit dilapidated; a missing detail serving as a hallmark to calm doubts; others insist upon completeness to the eye and solidity for use; while the connoisseur, with unlimited means, recognises nothing less than signed sofas and chairs, and other objets d'art. To repeat:—be always on the lookout, remembering that it is the man who knows the points of a good dog, horse ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... a solidity about a stone house, stone porch and stone wall in every part of Ireland; a strength that makes one think how easily a house could be turned into a ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... The Treasury, unimportant in the world's affairs before 1861, suddenly became one of the greatest dealers in credit. Its debt of $2,808,000,000, outstanding in October, 1865, affected the interests and solidity of international finance, and indicated, as well, resources of which even boastful Americans had been unaware in 1861. One item in the debt, however, was a menace to the security of the whole, which was but little stronger than its ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... a vestibule or hall. The roof had been recently painted a brilliant red at the expense of the Variag's officers. On the inside, the church has an antiquated appearance, but presents such an air of solidity as if inviting the earthquakes to ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... advantages are reaped from a select society of both sexes. The rough angles and asperities of male manners are imperceptibly filed, and gradually worn smooth, by the polishing of female conversation, and the refining of female taste; while the ideas of women acquire strength and solidity, by their associating with sensible, intelligent, and ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More

... this encounter, where each man had singled out his own foe as though it were a tournament, very many lances were broken, especially those of the Italian knights; for their lances were hollowed so as to be less heavy, and in consequence had less solidity. Those who were thus disarmed at once seized their swords. As they were far more numerous than the French, the king saw them suddenly outflanking his right wing and apparently prepared to surround it; at the same moment loud cries ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... original fluidity of the mass, in times long antecedent to the first introduction of living beings into the planet; but the geologist must be content to regard the earliest monuments which it is his task to interpret, as belonging to a period when the crust had already acquired great solidity and thickness, probably as great as it now possesses, and when volcanic rocks, not essentially differing from those now produced, were formed from time to time, the intensity of volcanic heat being neither greater nor less ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... out of both their lives, had been reinstated in another form. Gloria insisted that any one invited to the gray house must be "good," which, in the case of a girl, meant that she must be either simple and reproachless or, if otherwise, must possess a certain solidity and strength. Always intensely sceptical of her sex, her judgments were now concerned with the question of whether women were or were not clean. By uncleanliness she meant a variety of things, a lack of pride, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... (by virtue of the different angles from which each of his eyes gaze at it) and thus sees a trifle more of the background than would otherwise be the case. And this—these two viewpoints blended in his brain—gives him his perception of "depth," of "solidity"—the difference between a real scene of three dimensions and a painted scene on a canvas of two dimensions with only the artist's skill in perspective to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... that the Princess Palatine was a person of large intelligence, who was able to hold her own with men of the greatest capacity. De Retz and Bossuet tell us so. Some letters of the Palatine, however, are extant in which, whilst there is no lack of solidity, refinement, and ingenuity of thought, it will be seen that they often abound with errors, obscure phraseology, and not unfrequently outrageously violate even the commonest rules of orthography. It must not, however, by any means be inferred from this that the Palatine had not a mind of the first ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... petticoat were now called in, and ordered to produce what they had to say against the popular cry which was raised against it. They answered the objections with great strength and solidity of argument, and expatiated in very florid harangues, which they did not fail to set off and furbelow, if I may be allowed the metaphor, with many periodical sentences and turns of oratory. The chief arguments ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele

... the Free Library and the Town Hall attract attention. The latter is nearly on the site of the old free schools, which were built by Sir John Vanbrugh with all the solidity characteristic of his style; and Leigh Hunt opined, if suffered to remain, they would probably outlast the whole of Kensington. However, no such misfortune occurred, and the only relics of them remaining ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... carefully examined, and it was found that over the whole of that immense area an excessively fine chalky mud is being deposited; and this deposit is entirely made up of animals whose hard parts are deposited in this part of the ocean, and are doubtless gradually acquiring solidity and becoming metamorphosed into a chalky limestone. Thus, you see, it is quite possible in this way to preserve unmistakable records of animal and vegetable life. Whenever the sea-bottom, by some of those undulations of the earth's crust that I have ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... (inward sulphur) exactly expresses the spiritual state of the regenerate man according to mystical theology. There is no reason, other than their belief in analogy, why the alchemists should have held such views concerning the metals. "Salt," the principle of solidity and resistance to fire, corresponding to the body in man, plays a comparatively unimportant part in alchemical theory, as does its ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... The solidity of those women was something amazing. Terry soon found that it was useless, tore himself loose for a moment, pulled his revolver, and fired upward. As they caught at it, he fired ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... the strongest made, as indicated by its weight, which is almost a couple of pounds. To ensure this unusual strength it is necessary that its sides should be of equal thickness and the bottom of a uniform solidity throughout, in order that no particular expansion may ensue from sudden changes of temperature. The neck must, moreover, be perfectly round and widen gradually towards the shoulder. In addition—and this is of the utmost consequence—the inside ought to be perfectly smooth, as a rough interior ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... the town, I perceived it to be a fortress of vast extent; but as it is commanded from the heights from which I was descending, it appeared to want strength if approached from the south. The ramparts were built with great solidity, but rusty, old, dismounted cannon, obliterated embrasures, and palisades rotten from exposure to the weather, showed that to stand a siege it must undergo a considerable repair. The aspect of the place did not improve as we rumbled ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... rebel belligerents was concerted with France—France, so beloved in America, on which she had conferred the greatest benefits that one people ever conferred on another; France, which stands foremost on the continent of Europe for the solidity of her culture, as well as for the bravery and generous impulses of her sons; France, which for centuries had been moving steadily in her own way towards intellectual and political freedom. The policy regarding further colonization of America by ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... easiest comprehended. The Symphonic Variations are the greatest of all, greater than the Concerto or the Fantasie in C. These almost persuade one that their author is a fit companion for Beethoven and Chopin. There is invention, workmanship, and a solidity that never for a moment clashes with the tide of romantic passion surging beneath. Here he strikes fire ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... afforded by the return of our boats to bring them down to Vancouver. This gentleman, as well as the Messrs. Applegate, and others of the emigrants whom I saw, possessed intelligence and character, with the moral and intellectual stamina, as well as the enterprise, which give solidity and respectability to the foundation ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... of the body, was apparent in him in his very childhood, as he was with much difficulty incited to them, and always used them with great moderation; though in other things he was extremely eager and vehement, and in his love of glory, and the pursuit of it, he showed a solidity of high spirit and magnanimity far above his age. For he neither sought nor valued it upon every occasion, as his father Philip did, (who affected to show his eloquence almost to a degree of pedantry, and took care to have the victories of his racing chariots at the Olympic games engraved on his ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... equal effort. To use a familiar phrase, there will not be time for the whole resistance of the national fabric to come into play; the blow will fall on the organized military fleet, and if that yield, the solidity of the rest of the structure will avail nothing. To a certain extent this is true; but then it has always been true, though to a less extent formerly than now. Granted the meeting of two fleets which ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... When they had surrounded him, he spoke a few words. With shovels and axes they set energetically to work at his direction, packing a wall of snow and wood from the ground up over the axles of the wheels all around the wagons so as to give greater solidity to the whole and to prevent the cold wind ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... not some Boswell of a friend who could have recorded his wise sayings and valuable criticism of men and things. He was more of an idealist than Doctor Johnson, and at the same time like Doctor Johnson in personal solidity, his English aplomb of character. They were both men of sterling quality. He was in all things especially human. His sympathies equalled the breadth of his mind. There was scarcely a subject in which he did not take an interest, and was not ready to converse ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... when he laid the corner-stones of two habitations; one on the Peak, which was his private property, standing on his estate; and the other on the Reef, which was strictly intended to be a Government, or Colony House. The first was of brick, and the last of stone, and of great solidity, being intended as a sort of fortress. The private dwelling was only a story and a half high, but large on the ground for that region, measuring sixty feet square. The. government building was much larger, measuring ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... interests that radiated from it and were dependent upon it—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, that contributed to its solidity and success—the many investments, industrial, political, benevolent, reformatory, ecclesiastical, that had made the name of Weightman well known and potent in city, church, and state, demanded much ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke

