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noun
Assign  n.  A thing pertaining or belonging to something else; an appurtenance. (Obs.) "Six French rapiers and poniards, with their assigns, as girdles, hangers, and so."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Assign" Quotes from Famous Books



... is nothing revealed to us on the subject, all is left to conjecture. Whatever the cause was, we know it was a wise and a necessary one; and this appears to me to be the most plausible reason I can assign. Perhaps we may also trace a further purpose in their creation, in compelling by the terror they inspire the inferior animals to submit themselves to man, who is alone able to protect them against their formidable enemies, or to congregate, so that he may easily ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... Small letters, and the distinctions above mentioned, were the invention of later times. I cannot therefore persuade myself that this MS. is of so early an age as some would ascribe to it, though I will not take it upon me to assign the precise time in which, it was written. The characters are decidedly and distinctly those now called the Roman: they have not many abbreviations, as far as I could judge, and they are written with much clearness and regularity. They are not the literae cursivae, or those used ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... appellation of "Hew-Agag-in-Pieces," adopted the surname which Geordie now bears. This strain of ancestry may account for Geordie's smooth yet peremptory skill as a disciplinarian. It devolves upon him during the rod-fishing season to assign to each person of the fishing contingent his or her particular stretch of water, and to tell off to each as guide one of his ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... flavour; and it is said to be the only hybrid which is able to perpetuate its race. We hope that some enterprising individual will soon secure for English, tables what would seem to be a really valuable addition to our other game and poultry dishes; although it will be rather difficult to exactly assign its proper position, as within or without the meaning of "game," as by law established. Only a few specimens have been seen in England at present, but there is no reason to doubt that our rabbit-fanciers will prove equal to the occasion, and cope successfully with our neighbours across the Channel ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... performed with peeks and pokes on micros, and real languages tend not to encourage low-level memory groveling, a question like "How do I do a peek in C?" is diagnostic of the {newbie}. (Of course, OS kernels often have to do exactly this; a real C hacker would unhesitatingly, if unportably, assign an absolute address to a pointer variable and ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... dependence upon the words of others; to address ourselves more to the will than to custom, to the reason rather than to the memory; to substitute for verbal recitations lessons about things; to lead to theory by way of art; to assign to physical movements and exercises a prominent place, from the earliest hours of life up to perfect maturity; such are the principles scattered broadcast in this book, and forming a happy counterpoise to the oddities of which Rousseau was ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... 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 considerable firmness ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... without doubt suspectest me, since thou solicitest me, without hesitation, saying, 'Act thou as a driver.' Regarding Karna to be superior to ourselves, thou applaudest him thus. I, however, do not regard the son of Radha as my equal in battle. Assign to me a much greater share, O lord of Earth. Destroying that in battle, I will return to the place I come from. Or, if thou wishest, I will, O delighter of the Kurus, contend, single-handed, with the enemy. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... startled also at the frightful deformity and degradation of the inhabitants. By the roadside, basking in the sun, he beholds beings whose appearance seems such a caricature upon humanity, that he is at a loss to know whether to assign them a place among the human or the brute creation. Unable to walk,—usually deaf and dumb,—with bleared eyes, and head of disproportionate size,—brown, flabby, and leprous skin,—a huge goitre descending from the throat and resting upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Oh, a southerner would call it depression, and assign it to the liver, for he traces all trouble to that source. But there is no word for this mood in English, because it is not an English experience. My mother fell under it at times, and I saw ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... appears to determine our judgments when we assign to various creatures their place in the scale of living beings. We do not mean that the higher possess to a greater degree all the capacities possessed by the lower. Many things which the plant does man cannot do at all; and, among the animals, those which we recognize as higher may be ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... received, as is confessed, with cold disapprobation, he was probably less willing to claim it. Tickell omitted it in his collection; but the testimony of Steele, and the total silence of any other claimant, has determined the public to assign it to Addison, and it is now printed with other poetry. Steele carried The Drummer to the play-house, and afterwards to the press, and sold ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... inauguration of President Garfield, the "Division of the Gulf" was broken up, and I was permitted to visit Europe, as I had requested in the preceding November, until the President should be pleased to assign me to a command according ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... gathered from the occupations which the authors of the Talmud assign to him. "The day contains twelve hours. The first three hours the Holy One, blessed be He, sits and studies the Law. The second three hours He sits and judges the whole world. When He sees that the world deserves destruction, He stands up from the throne of judgment, and sits ...
— Hebrew Literature

