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verb
Assign  v. i.  (Law) To transfer or pass over property to another, whether for the benefit of the assignee or of the assignor's creditors, or in furtherance of some trust.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Assign" Quotes from Famous Books



... fifty years furnishes a living proof that Representative Government is impotent to discharge all the functions we have sought to assign to it. In days to come the nineteenth century will be quoted as having witnessed the ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... able to account satisfactorily at Sakhalien for the full number of convicts placed in their charge, I do not think they will care whether one of them declares himself to be Count Vasilovich, or not; they will simply assign to him the number which Colonel Sziszkinski now bears, and that will end the matter. If not, we must maroon the fellow upon some spot from which it will be practically impossible for him to escape, as he is altogether too wicked ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... would seem to have lapsed over the street. The older dwellings now begin to look weather-beaten, through the effect of the many eastern storms that have moistened their unpainted shingles and clapboards, for not less than forty years. Such is the age we would assign to the town, judging by the aspect of John Massey, the first town-born child, whom his neighbors now call Goodman Massey, and whom we see yonder, a grave, almost autumnal-looking man, with children of his own about him. To the patriarchs of the settlement, no doubt, the Main Street ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... north transept had attached to its east wall an apsidal Norman chapel similar to that which still exists on the eastern side of the south transept, but this had to make way for an addition of two chapels, which we may assign, from the character of their architecture, to the latter end of the thirteenth century. The northern chapel is lighted by a three-light window with three foliated circles in the head, which is rather sharp pointed, and the southern one by a two-light window with one foliated arch. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins

... have manifested such a spirit of good order and obedience to continental government, as is sufficient to make every reasonable person easy and happy on that head. No man can assign the least pretence for his fears, on any other grounds, than such as are truly childish and ridiculous, viz. that one colony will be striving ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine

... latter gave himself up entirely to scepticism—a natural consequence, after having discovered, as he thought, that the faculty of cognition was not trustworthy. We now intend to make a trial whether it be not possible safely to conduct reason between these two rocks, to assign her determinate limits, and yet leave open for her the entire sphere ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. ...
— Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death • Patrick Henry

... and showed no signs of surprise or curiosity on the sudden appearance of strangers at their fireside. The sample was far from prepossessing. One of the men, who seemed to eye us with suspicion, had just the physiognomy one should assign to a bandit. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... that the sermons laid before his congregation were replete with the subtleties of intellect, and bore evidence of the keenest perception and most exalted catholicity. His teaching was of an extremely liberal character, and if fair to assign a man possessed of such a universality of sympathy to any party, we should say that he belonged to what is denominated the 'Broad Church.' We, with many others, cannot agree in the fullest extent of his teaching, but, at the same time, feel bound to accord the tribute ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... and form of a vessel.—To shape a course. To assign the route to be steered in order to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... when the area of the terrace was restored. F, F, F. Different chambers, halls, triclinium, in which the remains of a carpet were found on the floor, and other rooms, to which it is difficult to assign any particular destination. They are all decorated in the most elegant and refined manner, but their paintings are hastening to decay with a rapidity which is grievous to behold. Fortunately, the Academy of Naples has published a volume of details, in which the greater ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... self'—his friend. Shakespeare, in his denunciation elsewhere of a mistress's disdain of his advances, assigns her blindness, like all the professional sonnetteers, to no better defined cause than the perversity and depravity of womankind. In these six sonnets alone does he categorically assign his mistress's alienation to the fascinations of a dear friend or hint at such a cause for his mistress's infidelity. The definite element of intrigue that is developed here is not found anywhere else in the range of Elizabethan sonnet-literature. The character of the innovation ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... astonished at what he called the obstinacy of the Christians; he knew not from what source these nameless heroes drew a strength superior to his own, though he was at the same time emperor and sage. It is impossible to assign with exactness the date of the first footprints and first labors of Christianity in Gaul. It was not, however, from Italy, nor in the Latin tongue and through Latin writers, but from the East and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... the astonishing height of the snow-line on Mount Ararat, which is placed at 14,000 feet; while in the Alps it is only about 9000 feet, and in the Caucasus on an average 11,000 feet, although they lie in a very little higher latitude. They assign, as a reason for this, the exceptionally dry region in which Ararat is situated. Mr. Bryce ascended the mountain on September 12, when the snow-line was at its very highest, the first large snow-bed he encountered being ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... whereof the former is a defect, the latter an excess of anger: and that liberality is the mean between stinginess and prodigality: and that meekness is the mean between insensibility and savageness: and so of temperance and justice, that the latter, being concerned with contracts, is to assign neither too much nor too little to litigants, and that the former ever reduces the passions to the proper mean between apathy (or insensibility) and gross intemperance. This last illustration serves excellently to show us the radical difference ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... my behaviour was ill-judged and improper; for, as I had received no offence, as the cause of the change was upon my account, not his, I should not have assumed, so abruptly, a reserve for which I dared assign no reason,-nor have shunned his presence so obviously, without considering the strange appearance of ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... Sally Grower and the good-natured Irishwoman, Mrs. McQuillen, not holding the key, could but dimly comprehend. Education, environment, inheritance, character—what a jumble of causes! What Judge was to unravel them, and assign ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... contrary, were persons of very various capacities, and still more diverse in their requirements: there were among them women and old persons, fathers with numerous children. There might also be among them—and this was the greatest danger—ambitious persons, to whom one could not assign the right place because their capacities would not be known, and who would ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... admitting fully the difficulty of tracing the marginal outline, has nevertheless taken for {228} granted, first, that all the consciousness the person now has, be the same focal or marginal, inattentive or attentive, is there in the "field" of the moment, all dim and impossible to assign as the latter's outline may be; and, second, that what is absolutely extra-marginal is absolutely non-existent. and cannot be a ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... gestures. To make those gestures significant the art of the actor must be called into play. So to make the outward event of history significant the poet's art is needed. Therefore a criticism which is based on the Greek view is impelled to assign to art a place, the place of sovereignty in its scheme of values. That Plato himself did not do this was due to his having misunderstood the nature of that process of 'imitation' in which art consists; but only the superficial readers of Plato—and a good many readers deserve no better ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... I have directed General J.E. Johnston to assume command of the Southern Army and assign you to duty with him. Together, I feel assured you ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... omitted from the acting play? There is nothing I have read in Shakespeare, certainly nothing in 'Henry VI.' or the 'Merry Wives of Windsor,' that surpasses its wit and humor.' The actor suggested the breadth of its humor as the only reason he could assign for omission, but thoughtfully added that it was possible that if the lines were spoken they would require the rendition of another or other ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various