... all sense of motion disappeared. The boat shrugged uneasily with the movement of the oars, the rowlocks made of loops of twisted osier creaked, but one could not perceive that one was going forwards. The hills lost their solidity, becoming mere holes in the grey blue of the sky, a bright planet made a light smudge on the ruffled water in which the stars could not reflect. As we crept forwards into the river and the mountains ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... not know of the niche behind the pillar, and there were pilasters all along, built into the wall. The construction of the high, springing vault that covered the whole throne room required them for its solidity, and only the one under the centre of the arch was built as a detached pillar, in order to give access to the gallery. Seen from either end of the passage, it looked exactly like the rest, and few persons would have noticed that it differed from ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... witches had celebrated one of their infernal dances upon his head while asleep in bed: and one of them, in accordance with this conjecture, acknowledged that the devil had sent her with a sledge-hammer to drive a nail into the temples of the obnoxious clergyman. The solidity of his skull saved him; and the only result was, as stated, a severe ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... a science of society. This object is to show the sciences as branches from a single trunk,—is to give to science the ensemble or spirit of generality hitherto confined to philosophy, and to give to philosophy the rigour and solidity of science. Comte's special object is a study of social physics, a science that before his advent was still to be formed; his second object is a review of the methods and leading generalities of all the positive sciences already ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley

... rival Tyrian purple; printing and binding by hand books that surpass the best of the Aldine, and Elzevirs; carving in old oak; hammering brass; forging locks, irons, and candlesticks; becoming artists in burned wood and leather; seeking old effects of simplicity and solidity in furniture and decoration, as well as architecture, stained glass, and to some extent in dress and manners; and all this toil and moil was ad majorem gloriam hominis [To the greater glory of man] in a new socialistic state, where the artist, and even the artisan, should ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... production of a keen and kindly observer of men and manners, and they display a subtle analysis of character, as well as a breadth of observation, which are remarkable. With much of occasional force, these Essays have sufficient solidity to make a book; and while they recall the wit of Montaigne and the playfulness of Addison, they are animated by a better moral tone, and cover a ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie

... still holding out the slate, with her innocent gesture of invitation and gentle look of apology, for the eldest girl to write on. The varying expressions of the three; the difference in their positions, the charming contrast between their light, graceful figures and the bulky strength and grand solidity of form in the noble Newfoundland dog who stood among them; the lustrous background of lawn and flowers and trees, seen through the open window; the sparkling purity of the sunshine which fell brightly over one part of the group; the transparency of the warm shadows that lay so caressingly, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... into laughter. It was still echoing through the house when she entered her room. As it died away it seemed to sound hollow and veiled, when the texture of sunny, transparent solidity in his laugh was ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... objective, except in the ambiguous sense of a sort of permanent illusion. But as soon as the complex vision, in its totality, contemplates the situation, the thing takes on a very different aspect. The pure reason may be as sceptical as it pleases about the static solidity of what is popularly called "matter." It may use the term energy, or movement, or ether, or force, or electricity, or any other name to describe that permanent sensation of outward reality which our ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... had some sound notions as a critic, and thus became the object of Pope's fear and therefore of his resentment. Dennis speaks of him as his "departed friend, whom I infinitely esteemed when living for the solidity of his thought, for the spring and the warmth and the beautiful turn of it; for the power and variety and fulness of his harmony; for the purity, the perspicuity, the energy of his expression; and, whenever these great qualities are required, for the pomp ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... it would cause the evaporation of some of the spirit. A pump to empty the hogsheads, and covered pipes to conduct the liquor into the still, is what has been found to answer that purpose. A good distilling apparatus is undoubtedly the most important part of a distillery. It must unite solidity, perfection in its joints, economy of fuel, rapidity of distillation, to the faculty of concentrating the spirit. Such are the ends I have proposed to myself ...
— The Art of Making Whiskey • Anthony Boucherie

... contemplated the building of the Pont des Arts we had a long conversation on the subject. I observed that it would be much better to build the bridge of stone. "The first object of monuments of this kind," said I, "is public utility. They require solidity of appearance, and their principal merit is duration. I cannot conceive, General, why, in a country where there is abundance of fine stone of every quality, the use of iron should be preferred."—"Write," said Bonaparte, "to Fontaine and Percier, the architects, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... always the air of a man seriously intent on producing practical results. There are no false motions. Every swaying of the preacher's weapon is a blow, and every blow is a hit. There is hardly another example in homiletic literature of such compactness, such solidity, such logical consecutiveness, such cogency, such freedom from surplusage. Tare and tret are excluded. Every thing counts. You meet with two or three adjectives, and you at first naturally assume, that, after the usual manner of homilists, Bourdaloue has thrown these in without ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... and Mr. John Gilbert, a well-known dramatic couple, who were extremely agreeable and genial, the husband abounding in droll reminiscences of the stage; a merry little German musician named Kreutzer, son of the great composer; and a young Englishwoman with a younger brother. I rather doubted the "solidity" of this young lady. By-and-bye it was developed that the captain was in love with her. Out of this, I have heard, came a dreadful tragedy; for the love drove him mad, the insanity developing itself on the return voyage. The captain had to be imprisoned in his own state-room, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... scarlet tulips, was far more attractive. Moving homeward, we floated under a lovely old bridge, whose three rose-toned arches date from the sixteenth century—the age of the Great Moguls. The extreme solidity of its piers contrasts strongly with the exceedingly sketchy (and sketchable) bridges manufactured ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... suppress their powers of elocution to escape being set to work. But the hypothesis was entirely imaginary; David Gellatley was in good earnest the half-crazed simpleton which he appeared, and was incapable of any constant and steady exertion. He had just so much solidity as kept on the windy side of insanity, so much wild wit as saved him from the imputation of idiocy, some dexterity in field-sports (in which we have known as great fools excel), great kindness and humanity in the treatment of ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... of aerial speculation, which courts no test of real life and practice, is described by the ancients under the term umbraticus, or seeking the cool shade, and shrinking from the heat. Thus, an umbraticus doctor is one who has no practical solidity in his teaching. The fatigue and hardship of real life, in short, is represented by the ancients under the uniform image of heat, and by the moderns under that of cold.] was stormy, and by the violence of the wind all the torches of his escort were blown out, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... most persistent key-notes of this underlying Etruscan character is the solemn, weird, and gloomy nature of so much of the true Etruscan workmanship. From the very beginning they are strong, but sullen. Solidity and power, rather than beauty and grace, are what they aim at; and in this, Michael Angelo was a true Tuscan. If we look at the massive old Etruscan buildings, the Cyclopean walls of Faesulae and Volterrae, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... liable to fall into—he was in love, and with Christina, Herr Kordwaener's daughter. Christina was a plump maiden, with a round, rosy face, an extensive latitude of shoulders, and a general plentitude and solidity of figure. All these she had; but what had captivated Hopeful's eye was her trim ankle, as it had appeared to him one morning, encased in a warm white yarn stocking of her own knitting. From this small ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... disabling blow before the enemy can organize an equal effort. To use a familiar phrase, there will not be time for the whole resistance of the national fabric to come into play; the blow will fall on the organized military fleet, and if that yield, the solidity of the rest of the structure will avail nothing. To a certain extent this is true; but then it has always been true, though to a less extent formerly than now. Granted the meeting of two fleets which represent practically the whole present strength of their two nations, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... close it up, and set them in the sun to dry. After they are thoroughly dry, put them in a glass matrass into a stream of running water and leave them there twenty days; by that time they will contract the natural hardness and solidity of pearls. Then take them out of th matrass and hang them in mercurial water, where they will moisten, swell, and assume their Oriental beauty; after which shift them into a matrass hermitically closed to prevent ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... the scow, and was already about to undo the fastenings of the gate, in order to enter within the 'dock.' March had no other motive in landing than a senseless bravado, and having shaken the door in a manner to put its solidity to the proof, he joined Hutter in the canoe and began to aid him in opening the gate. The reader will remember that this mode of entrance was rendered necessary by the manner in which the owner of this ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... the factory the stranger knew that there were three rows of cabins in the post, that the factory was a mighty fortress in its low solidity, and that the small log structure to the right of it with the barred window was the ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... with what quakings and shakings of heart Mrs. Follingsbee must have sought the alliance of these tremendously solid old Christians. They were precisely what she wanted to give an air of solidity to the cobweb glitter of her state. And we can also see how necessary it was that she should ostentatiously visit Charlie Ferfola's wife, and speak of her as a darling creature, her particular friend, whom she was doing her very best to keep out of ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... beams in question, without moving the decorations which covered them, and the mason affirmed that it was quite impossible to get a view of the foundations of the north-west corner of the palace, which were said to be weak, without knocking a hole through a wall upon which depended such solidity as there was. It was useless, he said. The snuffy gentleman could ask the Baron, if he pleased, and the Baron could do what he liked since the property now belonged to him: but he, the mason, would not lay hand to pick or crowbar without the Baron's express authorization. ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... in the work, and that the choir at any rate was done before the Norman influence was much affected by the Ile de France, may be seen at once in the fourteen tall and strong round pillars with their simple capitals and massive round arches, which produce a very fine effect of pure solidity amongst the lighter pointed work surrounding them. After Enguerrand came "Durand le Machon," who dwelt in the same house that Jean d'Andeli had held on lease, and after him, again, the name of Gautier de St. Hilaire occurs ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... dreamer. But the very same indolent habit of aerial speculation, which courts no test of real life and practice, is described by the ancients under the term umbraticus, or seeking the cool shade, and shrinking from the heat. Thus, an umbraticus doctor is one who has no practical solidity in his teaching. The fatigue and hardship of real life, in short, is represented by the ancients under the uniform image of heat, and by the moderns under that of cold.] was stormy, and by the violence of the wind all the torches of his escort were blown out, so that the whole party ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... whole amount of sinking can be thus accounted for. The Roman builders excavated the ground to an unusual depth for the foundations of their walls, which were thick and solid; it is therefore hardly credible that they should have been careless about the solidity of the bed on which their tesselated and often ornamented pavements were laid. The sinking must, as it appears to me, be attributed in chief part to the pavement having been undermined by worms, which we know are still at work. Even Mr. ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin

... aware in his own mind of the existence of any other premiss, he will readily understand, if it be denied that 'whatever exhibits marks of design must have had an intelligent author,' that the affirmative of that proposition is necessary to the solidity of the argument. An argument thus stated regularly and at full length, is called a syllogism; which, therefore, is evidently not a peculiar kind of argument, but only a peculiar form of expression, in which every argument may ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... the hand upon his shoulder tremble like a leaf; but he never turned his head, only moved steadily onward and downward, with a regularity and solidity which soon ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... fragrant balsamic odour. It is used in perfumery. Though contained in the pharmacopeias it has no special medicinal virtues. Balsam of Tolu is produced from Myroxylon toluiferum. It is of a brown colour, thicker than Peru balsam, and attains a considerable degree of solidity on keeping. It also is a product of equatorial America, but is found over a much wider area than is the balsam of Peru. It is used in perfumery and as a constituent in cough syrups and lozenges. Liquid storax or styrax preparatus, is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... present, doomed to partake his unpopularity. Part of the roof had been pulled down from the house itself, and an attempt had been made with crows and levers upon one of the angles, by which several large corner-stones had been forced out of their place; but the solidity of ancient mason-work had proved too great for the time or patience of the assailants, and they had relinquished their task of destruction. Such dilapidated buildings, after the lapse of years, during which nature has gradually covered the effects of violence with creeping plants, and with ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... vice-president and general manager of the company, in which, as also in some of the subsidiary Edison companies, and as president, he continued actively and energetically for nearly four years, a critical, formative period in which the solidity of the foundation laid is attested by the magnitude ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... objects which we seem to see and touch," went on Hitt, "we appear to see solidity and hardness, and we conceive as real objects what are only the mental signs or indications of objects. Remember, matter does not and can not get into the mind. Only thoughts and ideas enter our mentalities. We ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... acquired the habit of weeping. But there was something in her expression that moved Greif more than a fit of sobbing could have done. There was an evident strength in her resentment, even though it showed itself in temperate words, which indicated a greater solidity of character than the young man had given her credit for. He had not realised that a love developed by natural and slow degrees, without a shadow of opposition, could be deeper and more enduring than ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... is in the sunshine and the finest days, as that which has conquered and prevailed, commends itself to us by its very antiquity and apparent solidity and necessity. Our weakness needs it, and our strength uses it. We cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it. If there were but one erect and solid standing tree in the woods, all creatures would go ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... everywhere," she laughed. "It's only a question of degree; solidity here means a different thing ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood

... is built on the top of a hill which overhangs the Trieux, and from one of its battlemented galleries a splendid view of the windings of the river can be obtained. The wall on this side of the fortress is so thick as to allow of a chapel being hewn out of its solidity. A most distinctive architectural note is struck by the fourteen wonderful chimney-shafts of cut stone ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... the best tales of adventure produced by any living writer, combining the inventiveness of Jules Verne, and the solidity of character and earnestness of spirit which have made the English victorious in so many fields of labour and ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... was called Tetractys by the Pythagoreans, who accounted it the most powerful of numbers, because it was the foundation of them all, and as a square it signified solidity. They said it was at the source of Nature, four elements, four seasons, &c., to which later speculators added the four rivers of Paradise, four evangelists, and association of the number four with God, whose name was a mystical Tetra ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... to the God of Armies, a tomb worthy, if possible, of the name destined to be graven on it will be erected. The study of the artist should be to give to this monument a simple beauty, a noble form, and that aspect of solidity which shall appear to brave all the efforts of time. Napoleon must have a monument durable as his memory. The grant for which we have applied to the Chambers is to be employed in the removal of the remains to ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... ground, while the two ends of it rested upon the end walls. The walls themselves were constructed of thick mud plaster, overlaying a foundation of laced willow branches. The whole construction was of unusual solidity, and the smoke-blackened thatch yielded two holes, Indian fashion, through which the fire ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... amated by it. But I must desire the advice of some few friends to tell me whether it will be proper for me and in what way to answer it. However I will for mine own private satisfaction forthwith draw up an answer that shall have as much of spirit and solidity in it as my ability will afford and the age we live in will endure. I am, if I may say it with reverence, drawn in I hope by a good Providence to intermeddle on a noble and high argument. But I desire that all the discourse of my friends may run as if ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... stature until the twenty-fifth year, and it is safe to assume, that perfection of function is not established until maturity of bodily development is completed. The physical contour of these representations plainly exhibits the difference in structure, and also implies difference of function. Solidity and strength are represented by the organization of the male, grace and beauty by that of the female. His broad shoulders represent physical power and the right of dominion, while her bosom is the ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... with weight, had lagged behind in the driving wind of the day before, and was now closing in upon the lighter fragments of the pack, which had fled in advance and crowded the bay. Whatever advantage the heavier ice offered in the solidity of its footing, and whatever in the speed with which it might be traversed by agile, daring men, was mitigated by another condition involved in its exposed situation. It lay against the open sea; and the sea was high, rolling directly into Scalawag Run, ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... American topics—on railways, steamers, public works, on Americans whom he had met, and of the things he most wished to see on our side the water; altogether he seemed to be broad-minded, alert, with a quick sense of humor, and yet with a certain solidity ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... between the industrial and the aristocratic employing) which is responsible for the Five Towns' reputation for joylessness, the class which sticks its chin out and gets things done (however queer the things done may be), the class which keeps the district together and maintains its solidity, the class which is ashamed of nothing but idleness, frank enjoyment, and the caprice of the moment. (Its idiomatic phrase for expressing the experience of gladness, "I sang 'O be joyful,'" alone demonstrates its unwillingness to ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... the splendor of the sky, and the spotted skin which he wears is the image of the starry firmament: his lower parts are rough, hairy, and deformed, to represent the shrubs, wild creatures, trees, and mountains here below: his goat's feet signify the solidity of the earth; and his pipe of seven reeds, that celestial harmony which is made by the seven planets; lastly, his sheep-hook denotes that care and providence by ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway

... hopes extended to principles, temper, and conduct. The mere mechanical parts of education may at all times be purchased for money; automatons may be made to perform wonders. But we all know that something more is wanting to give solidity and consequence to character. If you refuse my daughter, she will ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown

... Solely sole. Solemn solena. Solemnity soleno. Solemnize solenigi. Solfa notkanti. Solfeggio notkanto. Solicit petegi. Solicitor advokato. Solicitous petega, zorga. Solicitude zorgeco. Solid fortika. Solid, a malfluido. Solidarity solidareco. Solidity fortikeco. Solidify malfluidigxi. Soliloquy monologo. Solitary sola. Solitude soleco. Soluble solvebla. Solubility solvebleco. Solution solvo. Solvable solvebla. Solvable (payable) pagokapabla. Solvability (solvency) pagokapableco. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... covered with vegetation, and, in many cases in the Hudson Bay country, have even been known to nurture trees of considerable dimensions. The broad flat tail of the animal serves a most excellent purpose, in carrying the mud to the dams or huts, and in matting and smoothing it into a solidity. ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... way, and hungry for her surcease, she darted down the familiar ways until at last her feet struck the dull solidity of the rotting pier. And then it was but a few more panting steps—and good mother East River took Liz to her bosom, soothed her muddily but quickly, and settled in five minutes the problem that keeps lights ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... fanatical in its desire to get at the idea and reason of everything it probes,—is relieved by a richly sympathetic and imaginative nature,—indeed, is so welded with it, that insight and analysis serve each other, and cool reason gives solidity to ecstatic experience. Perhaps as a seer Dr. Bushnell may be more certain of recognition than as a reasoner. Whatever may be thought of the orthodoxy of the doctrines he has rationalized, there can be no doubt as to the reality of the spiritual states he has described. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... manner it may be concluded, that you, James Boswell, and I Andrew Erskine, cannot write serious epistles. This, as Mr. Tristram[19] says, I deny; for this letter of mine shall contain the quintessence of solidity; it shall be a piece of boiled beef and cabbage, a roasted goose, and a boiled leg of pork and greens: in one word, it shall contain advice; sage and mature advice. Oh! James Boswell! take care and don't break your neck; pray don't fracture your skull, and be very cautious ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... leaves us the glorious legacy of her heroic sacrifices. During five months of privation and suffering, she has given to France the time to collect herself, to call her children together, to find arms, to compose armies, young as yet, but valiant and determined, and to whom is wanting only that solidity which can be obtained but by experience. Thanks to Paris, we hold in our hands, if we are but resolute and patriotic, all that is needed to revenge, and ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... do her justice, behaved exceedingly well. Her character, indeed, which had been quite unformed before her marriage, had gained solidity, and her mind, judgment as well as tone, since her introduction to a family so superior as that of the Selwyns. And she now neither blushed nor tittered, nor, indeed, showed any signs of consciousness, although she gave me a sly pinch, while she was inquiring in her sweetest voice and serenest ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... his mother, and for the next twelve years, 1828-1840, the two lived together, chiefly in Paris. There, as a child, he had been a nine days' wonder, but the solidity of his reputation was now destined to go hand in hand with his stormy and interrupted mental and moral development. Such a plant could not come to maturity all at once. No drawing-room or concert-room success ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... be? Are they huge phosphorised fishes? If so, what monsters! Or are they crystals? a kind of igneous snow-flakes? floating in a fluid of their own, or very nearly their own, specific gravity? Some kind of solidity or coherence they must have, or they would not retain their shape in the violent movements of the atmosphere which the change of the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... breath, glide, their sterns crowned with roses, to the sound of harps, on invisible waves. But do not believe that, not being entered in a dirty register in a shabby vestry, they would be of little solidity and could be easily torn asunder. They have for guarantors the spirits who gambol on the clouds whence flashes the lightning and roars the thunder. I reveal matters to you, my son, which be useful to you to know, because I conclude ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... which generally prevails is the napal, as it is called by the inhabitants, forming the basis of the red cliffs, and not infrequently the beds of the rivers. Though this napal has the appearance of rock it possesses in fact so little solidity that it is difficult to pronounce whether it be a soft stone or only an indurated clay. The surface of it becomes smooth and glossy by a slight attrition, and to the touch resembles soap, which is its most striking ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... find differences existing in the solidity or density of the spheroidally agglomerated matter. Our own solar system presents all stages of 'mean' density (or of the relation of 'volume' to 'mass'.) On comparing the planets from Mercury to Mars with the Sun and with ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... his residence in Lombardy, developed a method of erecting piers with rubble enclosed by hewn stone or plaster-covered brickwork. This enabled an unconscientious builder to furnish bulky architectural masses, which presented a specious aspect of solidity and looked more costly than they really were. It had the additional merit of being easy and rapid in execution. Bramante was thus able to gratify the whims and caprices of his impatient patron, who desired to see the ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... just after this adventure that we encountered a continent of immense extent and prodigious solidity, but which, nevertheless, was supported entirely upon the back of a sky-blue cow that had no fewer than ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... of the most monstrous I have ever seen. The pressure ridges rose 24 feet above the surface—the ice must have extended at least 30 feet below. The blows given us gave the impression of irresistible solidity. Later in the night we passed out of this into long lanes of water and some of thin brash ice, hence the progress made. I'm afraid we have strained our rudder; it is stiff in one direction. We are in difficult circumstances ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... eighteenth-century novelists—Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett—safely behind us, with all their solidity and their audacity, their sincerity, and their coarseness of fibre. They have brought us, as you perceive, to the end of the shelf. What, not wearied? Ready for yet another? Let us run down this next row, then, and I will tell you a ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... products of an age when a conscientiousness could be traced in the perfect finish of all the details of a work external or internal; some in the form of stately folios, suggestive at once both of the solidity and depth of learning possessed by the writers and expected in the readers; while a multitude of lesser volumes were crowded together, some erect, others lying flat, or leaning against one another for support. Greek ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... with a bridge [of boats]. The boat, thus used, is no longer moved by slowly hauled ropes, as it is wont to be. Fixed itself, it affords a means of transit to others. The joining of its planks gives the desired appearance of solidity; all the terror of the waves is removed by its likeness to the land, and the traveller passing over it unharmed only wishes that the ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... the motive and end but also the form of moral action depend on that which in every circle of society and at every time proves to be the most successful form. It is the proof of success or failure which gives this form a certain traditional authority and a relative solidity—but only a relative one, and only until it is displaced by a still more ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... deception. soga rope. sol m. sun. solamente only. soldado soldier. soledad f. solitude. solemne solemn. solemnidad f. solemnity. soler to be accustomed. solidaridad f. solidarity, participation. solidez f. solidity. solitario solitary. solo alone; solo only; tan solo only. soltar to loosen, let go. soltero -a bachelor, unmarried person. solteron -a bachelor, old maid. sollozo sob. sombra shadow. sombrero hat. sombrio somber, gloomy. son ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... buried beneath a portion of a wall and suffered a severe head injury. The Father Superior received most of the splinters in his back and lower extremity from which he bled copiously. Everything was thrown about in the rooms themselves, but the wooden framework of the house remained intact. The solidity of the structure which was the work of ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States

... countenance hers is in expression! No wonder Bernard has softened down. There is strength and solidity as well as sweetness in her ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... the governor ordered Master-of-camp Gallinato and Captain Villagra, together with Pablo de Lima, to confer with the captive king concerning what agreement it was advisable to make with him in his Majesty's name for the security and solidity of matters. They were to persuade him that that was the way to attain merit and oblige our king to make better conditions in his favor. The three came, accompanied by other influential persons, among whom were some Augustinian, Dominican, and Jesuit religious, all of whom served in their ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... almost a solitude; and poets loved to contrast its silence and repose with the din and turmoil of the monster London. [106] On the south the capital is now connected with its suburb by several bridges, not inferior in magnificence and solidity to the noblest works of the Caesars. In 1685, a single line of irregular arches, overhung by piles of mean and crazy houses, and garnished, after a fashion worthy of the naked barbarians of Dahomy, with scores of mouldering heads, impeded ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... deduced the third law, the conclusion will hold good, even if the effects of price-changes on supply are of the above paradoxical kind, provided that they do not continually outweigh the effects upon demand, there is no reason to cast doubt on the solidity of Law III, which, indeed, as we suggested before, commends itself directly to experience. But Law II seems now, perhaps, somewhat ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... the Directors of the East India Company propose shipping teas to some of the American Colonies, to be there sold by agents on the Company's account, and as I apprehend South Carolina may be fixed upon as one of them, I beg leave to propose Mr. Roger Smith, of South Carolina, for whose solidity I am willing to ...
— Tea Leaves • Various

... upon the table some dozens of asters from a small garden-bed, tilled, planted, and tended by Laura. Meanwhile, Mrs. Madison constantly turned the other cheek to the cook. Laura assisted in the pacification; Hedrick froze the ice-cream to an impenetrable solidity; and the nominal head of the family sat upon the front porch with the two young men, and wiped his wrists and rambled politically till they ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... religion, the commerce, the situation of each society. A late author of genius, as well as learning, has prosecuted this subject at large, and has established, from these principles, a system of political knowledge, which abounds in ingenious and brilliant thoughts, and is not wanting in solidity. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... If people watched her a good deal, she also returned their contemplation, and her charming eyes had several times encountered those of Basil Ransom. But they wandered mainly in the direction of Mrs. Farrinder—they lingered upon the serene solidity of the great oratress. It was easy to see that the girl admired this beneficent woman, and felt it a privilege to be near her. It was apparent, indeed, that she was excited by the company in which she found herself; a fact to be explained by a reference to that recent ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... slipped a little way out, and was loose; and experimenting with it, by and by discovered that by holding the parts together, and winding the tail round and round, the horse—how, he could not tell—was restored to its former apparent solidity. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... Prussian, that is to say, militarist, socialism will grow and increase; if she is German, the development and expansion of her political and social organism, having free play, will come about normally and surely. Therefore, the solidity of German unity should consist in resistance to Prussianism or militarism, to William II, and to the past. On the other hand, submission of the old Confederation to Prussia must inevitably ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam

... time, his house being within little more than ten miles of Oxford, he contracted familiarity and friendship with the most polite and accurate men of that university; who found such an immenseness of wit and such a solidity of judgment in him, so infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination, such a vast knowledge, that he was not ignorant in anything, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had known nothing, that they frequently resorted, and dwelt with him, as in a ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... de Sévigné writes of them (Dec. 21, 1689): “How charming they are! . . . Is it possible to have a more perfect style, an irony finer, more delicate, more natural, more worthy of the Dialogues of Plato? . . . And what seriousness of tone, what solidity, what eloquence in the last eight Letters!” Our Gibbon attributed to the frequent perusal of them his own mastery of “grave and temperate irony.” Boileau pronounced them “unsurpassed” in ancient or modern prose. Encomiums could hardly go higher, and yet the language of Perrault is in a still higher ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... your letter, and understand the contents. I cannot describe the solidity of your friendship and brotherly affection which subsisted between you and my late father. From the friendship of the Company he received numberless advantages; and I, notwithstanding I was left an orphan, from your favor and that of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... speech, and only suppress their powers of elocution to escape being set to work. But the hypothesis was entirely imaginary; David Gellatley was in good earnest the half-crazed simpleton which he appeared, and was incapable of any constant and steady exertion. He had just so much solidity as kept on the windy side of insanity, so much wild wit as saved him from the imputation of idiocy, some dexterity in field-sports (in which we have known as great fools excel), great kindness and humanity in the treatment of animals entrusted to him, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... February, the Bois de Boulogne appeared to be draped in a Siberian mantle rarely seen at that season. A deep and clinging covering of snow hid the ground, and the prolonged freezing of the lakes gave absolute guaranty of their solidity. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the regimental field officers. Some men retain flexibility of mind and body longer than others, and could more easily adapt themselves to new circumstances and a new occupation. Of course such would succeed best. But it is also true that in the larger and broader commands solidity of judgment and weight of character were more essential than in the company, and the experience of older men was a more valuable quality. Such reasons will account for the fact that youth seemed to be an almost essential requisite for a company officer, whilst it was not so in the same degree ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... too, these last words give the impression of immediate and utter dissolution of all opposition! All the Titanic brute forces are, at His voice, disintegrated, and lose their organisation and solidity. 'The hills melted like wax'; 'The mountains flowed down at Thy presence.' The hardness and obstinacy is all liquefied and enfeebled, and parts with its consistency and is lost in a fluid mass. As two carbon points when ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... disappeared, as there is no flanking protection, but the tower rises above the plain to a height of about sixty feet like a huge block of stone. It is said to have been erected by the Knights Templars, and is of great solidity; but such experienced soldiers would hardly have constructed so important a work without due regard to the first ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... and fields. Large as Bristol might then appear, it occupied but a very small portion of the area on which it now stands. A few churches of eminent beauty rose out of a labyrinth of narrow lanes built upon vaults of no great solidity. If a coach or a cart entered those alleys, there was danger that it would be wedged between the houses, and danger also that it would break in the cellars. Goods were therefore conveyed about the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... ordinary quality is from 1s. 3d. to 1s. 6d., whereas the cost of a book of double thick pure gold leaf is 3s. to 3s. 6d. For tooled work it is worth paying the increased price for the sake of the advantages in colour and solidity; but for lines and edges, which use up an immense amount of gold, the thinner and cheaper gold may quite well ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell

... news of the ship arrived, the Troyan wrote and made public a document with this title: "Advice to those who come as strangers to these islands, that they may not err in their judgment of things pertaining to the banishment of the archbishop." This paper had no solidity, and answer to it was made in another, in which the former was utterly demolished [98] with sharp arguments. The provincial made another reply, over his signature, of the same quality as the former document, but with not slight ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... classify the Johnson we know with Hamlet and Don Quixote as the product of creative or imaginative art, working on a "lost original." No exercise of critical ingenuity could be more futile or impertinent. The impression of the solidity and magnitude of Johnson's character which is to be gathered from Boswell is enforced from other sources; from his essays and his prayers and meditations, from the half-dozen or so lives and reminiscences which ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... the refreshing green, and the gay colours everywhere, fill the eye with pleasure, not less exquisite than that which fills the ears from the warblings and chatterings of birds, the gentle tones of domestic animals, and the tinkling of rills. The mere solidity of the land, under foot, forms an element of pleasure after the tossings of the restless sea, and all the sweet influences put together tend to rouse in the heart a shout of joy and deep gratitude for a world so beautiful, and for powers so ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... college. Even with the faculty he stood high, for if he lacked scholarship he had the more showy gifts that went farther. He knew when to defer and when to ride roughshod to his end. It was felt that his brilliancy had a solidity back of it, a quality of ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... been claimed by Chicago, and even St. Louis. These latter, however, base their right to the name mostly on the results of the census-returns. In all that relates to the substantial greatness of a city,—viz., the general intelligence, solidity of character, and proportionate wealth of its inhabitants,—Cincinnati, I think, may still be considered as approaching nearer to the Eastern cities than either of the others mentioned. This is certainly true as regards the musical devotion of its people; and this characteristic is the one, ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... possible all foreign and accidental accessories, that the eye may rest wholly on the essential objects, the figures themselves. These figures the sculptor works out with their whole body and contour, and as he rejects the illusion of colours, announces by the solidity and uniformity of the mass in which they are constructed, a creation of no perishable existence, but endowed, with a higher power ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... of rocks or chain of hills,—and, like the works of Nature herself, need no other justification of their right to exist than the fact of their existence. We may detest their object, but we cannot deny their solidity of organization. This power of giving a substantial body, an undeniable external shape and form, to his thoughts and perceptions, so that the toiling mind does not so much seem to pass from one sentence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... ask me—why should he now? Besides, I couldn't bear him to feel I wanted position or money from him. I only want love—love—love!' The silent repetition of that word gave her a wonderful sense of solidity and comfort. So long as she only wanted love, surely ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the crescent; and from garret to cellar there was not a nooky corner on which the eye could light. Two drawing-room windows flanked the front door on the left; two dining-room windows on the right. There was not even a gable or a dormer to break the square solidity of the whole. Fourteen windows in all, each chastely shrouded in Nottingham lace curtains, looped back by yellow silk bands, fastened, to a fraction of an inch, at the same height from the sill, while Aspidistra plants, mounted on small tables, were artfully ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... to set down, in orderly fashion, the list of the gem's attributes. I grouped together the fluctuating nature of its pale blue colour, its power of reproducing those who had gone into the Blind Spot, its combination of perfect solidity with extreme lightness; its quality of coldness to the touch of a male, and warmth to that of a female; and finally its ability to induct—I think this is the right term—to induct sounds out of the unknown. This last ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... Stille, pp. 120-124 (who misdates, "23d May" for 22d).] Colonel Winterfeld was made Major-General next day, for this action. Colonel Winterfeld is cutting out a high course for himself, by his conduct in these employments; solidity, brilliant effectuality, shining through all he does; his valor and value, his rapid just insight, fiery energy and nobleness of mind more and more disclosing themselves,—to one who is a judge of men, and greatly needs for his own use the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... even here there might be a difficulty. An active, diversified, and therefore a youthful, ingenuity is required by the quick exigencies of this singular war. Fortress Monroe, for example, in spite of the massive solidity of its ramparts, its broad and deep moat, and all the contrivances of defence that were known at the not very remote epoch of its construction, is now pronounced absolutely incapable of resisting the novel modes of assault which may be brought to bear upon it. It can only be the flexible ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... notion and powers of research by a hasty and popular production. Mr. Goldwin Smith has collected quite enough information for the purpose for which he has used it, and he has not failed through want of industry. The test of solidity is not the quantity read, but the mode in which the knowledge has been collected and used. Method, not genius, or eloquence, or erudition, makes the historian. He may be discovered most easily by his use of authorities. The first question is, whether the writer understands the comparative value ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... wishing to be clever. It was effort that had accomplished that great work. She was ever remarkable for her perseverance, for her industry. Her masters had remarked that it was as delightful as it was uncommon to find so much talent united with so much solidity, and so on." Once on the theme of her own merits, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... misunderstood world, if it was not, indeed, rather a word conveniently cloaking from themselves a multitude of their own sins. But now, as incarnated in this millionaire mammoth, the shadowy word took on a sudden solidity, to which his teeth gave the necessary tearing and ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... can to help create that really healthy condition of the drama which consists in the intimate union of poetry and the stage." Following in the footsteps of Schiller in his Intrigue and Love and of Hebbel in his Maria Magdalena, he has not attained, it is true, the massive solidity of the latter, nor has he breathed into his drama that lofty spirit of social challenge that wings the former. On close inspection, the construction of Ludwig's drama shows undeniable flaws of motivation. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... bread, and answers its purpose, but has neither the appearance nor consistence of our staff of life. It is about the size of the shaddock, and, when fresh gathered, the flavour of the citron; but it is always eaten baked, when it has the solidity of a roasted chestnut. Besides these luxuries, we had some fish nicely cooked, which we ate with the thick interior of the cocoa-nut, which may truly be called the cream, while the juice served to quench our thirst. We had a number of visitors, who all, both men and women, chatted away most merrily, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... circulation of air; they can be painted over and freshened up when necessary, and look well with any furniture. The best patterns are formed by parallel bars and circles, those with simple lilies conveying the idea of solidity, and with the least ornamentation, being preferable always. The extension foot facilitates the arrangement of spread or valance, and if drapery is desired, beds with head posts fitted with canopy frames ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... with which I before and since have regarded her sex. Her gentleness, her docility, her pleasure in the studies which I pointed out to her, attached my affections more than became my age though that was not then much advancedor the solidity of my character. But I need not remind your lordship of the various modes in which you indulged your gaiety at the expense of an awkward and retired student, embarrassed by the expression of feelings so new ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... flaw that ran through the whole period of revolutionary thought. It was not surprising that the family should come in for its share of destructive criticism, along with the other elements of the established system, but it is a proof of the solidity of Turgot's understanding that he should from the first have detected the mischievousness of this side of the great social attack. Nor did subsequent discussion with the champions of domestic license have any effect ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... sheltered this lady's singular menage stands on a hillside above the road, which a rapid path connects with the little grass-grown terrace before it. It is a small shabby, homely dwelling, with a certain reputable solidity, however, and more of internal spaciousness than of outside promise. The place is shown by an elderly competent dame who points out the very few surviving objects which you may touch with the reflection—complacent in ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... placed in so beautiful a light, and illustrated with such apt allusions, that they have in them all the graces of novelty, and make the reader, who was before acquainted with them, still more convinced of their truth and solidity. And here give me leave to mention what Monsieur Boileau has so well enlarged upon in the preface to his works—that wit and fine writing doth not consist so much in advancing things that are new, as in giving things that are known an agreeable turn. It is impossible for us, who live in the latter ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... you satisfaction to infer the great extent and solidity of the public resources from the prosperous state of the finances, notwithstanding the unexampled embarrassments which have attended commerce. When you reflect on the conspicuous examples of patriotism and liberality which have been exhibited by our mercantile fellow ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Adams • John Adams