... with the possibility of organization of its denizens. Ghosts gradually lost their importance as a factor in everyday life; sights and sounds that had been referred to wandering souls came to be explained by natural laws. Wider geographical knowledge made it difficult to assign the ghosts a mundane home, and led to their relegation to the sub-mundane region. Further, the establishment of great nations familiarized men with the idea that every large community should have its own domain. The gods were gradually massed, first in the sky, the ocean, ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... very much interested in this matter of the Chinese remaining, in order to get their profits and rents in their alcaicerias. Hence I do not think that it would be worth while to petition for [limitation of] the number of the Chinese, unless your Majesty assign that number. Truly, with four or five thousand Chinese, the community would be well served and the country free from danger. [Marginal note: "Have a letter sent to the governor, telling him of this, but not the writer; and that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various

... make it the more wonderful how a custom, so unnatural and inhuman, should have continued for so many ages, at least such is the opinion, that its origin is entirely unknown, or explained by such fabulous absurdities as are too ridiculous to assign ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... of opinion, that although the juice of this cane is larger in quantity, yet that it contains less sugar. There is some sense in the reason they assign, which is, that in the Mauritius and elsewhere it has the full time of twelve or fourteen months allowed for its coming to maturity—whereas the agriculture of India, and especially in Bengal, only allows it eight or nine ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... o'er the snow-besprinkled plain, To seek some neighb'ring copse's side, And rob the woodlands of their pride: With thee, companion of his toil, His active spirits ne'er recoil; Though hard his daily task assign'd, He bears it with an ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... inaccurate rehearsal of what may have been partly real, some on circumstances having no concern whatever with the subject, and others on the invention of some importunate persons, who might perhaps imagine that the readiest mode of forcing the Author to disclose himself was to assign some dishonourable and discreditable cause for ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... Clarendon (Hist. iii. 552) is made to assign the 18th of April for the day of rising; but all the documents, as well as his own narrative, prove this ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... seen that his income must have been large from the year 1718 or thereabouts, till his utter loss of credit in journalism about the year 1726; but he may have had old debts. It is difficult to explain otherwise why he should have been at such pains, when he became prosperous, to assign property to his children. There is evidence, as early as 1720, of his making over property to his daughter Hannah, and the letter from which I have quoted shows that he did not hold his Newington estate in his own name. In this letter he speaks of ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... shall we say of his twenty or thirty successors of the first, second, and third dynasties? What but that they are shadows of shadows? The native monuments of the early Ramesside period (about B.C. 1400-1300) assign to this time some twenty-five names of kings; but they do not agree in their order, nor do they altogether agree in the names. The kings, if they were kings, have left no history—we can only by conjecture attach to them any particular buildings, we can give no account of their actions, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... to the construction of the aqueduct which formerly brought into the town the waters pouring out of the rock at Arcier, two leagues from Besancon, and was the work probably of M. Aurelius and L. Verus. Local antiquaries assign the aqueduct to Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus, apparently for no better reason than because he built a similar work in Rome. The arch of triumph[33] at the entrance to the upper town has been an inexhaustible subject ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... accords with the purpose of Heaven. Infinite benevolence cannot allow a spiritual and sanctified character always to be imprisoned within the narrow confines of flesh and blood. It could never be satisfied to assign the objects of its affection so mean a portion as the pleasures and the possessions of this inferior state of existence. They must die to be perfectly blest. This earth will not do for a Christian in the maturity of his character. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... thee from the balmy air And radiant walks of heaven a little space, Where He, who went before thee to prepare For His meek followers, shall assign thy place. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... Lord Burghersh, Sir George Jackson, Odeleben, and Fain all assign this conversation to the night of the 16th; but Merveldt's official account of it (inclosed with Lord Cathcart's despatches), gives it as on October 17th, at 2 p.m. ("F.O.," Russia, No. 86). I follow this version rather ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... familiar to the Latin poets of the Augustan age, but always in a vague way, and usually with a general reference to Central Asia and the farther East. We find, however, that the first endeavours to assign more accurately the position of this people, which are those of Mela and Pliny, gravitate distinctly towards China in its northern aspect as the true ideal involved. Thus Mela describes the remotest east of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... not my intention to write for ever, or as Mr. Slick would say "for everlastinly;" but to make my bow and retire very soon from the press altogether. I might assign many reasons for this modest course, all of them plausible, and some of them indeed quite dignified. I like dignity: any man who has lived the greater part of his life in a colony is so accustomed to it, that he becomes quite enamoured ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... assign a Sanskrit origin to all or any of these words, they belong to a much earlier epoch than the comparatively pure Sanskrit words, the importation of which into Malay is the subject now ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell

... wipe out insignificant me! Thinking to bide his time and recoup his fallen fortunes George came back into camp; but he owns a valuable trap site which Marsh and his colleagues want; and before they would give him work, they tried to make him assign it to them, and contract never to go in business on his own account. Naturally George refused, so they disciplined him some more. He's been starving now for two years. Marsh and his companions rule ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... of clemency are mentioned. It is not, indeed, always safe to accept the stories, some of which are suspicious from their very form, while others are manifest inventions of an age when tolerance had become more popular than persecution. To the category of fable we are compelled to assign the famous response which Le Hennuyer, Bishop of Lisieux, is reported, by authors writing long after the event, as having returned to the lieutenant sent to him by Charles the Ninth. History is occasionally capricious, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... Eleatic stranger expressly criticises the doctrines in which he had been brought up; he admits that he is going to 'lay hands on his father Parmenides.' Nothing of this kind is said of Zeno and Parmenides. How then, without a word of explanation, could Plato assign to them the refutation of ...
— Parmenides • Plato

... any one should discover my possession of this strange wine; if Ganganelli should perceive that it is not wine from his own cellar that I have poured into the cup for him! It is dangerous work that you would assign to me, a work for which I might lose my head, and you venture to offer me a poor six thousand scudi for it! Adieu, then, pious fathers, keep you your golden lock, and I my unclosed lips. I shall know when and where ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... to say that the writers who are most willing to assign a high antiquity to the first occupation of the British Isles by Man, have never carried their epoch so high as the time when Britain and Gaul were joined by an isthmus. On the contrary, they all argue as if the islands were as insular as ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... that the prophets assign, And the students of stars to the years that are mine; Nay, let thirty suffice, for the man who hath passed Thirty years is a Nestor, and HE died ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang

... according to its resources. Of the Continental taxes assessed in 1783, only one-fifth part had been paid by the middle of 1785. And the worst of it was that no one could point to a remedy for this state of things, or assign any ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... It will be a historical fact, made palpable to succeeding ages, that you have wiped off a discredit from Scotland's church and nation, by securing a suitable memorial of one of her most distinguished sons, in the most conspicuous position the Metropolis could assign to it. It will be for us of the Free Church to recognise in our archives the high compliment paid to our illustrious leader and chief in the great movement of the Disruption by one of other ecclesiastical convictions ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... liked what you said, Milverton, about the philosophy of making light of many things, and the way of looking at life that may thus be given to those we educate. I rather doubted at first, though, whether you were not going to assign too much power to education in the modification of temper. But, certainly, the mode of looking at the daily events of life, little or great, and the consequent habits of captiousness or magnanimity, are just the matters which the ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps

... aspirations are important only in so far as they caused him to take a great step forward in the development of his art. The nearer the artist comes to reproducing for us life in its totality, the higher the rank we assign him among his fellows. Tried by this canon, Balzac is supreme. His interweaving of characters and events through a series of volumes gives a verisimilitude to his work unrivaled in prose fiction, and paralleled only in the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... qualities would permit her to be. Their dissimilarity did not stop here—it was deeper than mere appearance—the character of their minds differed almost as strikingly as did their complexion. The fair-haired beauty had a large proportion of that softness and pliability of temper which physiognomists assign as the characteristics of such complexions. She was much more the creature of impulse than of feeling, and consequently more the victim of extrinsic circumstances than was her sister. Emily, on the contrary, possessed ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... called for our most remarkable adventures, and as the occurrence I allude to was certainly the most remarkable one I ever met with in my hunting experience, I will relate it for the story you assign me. ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... had seen her dance," said Frederick, "you would be more inclined to assign her the role of the ant throttled by ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... the titular head of the bureau. He finds on his desk eleven police slips, each bearing in succinct outline the story of a crime which requires the services of Central Office detectives. Ordinarily he will assign two men to each crime and perhaps the same day, or the following one, the detectives will make a verbal or written report. Out of the eleven cases, perhaps ten will prove to be minor robberies of no especial significance, except to the victims. On the face of them, they are the work of professional ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... the house is ancient, and dates from medieval times. Some have conjectured that the present library and the adjoining rooms (the partitions being modern) originally formed the refectory of a monastic establishment. Others assign it to another use; but all agree that it is monastic and antique. The black oak rafters of the roof, polished as it were by age, meet overhead unconcealed by ceiling. Upon the wall in one place a figure seems at the first glance ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... according to your own doctrine and assertion, must be null and void; and therefore, how many persons titles to their lands will become void, I leave you to consider. And though, it may be, you will assign some new late fact, that you say will cause such a forfeiture, by which you may think to avoid the ill consequence that attends the titles to the lands; yet know, that the facts that you assign may not be the only ones that ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... reasoning, and keenness of analysis she felt that he was her master; in knowledge—the power of acquiring and using scientific facts—she could but laugh at his weakness. It puzzled her. She wondered at it; but she had never sought to assign a reason for it. It remained for the learner himself to do this. One day, after weeks of despondency, he changed places with his teacher during the hour devoted to his lessons, and taught her why it was ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... the skin at the pubes, which is called upon to furnish the extra tissue for the time being needed during erection, which should be supplied by the prepuce—this being the only office which I have been able to assign to this otherwise useless but very mischievous appendage. In cases where preputial irritation produces more or less priapism, the continued stretching of this integument causes a marked increase in its growth, which is mostly added forward. It was on ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... inclined to question the propriety of the title of the book, and to assign the true heroineship to Valerie Marneffe, whom also the same and other persons are fond of comparing with her contemporary Becky Sharp, not to the advantage of the latter. This is no place for a detailed examination of the comparison, as to ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... a new company, subsidiary to both L. E. & S. and T. & O., to engage in interplanetary shipping; both companies to assign their equity in the Harriet Barne to the new company, the work of completing her to be done at our spaceport and the labor cost to be shared. This would give us our spaceship, and get T. & O. off the hook all around. Everybody ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper

... has come down to us dates from 1467.[21] What relates to Jeanne before her coming to Orleans is interpolated; and the interpolator was so unskilful as to date Jeanne's arrival at Chinon in the month of February, while it took place on March 6, and to assign Thursday, March 10, as the date of the departure from Blois, which did not occur until the end of April. The diary from April 28 to May 7 is less inaccurate in its chronology, and the errors in dates which do occur may be attributed to the copyist. But the facts to which ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... indeed an admirable sagacity, as I have seen in some very remarkable instances. Neither was he at all inclinable to govern himself by secret impulses upon his mind, leading him to things for which he could assign no reason but the impulse itself. Had he ventured, in a presumption on such secret agitations of mind, to teach or to do any thing not warranted by the dictates of sound sense and the word of God, I should readily have acknowledged ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge

... had rebelled against him. Many of the old ducal families either died out or lost their heritage by unsuccessful revolt. None of them offered a long succession of able rulers. The duchies consequently fell repeatedly into the hands of the king, who then claimed the right to assign them to whom ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... orally from generation to generation. Thus, while Japanese annalists, by accepting the aggregate duration of all the reigns known to them, arrive at the conclusion that the first Emperor, Jimmu, ascended the throne in the year 660 B.C., it is found on analysis that their figures assign to the first seventeen sovereigns an average age ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... untrodden prairie, among the savage Indians or scarcely less savage settlers, all equally acknowledge his dominion. 'Within this circle none dares walk but he.'" And Christopher North, in the Noctes: "He writes like a hero!" And beyond the limits of his own country, every where, the great critics assign him a place among the foremost of the illustrious authors of the age. In each of the departments of romantic, fiction in which he has written, he has had troops of imitators, and in not one of them an equal. Writing not from books, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... encouraged, just as attention is given to the hygiene of a child who is under weight for his age. But it should not be inferred that any hard and fast age limits may be set for the use of different plays and games. To assign such limits would be a wholly artificial procedure, and yet is one toward which there is sometimes too strong a tendency. A certain game cannot be prescribed for a certain age as one would diagnose and prescribe ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... considerably outnumber the females; yet, while that disproportion exists throughout the provinces, polyandry is confined to the Tibetans. Their wretched lands, verging on the line of perpetual snow, devoid of fuel, and in many places unable to ripen grain, keep them poor; and they assign as a justification for the practice the necessity of repressing population and retaining property undivided. One mistress of the house and three or four masters, who are almost always brothers, is their unique remedy for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... 1729, recommends an elliptical missile, hollow behind, from a notion that the hollow gathered the explosive force, Robins recommends elongated balls; and they were used in many varieties of form. Theory would assign, as the shape of highest rapidity, one like that which would be made by the revolution of the waterline section of a fast ship on its longitudinal axis; and supposing the force to have been applied, this would doubtless be capable of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... assign with certainty responsibility for this serious misunderstanding. Possibly Howe's optimism and oratorical vagueness led him to misinterpret the promises made, but his reports immediately after the interviews were explicit, and in dispatches and speeches sent to the Colonial ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton

... is frequently quite obscure. M. Is. Geoffroy St. Hilaire has forcibly remarked that certain malconformations frequently, and that others rarely, coexist without our being able to assign any reason. What can be more singular than the relation in cats between complete whiteness and blue eyes with deafness, or between the tortoise-shell colour and the female sex; or in pigeons, between their feathered feet and skin betwixt the ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... to laugh, Doctor Grim," persisted the child, but either could not or would not assign any reason for her disapprobation, although what she said appeared to produce a noticeable effect on Doctor Grimshawe, who lapsed into a rough, harsh manner, that seemed to satisfy Elsie better. Crusty Hannah, meanwhile, seemed ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... royal government by means of such an assembly. There is no thought of universal suffrage. "It is property that makes the citizen; every man who has possessions in the state is interested in the state, and whatever be the rank that particular conventions may assign to him, it is always as a proprietor; it is by reason of his possessions that he ought to speak, and that he acquires the right of having himself represented." Yet this very definite statement does not save him from the standing difficulty of a democratic philosophy of politics. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... Europe, 1596. So commonly cultivated a shrub needs no description here, sufficient to say that the handsome evergreen foliage and pretty pinky-white flowers assign to it a first position amongst hardy ornamental flowering shrubs, V. Tinus strictum has darker foliage than the species, is more upright, rather more hardy, but not so profuse in the bearing of flowers. V. Tinus lucidum ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster

... be hard work," Anketam said. "I just want you to take care of the village when I'm not there. Settle arguments, assign the village work, give out punishment if necessary—things like that. As far as the village is concerned, you'll ...
— The Destroyers • Gordon Randall Garrett

... so great a hero, who had conquered all his enemies in battle, and had bound even the prince of Porgu in chains, could not remain idle in heaven. So he summoned all the gods in secret conclave to consider what work they should assign to the Kalevide, and the debate lasted for many days and nights. At last they determined that he should keep watch and ward at the gates of Porgu, so that Sarvik should never be able to free himself ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... so grouped and classified that an instructor can assign to a student deficient in English exact lessons with principles, illustrations, and exercises covering each typical defect as it comes to light in his work. The book also furnishes an abundance of illustrative material for use in regular ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... follows, as a legitimate consequence, that the first wife of one man "for time" may be the "spiritual" wife of another man "for eternity." The power of sealing and unsealing is vested in the Head of the Church, which, however, he may and does assign, with certain limitations, to deputies. The ceremony is performed in a room in the Mansion-House within Brigham's square, which is furnished with an altar and kneelng-benches. In every instance of divorce, the woman is supplied with a printed certificate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... against him, and for these I am pledged to procure justice at the hands of the courts of justice. What was done in my lands must be also judged in my lands, else my subjects might be wounded in their sense of right; and to assign this suit to the imperial court at Vienna would be in the highest degree derogatory to the Electoral power and jurisdiction. I can not therefore gratify his Imperial Majesty in this wish.[53] As concerns his right to the place of grand master, that appointment belongs not to me, but to ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... curiosity exposed even to Gallio-llke wayfarers. It is, in fact, a neglected topic. Its derivatives are obscure, its facts doubtful. Questions spring from it, sucker-like, numberless, which none may answer. Why, for instance, in apportioning his gifts among his posterity, did Phoebus assign the laurel to his step-progeny, the sons of song, and pour the rest of the vegetable world into the pharmacopoeia of the favored AEsculapius? Why was even this wretched legacy divided in aftertimes with the children ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... Whigs, who regarded the Prince of Wales as their dependent, if not as their dupe, insisted on his succession to the unlimited prerogatives of the sovereign; the Tories insisted, on the other hand, that Parliament alone had a right to confer the regency and to assign its powers, though they admitted that the choice, in the present instance, ought to fall upon the Prince of Wales. A question of this importance naturally brought out all the ability on both sides. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... sombre about the country; day was declining, the outlines of the larger objects in the landscape were becoming less distinct, and the trees were assuming any sort of fantastical shape that the mind chose to assign to them. Here and there a bird rustled in the foliage, but otherwise the silence was only broken by footsteps of the ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... not in the human, but divine nature of Jesus Christ. However, since hell is sometimes taken for the place (Acts 1:25), sometimes for the grave, sometimes for the state (Psa 116:3), and sometimes but for a figure of the place where the damned are tormented (Jonah 2:2); I will not strictly assign to Christ the place, the prison where the damned spirits are (1 Peter 3:19), but will say, as I said before, that he was put into the place of sinners, into the sins of sinners, and received what by justice was the proper wages of sin both ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... than that general insecurity should pervade the community from the arbitrary discretion of the judge. It is this which has blighted the countries of the East as much as cruel laws or despotic executives. Thus the legislature has seen fit in certain cases to assign a limit to the period within which actions shall be brought; in order to urge men to vigilance, and to prevent stale claims from being suddenly revived against men whose vouchers are destroyed or whose witnesses are dead. It is true, in foro conscientiae, a defendant, ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood

... should understand by it, that many hear the call of the Gospel, but few are chosen by God and admitted through regeneration into his family, it would not be possible, as far as I can perceive, to assign to it any proper connection with the lesson of the parable. But by the terms in which this sentence is introduced, it is clearly intimated that it is the very conclusion and kernel, so to speak, of the doctrine which the parable was intended ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... comes up from his grave! How the cheek of mercenary selfishness crimsons at the thought of his incorruptible integrity! How heartless and hollow pretenders, who offer lip service to freedom, while they give their hands to whatever work their slaveholding managers may assign them; who sit in chains round the crib of governmental patronage, putting on the spaniel, and putting off the man, and making their whole lives a miserable lie, shrink back from a contrast with the proud and austere dignity of his character! What a ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... art-form, then, will Homer, the grand constructive poet, who seizes every object necessary for his temple of song, assign to Ulysses singing of himself? The Fairy Tale is taken with its strange supernatural shapes, which have no reality, and hence can only have an ideal meaning; we are ushered into the realm of the physically impossible, where we have to see the spiritually actual, if ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... create; Why near the dregs of youth perversely wilt thou stay, So highly courted by the brisk and gay? Wert thou right woman, thou should'st scorn to look On an abandon'd wretch by hopes forsook; Forsook by hopes, ill fortune's last relief, Assign'd for life to unremitting grief; For, let Heaven's wrath enlarge these weary days, If hope e'er dawns the smallest of its rays. Time o'er the happy takes so swift a flight, And treads so soft, so easy, and so light, That ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... doccia. Smollett is perhaps the first writer to explain the word and assign to it the now familiar ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... for "profiteor;" and that instead of taking solemn vows, they were simply affiliated to the Benedictine Order of Mount Olivet. Such was the first beginning of the congregation of which Francesca was the mother and foundress. In these early times, Don Antonio, their director, did not assign them any special occupation, and only urged them to the most scrupulous obedience to the commandments of God and of the Church, to a tender devotion to the Mother of God, a diligent participation in the Sacraments, and the exercise of all the Christian virtues, ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... man are naturally found either in caverns, where they escaped destruction by the ice sheets, or in deposits outside the glaciated area. In both cases it is extremely difficult, or quite impossible, to assign the remains to definite glacial or interglacial times. Their relative age is best told by the fauna with which they are associated. Thus the oldest relics of man are found with the animals of the late Tertiary or early Quaternary, such as a species of hippopotamus ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... that, having but the September before received 100,000l., he must give him another in February? My Lords, he must, in the interval, have threatened the Nabob with some horrible catastrophe, from which he was to redeem himself by this second present. You can assign no other motive for his giving it. We know not what answer Mr. Hastings made to Mr. Middleton upon that occasion, but we find that in the year 1783 Mr. Hastings asserts that he sent up Major Palmer and Major ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... do justice to his memory, since nobody else undertakes it. And, indeed, I can assign no cause why so many of his acquaintance, that are as willing and more able than myself to give an account of him, should forbear to celebrate the memory of one so dear to them, but only that they look upon it as a work entirely ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... you or break you, and I shall play the part they assign me in the game. Oh, I've nothing to hide. I've no excuse to make. You will fight your battle, and we shall fight ours. Maybe we shall learn to hate each other in the course of it. I don't know. Yet there's nothing personal in the fight. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... Matthew Arnold (1822-88), is a poem that I do not expect children to appreciate fully, even when they care enough for it to learn it. It is too long for most children to commit to memory, and I generally assign one stanza to one pupil and another to another pupil until it is divided up among them. The poem is a masterpiece. Doubtless the poet meant to show that the forsaken merman had a greater soul to save than the woman who sought to save her soul by deserting ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... declaring incapacities, would not be above the just claims of a final judicature, if they had not laid it down as a leading principle, that they had no rule in the exercise of this claim but their own discretion. Not one of their abettors has ever undertaken to assign the principle of unfitness, the species or degree of delinquency, on which the House of Commons will expel, nor the mode of proceeding upon it, nor the evidence upon which it is established. The direct consequence of which is, that the first franchise of an Englishman, and that ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... as the events I am about to describe might have happened many different ways, my choice of these I shall assign can be grounded on nothing but mere conjecture; but besides these conjectures becoming reasons, when they are not only the most probable that can be drawn from the nature of things, but the only means we ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... with his toilet. When he arrived, the room was already full, and he had an instant's fear that the mask with the violet ribbons would not find him, inasmuch as the unknown had neglected to assign a place of meeting, and he congratulated himself on having come unmasked. This resolution showed great confidence in the discretion of his late adversaries, a word from whom would have sent him before the Parliament, or at least to the Bastille. But so much confidence had the ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... welcome was now assured he met some three of four women among whom it would have been difficult to assign the precedence for grace of manner and of mind. These persons were not in declared revolt against the order of things, religious, ethical, or social; that is to say, they did not think it worthwhile to ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... English is almost proverbial. Were I to assign a cause, it would be, their living so much on animal food. There is no doubt but this induces a ferocity of temper unknown to men whose food is taken chiefly from ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... surely excessive unthriftiness.'" Replied the second Caliph, "Ho thou, the money is my money and the stuff my stuff, and this is by way of largesse to my suite and servants; for each suit that is rent belongeth to one of my cup-companions here present, and I assign to them with each suit of clothes the sum of five hundred dinars." The Wazir Ja'afar replied, "Well is whatso thou doest, O our lord," ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... is," she said. "This man is my prisoner, and I'm going to have to keep him in custody here for two days and a half, until help arrives from Mars City. I'd like for you to arm a couple of dependable men with heatguns and assign them to ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... to make an announcement, and give further instructions. In order that there may be no confusion, in the event the enemy should attack us and compel the passengers to take to the boats, I am going to assign places to all of you, so that the moment you hear the five bells you will know where to go, ready to man the boats. Now, notice the numbers on the boats, which you see are swung out on the davits ready to be launched. Be particular ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward

... piece worthy of any poet. It has that aim of concentration and organic unity which I value greatly both in prose and verse. 'Bell in Camp' pleases me less, for the same reason which makes me put Rossetti's 'Jenny,' and some of Browning's pathetic-satiric pieces, below the rank which many assign them. In no one of the poems I am thinking of, is the inherent sordidness of everything in the persons supposed, except the one poetic trait then under treatment, quite forgotten. Otherwise, I feel the pathos, the humour, of the piece (in the ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... of man and psychical phenomena to which they give rise, whether in the conscious, inner realm, in functions of the bodily organism, or observable to others, we are able to assign each to its ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... Kirchner has collected 17 cases of this nature, two of which were due to contusions of the chest, one each to a puncture, a cut, and a shot-wound, and three to erosion from suppuration. In the remaining cases the account fails to assign a definite cause. Chylothorax, or chylous ascites, is generally a result of this injury. Krabbel mentions a patient who was run over by an empty coal car, and who died on the fifth day from suffocation due to an effusion into ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... often asked to tell which of their friends they love the best, but they are seldom required to assign any reason for their choice. It is not prudent to question them frequently about their own feelings; but whenever they express any decided preference, we should endeavour to lead, not to drive them to reflect ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... Rzhanoff Houses, or the Rzhanoff fortress. These houses once belonged to a merchant named Rzhanoff, but now belong to the Zimins. I had long before heard of this place as a haunt of the most terrible poverty and vice, and I had accordingly requested the directors of the census to assign me to this quarter. My ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... is the more deserving of being held in honour in proportion as it is the more exposed to peril. Away with those who assert that letters have the preeminence over arms; I will tell them, whosoever they may be, that they know not what they say. For the reason which such persons commonly assign, and upon which they chiefly rest, is, that the labours of the mind are greater than those of the body, and that arms give employment to the body alone; as if the calling were a porter's trade, for which nothing more is required than sturdy strength; or as if, in what we who profess them ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... when I arrived, much fatigued by the journey I had so often made so easily. The Boar could not put me into my usual bedroom, which was engaged (probably by some one who had expectations), and could only assign me a very indifferent chamber among the pigeons and post-chaises up the yard. But I had as sound a sleep in that lodging as in the most superior accommodation the Boar could have given me, and the quality of my dreams was about the same as ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... court of Madrid cede these districts to France and from that moment the power of America is bounded by the limit which it may suit the interests and the tranquillity of France and Spain to assign her. The French Republic ... will be a wall of brass forever impenetrable to the combined efforts of England and America." [Footnote: Quoted in Henry Adams's "History of ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... Absolute was precisely what the contingent was not. The perfect was free of every mark of imperfection. Behind all manifestations was the essential Substance which made the manifestations. The completely Real was above all mutation and process. "For one to assign," therefore, "to God any human attributes," as Spinoza, the supreme apostle of this negative way has said, "is to reveal that he has no true idea of God." It has taken all the philosophical and spiritual travail of the centuries to discover that there may be a concrete Infinite, an organic Absolute, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... may likewise bargain, sell, assign, transfer and convey such property, and enter into contracts regarding the same on her separate trade, labor or business with the like effect as if she were unmarried. Her husband, however, is not liable for such contracts, and they do not render ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... Miss Middleton, inventing beforehand never prospers; 't is a way to trip our own cleverness. Truth and mother-wit are the best counsellors: and as you are the former, I'll try to act up to the character you assign me." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... my part, I envy not her state, Nor yet mislike the meanness of my simple rate. But what the heavens assign, that do I still think best: My fame was never yet by Fortune's frown opprest: Here, therefore, will I rest in this my homely bower, With patience to abide the storms ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... OF HOSPITALS.—The reports of hospitals for lunatics almost universally assign intemperance as one of the causes which predispose a man's offspring to insanity. This is even more strikingly manifested in the case of congenital idiocy. They come generally from a class of families ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... Fielding's works it is somewhat difficult (if due proportion be observed) to assign any real importance to efforts like the Covent-Garden Journal. Compared with his novels, they are insignificant enough. But even the worst work of such a man is notable in its way; and Fielding's contributions to the Journal ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... of—duty! I have worked hard, however imperfectly. I have worked in weariness, in tribulation, and to the very edge of peril; and I believe that the high Taskmaster, to whom I thus refer with humble and solemn awe, will pardon me some repose, if circumstances beyond my control assign it to me for ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... offered to admit Almagro and his troops into Cuzco, and to assign them a particular quarter of the city for their residence, if he would agree to defer the dispute about the boundaries, till intelligence were sent to the governor Don Francisco Pizarro, then at Lima, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... author here does, that when CHRIST said "Lazarus, come forth," "he that was dead," (though he had been buried four days,) "came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes[73];"—admitting these "facts," I say,—what other "cause," or "explanation" does the reverend gentleman propose to assign but the supernatural power of ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... in the late action at Cypress Bend, on the 1st inst., you are hereby appointed an Acting Master's Mate in the Navy of the United States, on temporary service. Report, without delay, to Acting Rear-Admiral David D. Porter, for such duty as he may assign you. Very respectfully, your ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon

... knowledge of manual training, of domestic science, of designing and painting, to learn to cook—these were indeed measures full of reward, but they were not all. In her wondering, pondering meditation she arrived at the point where she tried to assign to her love the growing fullness of her life. This, too, splendid and all-pervading as it was, she had to reject. Some exceedingly illusive and vital significance of life had ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... much of the country, and you assign various reasons for disliking it; among others, you imagine the atmosphere too moist and heavy; I agree with you in that opinion, all the black clouds in the sky are continually pressing upon you, for as the proverb says, Like draws to like. Believe me, I have sometimes taken you at a distance, for ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... obscurity was around me, and the stars were glittering brightly overhead. How far in the night it was I could not guess. How to follow my companions too, was a question, as it was so dark that I could not have found my way to the camp, even if they had been there. The only cause I could then assign for my having slept so long, was that I must have been surrounded by some herbs of soporific power, though, perhaps, the perfect tranquillity of the spot, the heat of the weather, and the exertion I had of ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... the appointee, expressed in the commission, was very assuring. Accompanying it was a letter from the Secretary of the Navy directing me to report to the Bureau of Ordnance and Hydrography, in Washington, for such duty as it might assign me. I arrived on October 6, and immediately called on Professor J. S. Hubbard, who was the leading astronomer of the observatory. On the day following I reported as directed, and was sent to Captain Gilliss, the recently appointed ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... But it does not follow from this that in each particular case certain characters will reappear: for instance, this will not occur when a race is crossed with another endowed with prepotency of transmission. In some few cases the power of reversion wholly fails, without our being able to assign any cause for the failure: thus it has been stated that in a French family in which 85 out of above 600 members, during six generations, had been subject to night-blindness, "there has not been a single example ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... this was sin unto David; and like all sin, brought with it its own punishment. I do not mean to judge him: to assign his exact amount of moral responsibility. Our Lord forbids us positively to do that to any man; and least of all, to a man who only acted according to his right, and the fashion of his race and his age. But we must fix it very clearly in our minds, that sins may be punished ...
— David • Charles Kingsley