... compositions appears somewhat formidable at a first glance, but when one comes to examine it carefully the solidity seems somewhat to melt out of it. The long string of church pieces is made up of anthems, many of them far from long. The forty odd "operas" are not operas at all, but sets of incidental pieces and songs for plays, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... himself. Among gentlemen he was the English gentleman; with ladies his aim was the Gallican courtier of any period from Louis Treize to Louis Quinze. He could doat on those who led him to talk in that character—backed by English solidity, you understand. Roast beef stood eminent behind the souffle and champagne. An English squire excelling his fellows at hazardous leaps in public, he was additionally a polished whisperer, a lively dialoguer, one for witty bouts, with something ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... been altogether along the smaller lines of composition, and he has won an enviable place as a fervent worker in diamonds. None of his gems are paste, and a few have a perfection, a solidity, and a fire that fit them for a place in that coronet one might fancy made up of the richest of the jewels of the world's music-makers, and fashioned for the very ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... called the 'Abbaye aux Hommes,' and la Ste. Trinite, the 'Abbaye aux Dames'—both founded and built in the eleventh century; the first (containing the tomb of the Conqueror) with two plain, massive towers, with spires; and an interior remarkable for its strength and solidity—'a perfect example of Norman Romanesque;' adorned, it must be added, with twenty-four nineteenth-century chandeliers with glass lustres suspended by cords from the roof; and with gas ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... chief elements that enter into the composition of living bodies three are gaseous, or convertible into gas. In the physical man water constitutes three-fourths of the weight of the body. This being so we realize why, notwithstanding our sense of solidity and weight, chemical changes occur quite as readily in our organism as in the substances we see about us. There are no waterproof walls in the body of man to impede the percolation of liquids freighted with ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... historical judgments have as much to do with hopes of heaven as public or private conduct. Convictions that have been strained through the instances and the comparisons of modern times differ immeasurably in solidity and force from those which every new fact perturbs, and which are often little better than illusions ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... a few moments the Captain had produced in the great cavernous chimney a foundation for a fire that promised breadth, solidity, and continuance. A great back-log, embroidered here and there with tufts of green or grayish moss, was first flung into the capacious arms of the fireplace, and a smaller log placed above it. "Now, all you young uns go out and bring in chips," said the Captain. "There's ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... and "possessing a literature in vastness and antiquarian value surpassed by no other." He goes on to say that the translations hitherto made "have conveyed to us a faint notion of the compass, variety, solidity, and linguistic beauties of that literature." Such statements as these admit, unfortunately, of rhetorical support, sufficient to convince outsiders that at any rate there are two sides to the question, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... were like streets, its stairways broad enough for four people to ascend them abreast. Light, air, space were throughout its distinguishing qualities, and its furnishings were not only very handsome, they had in a special manner that honest size, solidity, and breadth which make English household belongings so comfortable and satisfactory. The grounds were full of handsome forest trees and wonderful grassy glades and just around the house the soil had been enriched and planted with shrubbery ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... To give solidity and permanence to the inspirations of genius two things are especially necessary. First, that the idea to be communicated should be powerfully apprehended by the speaker or writer; and next, that he should employ words and phrases which might ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... by the full moon, shifting momentarily into new forms and drifting south in low, black clouds of ashes and cinders reaching to Capri. At Torre del Greco we ran under this terrifying pall, apparently a hundred feet above, the solidity of which was soon revealed in the moonlight. The torches of the railway guards added to the effect, but greatly relieved ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... will withstand the winters of the Northern or Middle States in the open ground. The crop should therefore be harvested in October or November, and stored for the winter, out of danger from freezing. Most of the sorts now cultivated retain their freshness and solidity till spring, and some even into the summer; requiring no particular care in their preservation, other than that usually given to the carrot ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... Skinner. Here is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a man whose name stands for caution, has pronounced a panegyric on our situation. Here are his words quoted in this leader; now listen: 'We may safely venture to contemplate with instructive admiration the harmony of its proportions and the solidity of its basis.' What do you say ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... drooping line of the mountains with her childhood's delight in its clear outline against the sky; she saw the white stones of the old graveyard, next door, glimmer through the shadow cast by the church tower, with the half uneasy, fearful pleasure of her romantic girlhood; she felt about her the solidity and permanency of the old house, her father's and her grandfather's home, with the joy in protected security of her young married life; and through it all there ran a heavy sick realization that she was, in fact, a helpless old woman, grown too feeble to conduct her ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... Saracen hornet's nest inside it, has only blackened the outer walls and arches venerably. Utility and perfect adaptation of means to ends form the beauty of Roman buildings. The science of construction and large intelligence displayed in them, their strength, simplicity, solidity, and purpose, are their glory. Perhaps there is only one modern edifice—Palladio's Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza—which approaches the dignity and loftiness of Roman architecture; and this it does because of its absolute freedom from ornament, the vastness of its ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... confusion,) forms of idea, whether respecting morality or marble, arising out of the meanings of these words: the notions of a bed gathered or strewn for the rest, whether of rocks or men; of the various states of solidity and liquidity connected with strength, or with repose; and of the duty of staying quiet in a place, or under a law, and the mischief of leaving it, being all fastened in the minds of early builders, and of the generations ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... raised about four or five feet above the top of the flue, and is made of three quarter inch boards, tongued and grooved, supported by joists two inches broad, and nine inches deep, placed at proportioned distances, to give solidity to the floor. The floor or platform of this kiln should be carefully laid, and well nailed; in this floor should be placed a wooden chimney, nine inches square, on the most convenient part of the ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger

... face doth glow; Yea, this solidity and compound mass, With tristful visage, as against the doom, Is thought-sick at ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... the proper depth of bas-relief. Suppose that depth fixed; then observe what a pretty problem, or, rather, continually varying cluster of problems, will be offered to us. You might, at first, imagine that, given what we may call our scale of solidity, or scale of depth, the diminution from nature would be in regular proportion, as, for instance, if the real depth of your subject be, suppose, a foot, and the depth of your bas-relief an inch, then the parts of the real subject which were six inches round the side of it would be carved, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... shell (fig. 6) are cast in sand moulds head downwards from steel of the required composition to give the proper tenacity. A large head, which is subsequently removed, is cast on the base to give solidity and soundness to the castings. The castings are annealed by placing them in a furnace or oven until red hot, then allowing them to cool gradually. The process of casting is very similar to that for ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... The bones consist of a special and very distinct tissue in which lime predominates. This gives them the strength and solidity which enables them to act as support to ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... Farges, his skin dried up and became horny, causing him such intense irritation, that as the only means of allaying it he had to be kept buried up to the neck while still alive. The disease under which Roquefort suffered seemed to have its seat in the marrow, for his bones by degrees lost all solidity and power of resistance, so that his limbs refused to bear his weight, and he went about the streets crawling like a serpent. Both died in such dreadful torture that they regretted having escaped the scaffold, which would have spared them ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... denied me the good looks that are proverbial in our family—but in compensation he endowed me with a solid mind to match my solid body. The Family means a great deal to me, Barry—more than anybody has ever realised—and there are times when I wonder why the solidity of mind was given to the one member of the race who could not perpetuate it in the direct line." She sighed, and then as if ashamed of unwonted emotion, jerked her dishevelled grey head with a movement that was singularly reminiscent ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... in those days were very far from having attained the strength and solidity which a few generations later were bestowed upon them. The stones of which they were constructed were comparatively small, and fastened together by mortar, consequently they could ill resist even an assault by manual weapons. Covered ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... theatres, theatres, temples, porticoes, triumphal arches, baths and aqueducts, all variously conducive to the health, the devotion, and the pleasures of the meanest citizen. The last mentioned of those edifices deserve our peculiar attention. The boldness of the enterprise, the solidity of the execution, and the uses to which they were subservient, rank the aqueducts among the noblest monuments of Roman genius and power. The aqueducts of the capital claim a just preeminence; but the curious traveller, who, without the light of history, should examine ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... rot. I thought I ought to bestow on it all the attention in my power; and I have deemed it right to treat on this subject in a particular dissertation. After having deeply studied it, and obtaining as much information as I was able, I found little solidity and certainty on the subject; which, joined to the opinion of some prudent and respectable persons whom I consulted, had induced me to give up my design entirely, and to renounce laboring on a subject which is so contradictory, and ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... golden age is made to appear more golden than it really was by the mists of time; but undoubtedly the old actors possessed a mellowness, a solidity, a sort of high tradition now almost unknown. These qualities were due in part, perhaps, to the long and arduous stock company training, where, in the old days, every actor must serve his apprenticeship, and in part to the study ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... necessity and corruption, a free state may lose the spirit of that complex constitution which is the foundation of confidence. On the other hand, I am far from being sure that a monarchy, when once it is properly regulated, may not for a long time furnish a foundation for credit upon the solidity of its maxims, though it affords no ground of trust in its institutions. I am afraid I see in England, and in France, something like a beginning of both these things. I wish I may be found ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... The women on the right appear to come from the house where they had met to assist at the ceremony; the men stand on the left. The background with its portico, and the walls, above which the trees of a garden project, are shown with more truth and solidity. To give wider scope to the scene Fra Angelico has depicted the marriage in an open space. The picture in the Uffizi, on the other hand, is so conventional both in architecture and landscape that it is impossible to establish a comparison between ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino

... waned and winter came back, with the attendant discomforts of dark mornings, draughty corridors, and coatings of ice on the water in the ewers; for this was a good, old-fashioned winter, when Jack Frost made his appearance in the beginning of December, and settled down with a solidity which meant that he had come to stay. The hardy girls declared that it was "ripping," and laughed at the shivery subjects who hobbled about on chilblained feet, and showed faces mottled blue and red, like the imitation marble ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... him linger in Wales to settle the government of the newly won lands. His first care was to hold Snowdon with the ring of fortresses which, in their ruin, still bear abiding witness to the solidity of the conqueror's work. Round each castle arose a new town, created as artificially as were the bastides of Aquitaine, within whose walls English traders and settlers were tempted by high privileges to take up their abodes, and whose strictly military character ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... of miles away, behind a vast curve of water on a tiny piece of earth, came before their eyes. They who had had no solidity or anchorage before seemed to be attached to it somehow, and at once grown more substantial. Perhaps they had been in the drawing-room at the same moment; perhaps they had passed each other on the stairs; at any rate they knew some of the same people. ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... however, was the life of that dance, and he was physically a larger man than most of the rest, for, as a rule, the Colonial born run to wiry hardness rather than to solidity of frame. Gregory Hawtrey was tall and thick of shoulder, though the rest of him was in fine modeling, and he had a pleasant face of the English blue-eyed type. Just then it was shining with boyish merriment, and ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... "If handsomeness means solidity—no. Still, they'll do. Can you give me the lengths for these strips?" and Roger waved his saw at his cousin as if he were so impatient to begin that he could not wait to study out the lengths ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith

... attitude of paradox, his essential judgments on life and literature were usually sound and reasonable. His essay on "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" witnessed to his large and enlightened conception of life, and his profound admiration for Flaubert to the sanity and solidity of his literary taste. In early life he revealed no homosexual tendencies; he married and had children. After he had begun to outgrow his youthful esthetic extravagances, however, and to acquire success and fame, he developed what was at first a simply ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... whole, inevitable disaster overtakes the man who would behave as though it were a thing of shreds and fragments. Now this law of what we may call the Divine unity is equally valid in the purely intellectual order. That, likewise, refuses to admit schisms and divisions to break in on the solidity of its unbroken ranks. An attempt to view life and its problems exclusively from our own standpoint, is to fail to grasp truth; our shadow gets projected over the surface, and the light is partially concealed, if not wholly confused. No better illustration of ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... the great man, for, with a kindly but preoccupied "Thank you, Hugh," Mr. Watling took the papers and dismissed me. Heaviness, blackness and impassivity,—these were the impressions of Mr. Gorse which I carried away from that first meeting. The very solidity of his flesh seemed to suggest the solidity of his position. Such, say the psychologists, is the effect ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... wedge, apply also a clamp, thus assuring additional firmness and solidity to that portion of ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... more fearful magnificence, than that which is sometimes presented in the breaking up of one of our large rivers by a winter flood; when the ice, in its full strength, enormous thickness, and rock-like solidity, is rent asunder, with loud, crashing explosions, and hurled up into ragged mountains, and borne onward before the raging torrent with inconceivable force and frightful velocity, spreading devastation along the banks in its course, and sweeping away the strongest ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... And it had now given us my friend Mr. Stewart, one of the ablest and honestest ministers in Scotland, or elsewhere, whether Established or Dissenting. And these facts, which were but specimens of a numerous class, had a tangibility and solidity about them which influenced me more than all the theoretic reasonings pressed on my attention about the mischief done to the Church by the over-kindness of Constantine, or the corrupting effects of State favour. But then I could as little agree with some of my friends on the endowment ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... obstacles to overcome, and an adequate object to be attained, it was not in the man to give out or fail. The heat that had formerly pervaded his nature, and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind that flashes and flickers in a blaze; but rather a deep red glow, as of iron in a furnace. Weight, solidity, firmness—this was the expression of his repose, even in such decay as had crept untimely over him at the period of which I speak. But I could imagine, even then, that, under some excitement which should go deeply into his consciousness—roused ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... may enjoy an analysis of certain pages in "Ma Piece," for instance, the wonderful description of an alerte at 2 A.M. above the village of Tailly-sur-Meuse (pp. 131, 132). With the vigorous picturesqueness of these sentences we may compare the pensive quality and the solidity of touch which combine to form such a passage as the following account of a watch at Azannes (August 14, 1914):—"La nuit est claire, rayee par les feux des projecteurs de Verdun qui font des barres d'or dans le ciel; merveilleuse nuit de mi-aout, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... oracles of heaven. I now perceive for the first time that I have perhaps made too long a dissertation; and I doubt not you have already perceived that a system built on a basis possessing so little solidity as that of the God whom his devotees raise with one hand and destroy with the other, can have no stability attached to it, and can only be regarded as a long tissue of errors ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... the Americas is plainly stamped upon their respective cities. The one is sealed with a hurried activity—the mark of the exigencies of commerce; the windows and doors of a business world, where men look out or emerge to the strife of money-making. Notwithstanding its wealth and solidity it bears a certain ephemeral stamp which the Mexican type does not convey. The atmosphere of this is one of serenity, of indifference to the feverish haste of money-getting, and its windows and doors give sight and footstep to less ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... Pope. The solidity of thy arguments restores me to myself, and thy eloquence exalts my soul, although it makes me shudder. Francisco is dead; Caesar lives: let him live, and take his brother's place, since fate ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... candidates for the tiara, who was designated by the words 'de antiquitate orbis,' because he was of Orvieto, in Latin, 'orbs vetus.'" (Biog. Unv'l v. Wion.) Menestrier published a refutation of the pretended prophecies of S. Malachi, Paris, 1689, written with much solidity. Don Feijoo also refuted these pretended prophecies in his Teatro Critico. The Noveau Dictionnaire Historique, by MM. Chaudon and Delaudine, speaks of the "errors and anachronisms with which this impertinent list swarms." "The forgetfulness ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... Arthur seemed to become aware of her presence, and laughed heartily at her burlesque account of their fellow-students at Colarossi's. Meanwhile Susie examined him. He was very tall and very thin. His frame had a Yorkshireman's solidity, and his bones were massive. He missed being ungainly only through the serenity of his self-reliance. He had high cheek-bones and a long, lean face. His nose and mouth were large, and his skin was sallow. ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham

... "primary" and "secondary" qualities, and hold that the former, such as extension, figure, motion, and solidity, have some existence outside of the mind in an unthinking substance which they call "matter." But extension, figure, and motion are only ideas existing in the mind, and neither these ideas nor their archetypes can exist in an unperceiving substance. The ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... wall would be a hundred and twenty feet. Mr. Ainsworth says that he found the ruins of the brick wall at Resen, which he considers to be the same with Larissa, "based on a rude and hard conglomerate rock, giving to them all the solidity and characteristics of being built of stone." Travels in the Track, ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon

... connection between robust character and the soil, the hills, mountains and valleys, the pure air and sunshine. There is a very appreciable difference between the physical stamina, the brain vigor, the solidity and the reliability of country-bred men and that of those ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... and telegraphs, proposed either for the defence or the development of his possessions, seem to have been regarded by the amir with extreme distrust, as methods of what has been called pacific penetration —so that on these points he was immovable. It was probably due to the strength and solidity of the executive administration organized, during his lifetime, by Abdur Rahman that, for the first time in the records of the dynasty founded by Ahmad Shah in the latter part of the 18th century, his death ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the yearly balance?" It is a brutal way of putting things. It does not make for poetry and art. It may be sordid. I believe as a people we Canadians, perhaps, do err on the sordid side of the practical, but it also makes for solidity and national strength. ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... however, till we stood almost beneath it that we really felt the grandeur of this great arch, including so large a space of the blue sky in its airy sweep. At a distance, it impresses the spectator with its solidity; nearer, with the lofty vacancy beneath it. There is a spiral staircase within one of its immense limbs; and, climbing steadily upward, lighted by a lantern which the door-keeper's wife gave us, we had a bird's eye view of Paris, much obscured by smoke or mist. Several interminable avenues ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... round as an apple—not an inch of "straight" anywhere in them—and, despite her unusual breadth, her lines were the finest and most beautiful that I had ever seen. She carried a full poop, the interior of which constituted the captain's quarters—roomy, light, and airy; and as I noted the length and solidity of her lower-masts the idea occurred to me that, if the remainder of her spars were to be in proportion, her sail-spread, combined with her perfect lines, ought to give her such exceptional speed as would enable her to do just as ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... them easy and pliant to each other in discourse. Thus, insensibly, our way of living became more free; and the fire of the English wit, which was before stifled under a constrained, melancholy way of breeding, began first to display its force by mixing the solidity of our nation with the air and gaiety of our neighbours. This being granted to be true, it would be a wonder if the poets, whose work is imitation, should be the only persons in three kingdoms who should not receive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... street where the gas lamps still burnt and the night sentry still paced up and down in the spectral gloom. Over the river hung a woolly fog, imprisoning the water; but as she crossed the bridge she noticed where its solidity was incomplete and torn, and into the dark water which lay at the bottom of such crevasses a lamp upon the bridge struck its arrowed likeness. It was a good seven minutes' walk to the garage, and she tried to get warm by running, but the ice crackling in the gutters and between the cobble ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... inquired of her daughter. "Dear, dear, and there's nothing young things want like generous living. Well, it's grievous. When I think of the quarts of milk I used to put into you, Bee, and the pounds and pounds of the best beef jelly—jelly that you could fling over the house, for thickness and solidity, and the fowls I had boiled down for you after the measles—who's that coming down the street, Bee? Look, my love, I'm a bit short-sighted. Oh, it's Miss Peters, of course. How are you, Miss Peters? Hot day, isn't it? Bee and I are off to the Manor—special invitation—letter—I lent it ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... satisfied, that it is not upon the first alone that Australian commerce has raised its storehouse and wharfs, but that the whole extent of the eastern shore of the last more capacious basin, is equally crowded with warehouses, stores, dockyards, mills, and wharfs, the appearance and solidity of which would do credit even to Liverpool. Where, thirty years ago, the people flocked to the beach to hail an arrival, it is not now unusual to see from thirty to forty vessels riding at anchor at one time, collected there from every quarter of the globe. In 1832, one hundred and fifty vessels ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... by one travel these particles Of the warm exhalations, but are all Entangled and enmassed, whereby at once Each is restrained by each, and from without Checked, till compelled more slowly to advance. But the primordial atoms with their old Simple solidity, when forth they travel Along the empty void, all undelayed By aught outside them there, and they, each one Being one unit from nature of its parts, Are borne to that one place on which they strive Still to lay hold, must then, beyond a doubt, Outstrip in speed, and be ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... intervals of about 100 yards, by towers and other fortifications. The ramparts are built of brickwork and ash-tar cemented with lime; measure twenty feet in height, and twenty-five to thirty feet in thickness; but do not at all points preserve this solidity. In the province of Kansou, there is but one line of rampart. The total length of this great barrier, called Wan-ti-chang (or "myriad-mile wall") by the Chinese, is 1,250 miles. It was built about 220 B.C., as a protection against the Tartar marauders, and extends from ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... upon us is shaking us down into solidity as corn is shaken down in the measure. We were heaped up in our own opinion, and sometimes running over in expressions of it. This rude jostling is showing us the difference between bulk and weight, space ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... the Facts, mar the Reflections, and unnaturalize the Incidents, so as to be lost in a Multiplicity of fine idle Words and Phrases, and reduce our Sterling Substance into an empty Shadow, or rather frenchify our English Solidity into Froth and Whip-syllabub. No; let us have Pamela as Pamela wrote it; in her own Words, without Amputation, or Addition. Produce her to us in her neat Country Apparel, such as she appear'd in, on her intended Departure ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson

... founded by men from Holland, in the sixteenth century. In the matter of samovars, especially, there is a wide range of choice in this cradle of "the portable domestic hearth," although there are only two or three among the myriad manufacturers whose goods are famed for that solidity of brass and tin which insures ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... life to intellectual pursuits, opposed with the most barbarous legal disabilities and the still more barbarous incubus of public opinion. Yet notwithstanding all this oppression and want of opportunity, she has shown a quickness of perception, an intuitive acumen, a sharpness of forecast and solidity of judgment that among nearly all married men has made her opinion a matter of great importance. Few are the married men that are willing to risk a disrespect of their wives' judgment in any important matter. An eminent lawyer of Virginia once told me that but ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... is called the "social center," or the "community center," in rural districts. This idea has grown with the spread of the consolidation of schools, and means, as the name implies, a unifying, cooerdinating, organizing agency of some kind in the midst of the community, to bring about a harmony and solidity of all the interests there represented. It implies of course a leader; for what is left to be done by people in general is likely to be done poorly. There is no doubt that this idea should be encouraged and promoted. People living in the country are of necessity forced to a life of ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... spoke Zenith again, "and you are obliged to tame them. The difference here is that the horses are born tame and do not need breaking, and though they have plenty of spirit, as you see, they are so intelligent and have such solidity of character that there is never any danger that they will ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan









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