... no horses, of course?" Lord Beresford put in. "I will provide you with horses, and will assign servants to you from one of the cavalry regiments with me. Will you join me at daybreak to-morrow? we shall march ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty

... authorizing them to issue such commissions or letters of marque. A specimen American privateering commission may be seen in doc. no. 144; a Portuguese letter of marque, and a paper by which its recipient purported to assign it to another, in docs. no. 14 and no. 15. Royal instructions were issued to all commanders of privateers (doc. no. 126), and each was required to furnish, or bondsmen were required to furnish on his behalf, caution or security[2] ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... answered readily, gaily almost, "I cannot share your regrets for me. The act of yours may be a madness, Madonna, but it is the bravest, sweetest madness that ever was, and I shall be proud to play my part if you'll assign ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... the sordid throng Who barter human feeling at the mart Of pamper'd selfishness, and thus do wrong Imperial Nature of her prime desert.— SEWARD! thy strains, beyond the critic-praise Which may to arduous skill its meed assign, Can the pure sympathies of spirit raise To bright Imagination's throne divine; And proudly triumph, with a generous strife, O'er all the "flat realities ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... that anecdote of Jones if the napkin-in-hand listener should be an ex-envoy renowned for his story-telling? Who would break down in his history, enunciate a false quantity, misquote a speech, or mistake the speaker, in such hearing? Some one might object to the position and to the functions I assign to persons of a certain distinction, and say that it was unworthy of an ex-ambassador to act as a hall-porter, or a celebrated prose-writer to clean the knives. I confess I do not think so. I shrewdly suspect a great deal of what we are pleased to ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... prison, in the midst of political storms, how shall I recall to my mind, and how describe, the rapture, the tranquillity I enjoyed at that period; but when I review the events of my life, I find it difficult to assign to circumstances that variety and that plenitude of affection which have so strongly marked every point of its duration, and left me so clear a remembrance of every place at ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... laws have greatly fallen off in dignity. No long time ago they were quite commonly described as the Fixed Laws of Nature, and were supposed sufficient in themselves to govern the universe. Now we can only assign to them the humble rank of mere descriptions, often erroneous, of similarities which we believe we have observed.... A law of nature explains nothing, it has no governing power, it is but a descriptive formula which the careless have sometimes personified." It used to be said that "the laws ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... parts are aroused from their lethargy, we will come back and fight for our home and lands; if not, I will no longer stay in East Anglia, which I see is destined to fall piecemeal into the hands of the Danes; but we will journey down to Somerset, and I will pray King Ethelbert to assign me lands there, and to take me ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... editing for the Early English Text Society the Troy Book, translated from Guido di Colonna, puts forward a plea for Huchowne as its author, to whom he would also assign the Morte Arthure (ed. Perry) and the Pistel of Sweet Susan.[8] But Mr. Donaldson seems to have been misled by the similarity of vocabulary, which is not at all a safe criterion in judging of works written in a Northumbrian, West or East ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various

... myths of the Teutonic race settled in England, no figure appears more frequently and more mysteriously than that of Gladstone or Mista Gladstone. To unravel the true germinal conception of Gladstone, and to assign to all the later accretions of myth their provenance and epoch, are the problems attempted in this chapter. It is almost needless (when we consider the perversity of men and the lasting nature of prejudice) to remark that some still see in Gladstone a shadowy historical ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... place in the midst of Mark's narrative. Most of it, however, he has gathered together in what seems to be a sort of appendix, which he has inserted between the close of the ministry in Galilee and the final arrival in Judea. For many of the teachings it is now impossible to assign a time or place. That this is so will cause no surprise or difficulty if we remember that in the earliest days the report of what Jesus said and did circulated in the form of oral tradition only. It was the knowledge that first-hand witnesses were passing away that led to the writing of the gospels. ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... the world has always insisted upon accepting him as a thinker: and hence a great coil of misunderstanding. As a thinker, Emerson is difficult to classify. Before you begin to assign him a place, you must clear the ground by a disquisition as to what is meant by "a thinker", and how Emerson differs from other thinkers. As a man, Emerson is ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... contain a slight and rapid sketch of Barneveld's career up to the point at which the Twelve Years' Truce with Spain was signed in the year 1609. In previous works the Author has attempted to assign the great Advocate's place as part and parcel of history during the continuance of the War for Independence. During the period of the Truce he will be found the central figure. The history of Europe, especially ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... incident as having occurred in the course of our Lord's journey to Jerusalem to attend the Feast of Tabernacles; others (e.g. Geikie) assume that it took place immediately after that feast; and yet others (e.g. Farrar) assign it to the eve of the Feast of Dedication, nearly three months later. The place given it in the text is that in which it appears ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... said the marquise to herself. "M. Faucheux, you will take away with you both the gold and silver plate. I can assign, as a pretext, that I wish it remodeled on patters more in accordance with my own taste. Melt it down, and return me its value ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... thing worth caring for. Colbert, moreover, who was not simply an envious and jealous man, but who had the king's interest really at heart, because he was thoroughly imbued with the highest sense of probity in all matters of figures and accounts, could well afford to assign as a pretext for his conduct, that in hating and doing his utmost to ruin M. Fouquet, he had nothing in view but the welfare of the state and the dignity of the crown. None of these details escaped Fouquet's ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... of the higher order, as regular guests." The hotel clerk's voice was silken with courtesy; there was no telling with what important families these two were connected; and it would not do to give offense. "We receive servants only when they accompany their employers, and then assign them to the servants' quarters. You yourself must perceive the necessity of this," he added hastily, seeing that Mrs. De Peyster was shaking, "to preserve ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott

... and the logs are carried away. Monsieur Claes received three hundred thousand francs in cash as a first instalment of the price, which he has used towards paying his bills in Paris; but to clear off his debts entirely he has been forced to assign a hundred thousand francs of the three hundred thousand still due ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... work when the energy arrives from space," Tom said, "but I think everything tracks okay. Hank, get these plans blueprinted and assign an electronics group to the project. You'd better handle the ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... with any additions in the margin or any prologue ... except the same be first viewed, examined, and allowed by the king's highness, or such of his majesty's council, or others, as it shall please his grace to assign thereto, but only the plain sentence and text."[172] The version of 1611 admitted ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos

... very beginning it banished the idea that electricity as it passes through metallic conductors has anything like its velocity through free space. It was soon found, as Professor Mendenhall says, "that it is no more correct to assign a definite velocity to electricity than to a river. As the rate of flow of a river is determined by the character of its bed, its gradient, and other circumstances, so the velocity of an electric current is found to depend on the conditions under which the flow takes place."[2] Mile for ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... sides of the game, should conclude that the rigors and restraints of not drinking overbalance the compensations and take up the practice again; but I cannot understand why a man should be so great a hypocrite with himself as to assign a reason like that for his renewal of the habit. No man quits just to see whether he can quit. Every man quits because he personally thinks he ought to quit—for whatever his personal reason may be. And he begins again because he concludes the game is not worth ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe

... should be apt to say that those who feel poetry most enthusiastically prefer Southey; those who try it by the most severe rules admire Campbell; while the general mass of readers prefer to either the Border Poet. In this arrangement we should do Mr. Scott no injustice, because we assign to him in the number of suffrages what we deny him in their value." He once wrote to Miss Baillie, "No one can both eat his cake and have his cake, and I have enjoyed too extensive popularity in this generation ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... paid to me the Sum of One Pound, Ten Shillings, on account of the Territorial Revenue, I hereby Licence him to dig, search for, and remove Gold on and from any such Crown Land within the Upper Lodden District, as I shall assign to him for that purpose during the month of September, 1852, not within half-a-mile ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... overmuch for me this day, that I should fight with you. Moreover, it will be no honor for you to have to do with me, for you are fresh and I am wounded. Therefore, if you will needs have to do with me, assign me a day, and I shall meet you without fail." "You say well, "said Sir Tristram; "now I assign you to meet me in the meadow by the river of Camelot, where Merlin set the monument." So they were agreed. Then they departed and took their ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... Greek philosopher of Clazomenae, in Ionia, removed to Athens and took philosophy along with him, i. e. transplanted it there, but being banished thence for impiety to the gods, settled in Lampsacus, was the first to assign to the nous, conceived of "as a purely immaterial principle, a formative power in the origin and organisation ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... their sons with the necessary sums to buy estates, are not to be pitied. Still, the remark is a just one, not only as to France, but as to your residence in foreign countries. With your eternal mania for roving, it is really very difficult to assign you a domicile." ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... remember, the only point of perplexity which I knew, the only point which to this hour I know, as pressing upon him, was that of the Pope's supremacy. He professed to be searching Antiquity whether the see of Rome had formally that relation to the whole Church which Roman Catholics now assign to it. My letter was directed to the point, that it was his duty not to perplex himself with arguments on [such] a question ... and to put it altogether aside.... It is hard that I am put upon my memory, without knowing the details of the statement ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... intellect can that be? You can assign to it no character in accordance with its acts. It is an intellect, if it be an intellect at all, which will swallow up a city, and will create the music of Mozart for me when I am weary; an intellect which brings to birth His Majesty King George IV., and the love ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... considered as dramatic and poetical conceptions, it is difficult to pronounce which is most perfect in its way, most admirably drawn, most highly finished. But if considered in another point of view, as women and individuals, as breathing realities, clothed in flesh and blood, I believe we must assign the first rank to Portia, as uniting in herself in a more eminent degree than the others, all the noblest and most lovable qualities that ever met together in woman; and presenting a complete personification of Petrarch's exquisite ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... own age at the time 'shuddered at the violence of his most irritable and ungovernable mind.' There is no reason to doubt the fidelity of this description. And those who know something of human nature will be disposed to assign the disappearance of the irritableness and ungovernableness precisely to this incident, and to the working of a strong mind, confronted by fate with the question whether it was to be the victim or the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... glitter upon glitter, we have a perfect farrago of discordant and displeasing effects. The veriest bumpkin, on entering an apartment so bedizzened, would be instantly aware of something wrong, although he might be altogether unable to assign a cause for his dissatisfaction. But let the same person be led into a room tastefully furnished, and he would be startled into an exclamation of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Barr, of New York, do here by deed, make over and assign to the Boy Aviators—namely Frank and Harry Chester, William Barnes and Lathrop Beasley, all my share, claim or equity in the ivory which I wrongfully stole from them, which fact I with shame acknowledge. I hereby affix my signature which I admit in ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... This in the publike eye? Caesar. I'th' common shew place, where they exercise, His Sonnes hither proclaimed the King of Kings, Great Media, Parthia, and Armenia He gaue to Alexander. To Ptolomy he assign'd, Syria, Silicia, and Phoenetia: she In th' abiliments of the Goddesse Isis That day appeer'd, and oft before gaue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... There seems to be a common tendency to discredit a system of relationship, which suggests even as a bare possibility the mother, and not the father, being the head of the family. Yet, I believe I can assign some, at least plausible, reasons for believing that descent through women has been a stage, though not, I think, the first stage, in social growth for all branches of ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... perhaps, with an outbreak of insanity in your housekeeper—and who is now evidently confused with my niece in your housekeeper's wandering mind. That is my conviction, Mr. Vanstone. I may be right, or I may be wrong. All I say is this—neither you, nor any man, can assign a sane motive for the production of that incomprehensible document, and for the use which you are requested to ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... teach chap. i, which is introductory. Draw out discussion on the points suggested therein, and assign this chapter and the one following for the next session. The first lesson will give the teacher opportunity to explain and illustrate the method of study, presentation, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... late years received a more extended significance than that which is implied in our English equivalent—the "revival of learning." We use it to denote the whole transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world; and though it is possible to assign certain limits to the period during which this transition took place, we cannot fix on any dates so positively as to say between this year and that the movement was accomplished. To do so would be like trying to name the days on which spring in any particular season began ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... "The dauphiness complains of solitude. 'Since the Duke de Choiseul has left,' writes she, 'I am alone, and without a friend.' You are right. The dauphiness is in danger. She writes that her enemies are intriguing to part her from the dauphin. They attempted in Fontainebleau to assign her a suite of apartments remote from those ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... call, the city Rome, To them no bounds of empire I assign, Nor term of years to their immortal ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... rank among these self-seekers," said Sir Duncan Campbell, "we shall assign to a noble Earl, so violently attached to the Covenant, that he was the first, in 1639, to cross the Tyne, wading middle deep at the head of his regiment, to charge the royal forces? It was the same, I think, who imposed ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott



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