... To assign a feeling and a determination of their will as a satisfactory reason for embracing or rejecting an opinion is the habit of many educated people; to me, this seems little less irrational than to apply the nose to a picture, and to decide on its ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... time, had recovered sufficient self-possession to seat herself and assign a chair ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... from the mechanical and chemical? Given the cell, and you have only to multiply it, and organize these products into industrial communities, and direct them to specific ends,—certainly a task which we would not assign to chemistry or physics any more than we would assign to them the production of a work on chemistry or botany,—and you have all the myriad ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... of revolutionary unionism also assign to the party a very secondary part, though they are by no means, like the anarchists, opposed to all political action. They do not as a rule oppose the Socialist parties, but they protest against the view that Socialist activities should be chiefly political. Their best-known ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... 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. They are sent over to bind and to rivet upon us those chains which the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... good? It is not necessary to admit, for our present purpose, this latter proposition, though it brings us closer to the matter in hand; it is sufficient for the present to admit, what no one doubts, that when a part of the body, for instance, is discovered, to which, like the spleen, we cannot assign any function in the animal system, we never think of concluding that it is made for no use, but only that we have as yet not been able to ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham

... of Pleistocene 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, ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... grand jury, had to tell them that the calendar was very heavy, the heaviest, in fact, known for many years. There were forty-five prisoners for trial, whereas the average number is twenty-five, taking the last five years. Sir John could assign no particular reason for such a lamentable increase, though he supposed the prevailing depression of trade might have had something to do with it. But he pointed out a very notable fact indeed, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... and cramped with long sitting, I would have helped her to dismount; but she fiercely rejected my aid, and I had to content myself with requesting the landlord to assign the best accommodation he had to the lady and her attendant, and secure as much privacy for them as possible. The man assented very civilly and said all should be done; but I noticed that his eyes wandered while I talked, and that he seemed to have ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... assign to things in order to maintain himself—he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calleth he himself "man," that is, ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... quite unconvinced. "But—what honest motive could she have? I am able to assign her no role in this little drama. I have tried. I am able to see no connection between her ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... this arrangement was that when Sultan Sikandar died the several important nobles, impatient even of nominal obedience, resolved, acting in concert, to assign to his son, Ibrahim, the kingdom of Delhi only, and to divide the rest of the deceased Sultan's dominions amongst themselves, Jaunpur alone excepted. This province was to be assigned to the younger brother of Ibrahim, as a separate kingdom, in subordination to Delhi. It would appear that when ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson

... the money would be paid to the commissioner. As it was impossible for me to perform that duty personally, I asked Mr. Chase for authority to appoint Mr. Marshall Conant, who had been and perhaps then was principal of the Normal School, at Bridgewater, Mass., a clerk in the office, and assign him to duty as cashier. He was appointed to a twelve hundred dollar clerkship, from which he was advanced to fourteen and then to sixteen hundred dollars. From September 1, 1862, to March 3, 1863, he collected and accounted ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell

... said that, not the judge. Is it a principle of your jurisprudence to permit the guilty to assign their own punishment? They might deserve a severer one. Why should they transfer any of the infliction to their posterity? What evidence have you that Omnipotence accepted the offer? It is not so announced in your histories. Your ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... assign any precise date for the first foundation of the "Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula apud turrim." It is not probable that it was contemporary with the Chapel of St. John, but was doubtless erected by Henry I. when he enlarged the area of the outer ward of the Tower; as this necessitated ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... it may have been written some five or six years later. In this book the influence of Quintilian and the Ciceronian school is strongly marked; there is so much of Ciceronianism in the style that many scholars have been inclined to assign it to some other author, or have even identified it with the lost treatise of Quintilian himself, on the Causes of the Decay of Eloquence. But its style, while it bears the general colour of the Silver Age, has also large traces of that compressed ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... its origin, no doubt, 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 of controversy for many generations ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... In order to assign a motive for his journey, Frederick invented a story; and he left home, telling everyone, and himself believing, that he would ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... a fancy to the astronomer that he first, as I have already mentioned, duly pardoned his desertion from the army, some twenty-five years previously. As a further mark of his favour the King proposed to confer on Herschel the title of his Majesty's own astronomer, to assign to him a residence near Windsor, to provide him with a salary, and to furnish such funds as might be required for the erection of great telescopes, and for the conduct of that mighty scheme of celestial observation ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... our enthusiasm we broke two glasses and upset a cruet; a small, thin lady was unfortunate enough to shed her chignon. Thus encouraged, Uncle Sutton launched himself upon his task. Personally, I should have been better pleased had Fate not interposed to assign to him the duty. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... the heights of the island, which permitted you to land; that it was he who fired that bullet found in the body of the peccary; that it was he who immersed that torpedo in the channel, which destroyed the brig; in a word, that all those inexplicable events, for which we could not assign a reason, are due to this mysterious being. Therefore, whoever he may be, whether shipwrecked, or exiled on our island, we shall be ungrateful, if we think ourselves freed from gratitude towards him. We have contracted a debt, and I hope that we ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... having Tristan produced at the Opera, as I had found out that Frau Dustmann's indisposition was merely a feint, Herr Ander's complete loss of voice having been the real cause of the last interruption. Good old Conductor Esser tried hard to persuade me to assign the part of Tristan to another tenor of the theatre named Walter, but the very idea of him was so odious to me that I could not even bring myself to hear him in Lohengrin. I therefore let the matter sink into oblivion, and concentrated myself exclusively on getting ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... me, whispering that all doubt was dispelled;—there were spirits on board, to a dead certainty. He had overheard a supernatural sneeze. But by this time I was all but convinced, that we were alone in the brigantine. Since, if otherwise, I could assign no earthly reason for the crew's hiding away from a couple of sailors, whom, were they so minded, they might easily have mastered. And furthermore, this alleged disturbance of the atmosphere aloft by a sneeze, Jarl averred to have taken place in the main-top; directly underneath ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... came the horse arrived with it. Many of the skeletons in this series were known before it was realized what they were. As time went on and intermediate forms were found, it became possible to recognize these as ancestors of the horse and to assign them their proper position in the ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... required by the spirit and safety of free government. The present organization of our militia is universally regarded as less efficient than it ought to be made, and no organization can be better calculated to give to it its due force than a classification which will assign the foremost place in the defense of the country to that portion of its citizens whose activity and animation best enable them to rally to its standard. Besides the consideration that a time of peace is the time ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... father?" And his eyes were cast with trouble on the girl, though he could assign no cause ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... or necessary for his trade; he may find himself compelled to rebuild or pay rent in case of fire; he may find himself subject to forfeiture of his lease, or other penalty, if he should underlet or assign his interest, carry on ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... to the seven tribes, or rather the seven cities, vuk ama[t], and the thirteen divisions or provinces, oxlahuh [c]hob, are not explained in the course of the narrative. These numbers retained sacred associations, as they were adopted later to assign the days of worship of their divinity (see Sec. 44). Brasseur is of opinion that the thirteen divisions refer to the Pokomams,[34-1] but that such a subdivision obtained among the Cakchiquels as well, is evident from many ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton

... there, Ganchuelo![23] Is the watch set?" "Yes," replied the boy; "three sentinels are on guard, and there is no fear of a surprise." "Let us return to business, then," said Monipodio. "I would fain know from you, my sons, what you are able to do, that I may assign you an employment in conformity with your ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... Major-general Gaines is president, on the several charges and specifications exhibited against Mr. Louallier; and is induced by the novelty and importance of the matters submitted to the decision of that court, to assign ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... quoi vivre, ni de quoi se vtir. Je l'avais prvu; et j'avais ordonn de faire en tout genre les provisions ncessaires pour pouvoir les secourir promptement; c'est ce qui a t excut. On a fait la division des terres; et on a assign chaque famille une portion suffisante pour pouvoir servir son entretien, soit en la cultivant, soit en y nourissant des bestiaux. On a donne a chaque particulier des toffes pour l'habiller, des grains pour se nourrir pendant l'espace d'une anne, des ustensiles pour le mnage et d'autres ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... have been forced to submit to is that of segregation. Here the effort has been to establish a ghetto in cities and to assign certain parts of the country to Negroes engaged in farming. It always happens, of course, that the best portion goes to the whites and the least desirable to the blacks, although the promoters of the segregation maintain that both races are ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson

... field of war had not been lessened by my experiences of the summer, and both directly and indirectly I renewed my requests for a field command. I had been told that the Secretary of War awaited only an opening which would permit him to assign me to duty with the advanced grade which had been given me after Antietam, and I had been advised, in a way that seemed authoritative, to wait patiently for this. It became evident in the autumn that such waiting was likely to be profitless as well as wearisome. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... washed its base: for it is known to have occupied the whole of what is called the Valley of Arques, running as far as Bouteilles. Its position, in reference to the art of war, must have been almost impregnable. Other hypotheses assign its origin to the ninth or tenth century. Whenever built, its history has been fertile in sieges. In 1144, it was commanded by a Flemish Monk, who preferred the spear to the crosier, but who perished by an arrow in the contest. Of its ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... "I have to assign you to an important duty in addition to your present service, and I have no doubt you will perform it as well as you have the conduct of the wagon-train," said ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic

... 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 me one." ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... end to a pestilence by which 60,000 people had been carried off. It is a most beautiful structure, full of fine things; and altogether a curious monument of that delusion of ignorance and misdirected piety which made men assign to a chapter of priests the duty now committed to a Board of Health, and persuaded them that a church was of much greater efficacy for the cure of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various

... those she loves is wonderful. Without being able to assign any definite reason, Marguerite felt that the man's presence boded her no good; and it was therefore with a troubled spirit that she heard the Count, after looking several times at his watch, suggest that he wished to speak to ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... probability, making allowance for bachelors, each name will represent three persons; there are seventy-five names, which means two hundred and twenty-five places reserved for science. I will now make a series of other categories and assign the number of ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... great reputation in the keen rivalry of this situation by securing the best of the trade of Japan for your own country to its western coasts over the waters of the Pacific. You will be welcomed by the Japanese Government and the minister of foreign affairs will assign you a palace to live in, with a garden attached so perfectly appointed and kept as to have been the envy of Shenstone. You will be attended by hundreds of beautiful ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... let Stella go gay, because of sentiment; and they will not let Mrs. Dingley go gay, because of sentiment for Stella. Marry come up! Why did not the historians assign all the tender passages (taken very seriously) to Stella, and let Dingley have the jokes, then? That would have been no ill share for Dingley. But no, forsooth, Dingley is ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... witnessing this, that the prize I obtain'd is to leave me." Thus to him instantly answer'd the swift-footed noble Peleides:— "Foremost in fame, Agamemnon, in greediness, too, thou art foremost. Whence can a prize be assign'd by the generous host of Achaia? Nowhere known unto us is a treasure of common possessions: All that we took with a town was distributed right on the capture; Nor is it seemly for states to resume and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... particular to the first of them. At the 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 ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... like a courteous host, to go back no farther into the history of Scotland," replied Mary Stuart, "and not to make the daughter blush for the father's errors; for I have heard say that the evil which your lordship laments was prior to the time to which you assign it, and that King James V. also had formerly favourites, both male and female. It is true that they add that the ones as ill rewarded his friendship as the others his love. In this, if you are ignorant ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Faith; and it has been said that they first settled the titles of the several chapters, and then apportioned the preparation of so many of them to each. But this is matter of pure conjecture. The portion on the universities, from the multitude of its practical details, we cannot but assign mainly to Douglas, the Principal of St Mary's College, and Wynram, the sub-prior of the Augustinian Monastery at St Andrews. One can hardly doubt that the rest, if not actually drafted by Knox, was carefully remoulded by him; and ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... era of its greatest power was from the Norman conquest of England to the reign of Edward III. But there was a long and gloomy period before Feudalism ripened into an institution,—from the dissolution of the Roman Empire to the eighth and ninth centuries. I would assign this period as the darkest and the dreariest in the history of Europe since the Roman conquests, for this reason,—that civilization perished without any one to chronicle the changes, or to take notice of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... Each went forth to battle, followed by his dependents, while a chief of all the clans was appointed to take command during the war. The prince or chief governor was elected annually, but only by the nobles. The people had no rights at all, and were glad to assign themselves as slaves to any noble who was strong enough to protect them. In peace the Druids exercised the main functions of government. They decided all controversies, civil and criminal. To rebel against their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... temples of the Christians, and sparing no insult, they acted with all the unrestrained lawlessness natural to them, beating as many priests as they caught and lashing them with many blows over the back and commanding them to render such service to the Vandals as they were accustomed to assign to the most dishonoured of their domestics. And as soon as they had departed from there, the spies of Cabaon did as they had been directed to do; for they straightway cleansed the sanctuaries and took ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius

... their presence. In this they are countenanced by the white residents, most of whom have Indian or half-breed wives but seem afraid of treating them with the tenderness or attention due to every female lest they should themselves be despised by the Indians. At least this is the only reason they assign for their neglect of those whom they make partners of their beds and mothers ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... treasure. I do not know that I am obliged to speak to the motives of ministry, in the arrangements they have made of the pretended debts of Arcot and Tanjore. If I prove fraud and collusion with regard to public money on those right honorable gentlemen, I am not obliged to assign their motives; because no good motives can be pleaded in favor of their conduct. Upon that case I stand; we are at issue; and I desire to go to trial. This, I am sure, is not loose railing, or mean insinuation, according to their low ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... last-named theories—Self-Interest, and Utility or the Common Well-Being, have exclusive regard to the consequences of actions; the others assign to consequences a subordinate position. The terms External and Dependent are also used to express the reference to Happiness as the end: Internal and Independent are the ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... the dark mysteries and intricate horrors of the melo-drama; but unable to cope with the grandeur of their subject, they have been betrayed into the grossest absurdities. What, for instance, could be more preposterous than to assign the same music for "storming a fort," and "stabbing a virtuous father!" Equally ridiculous would it be to express "the breaking of the sun through a fog," and "a breach of promise of marriage;" or the "rising of a ghost," and the "entrance of a lady's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... October, 1802, the Spanish Intendant at New Orleans, acting on his own responsibility, suddenly withdrew the "right of deposit" at the city, and contrary to the provisions of the treaty, he refused to assign an equivalent establishment at any other place on the banks of the river. The western people were wild with rage. It was necessary to send troops to Kentucky to prevent an armed expedition against the Spanish province. Fortunately, the Spanish government disavowed the action of the Intendant ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre

... Phalereus did not belong to the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, but to that of his father Ptolemy Soter, the son having banished him from court in the beginning of his reign. For this reason some have proposed to assign the founding of the Alexandrian library to the father and not the son. But whatever be our judgment in respect to Demetrius and his relation to the two Ptolemies, the voice of history is decisive in favor of the son and not the father, as the patron ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... rank, deliberately pronounces the style of the 13 chapters to belong to the early part of the fifth century. Seeing that he is actually engaged in an attempt to disprove the existence of Sun Wu himself, we may be sure that he would not have hesitated to assign the work to a later date had he not honestly believed the contrary. And it is precisely on such a point that the judgment of an educated Chinaman will carry most weight. Other internal evidence is not far to seek. Thus in XIII. ss. 1, there is an unmistakable allusion to the ancient system ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

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

... 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 in body and soul: As is ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... a pair of critical spectacles have been applied to his own remains; and though he left behind him a sufficiently ragged reputation from the first, it is only after these four hundred years that his delinquencies have been finally tracked home, and we can assign him to his proper place among the good or wicked. It is a staggering thought, and one that affords a fine figure of the imperishability of men's acts, that the stealth of the private inquiry office can be carried so far back into the dead and dusty past. We are not so soon quit of our concerns ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... mark a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so conclusively admitted, by educated persons, that a false accent or a mistaken syllable is enough, in the parliament of any civilized nation, to assign to a man a certain degree of inferior ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... Hindus, but may take their food in batches; so that the necessity of awaiting the arrival of every guest before commencing the feast is avoided. The Deswalis will not kill a black-buck nor eat the flesh of one, but they assign no reason for this and do not now worship the animal. The rule is probably, however, a totemistic survival. The men may be known by their manly gait and harsh tone of voice, as well as by a peculiar method of tying the turban; the women have a special ornament called rakhdi ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... saying that we can no longer assign praise or blame to any human thought or action, once the inevitable nature of such thoughts and actions has been proved ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... said thus much, that in some measure I may answer your question, that I may explain to you why I am here, that I may assign to you something that shall have at least the faint aspect of a cause for my wearing these fetters, and for my tenanting this cell of the condemned. Had I not been thus prolix, you might either have misunderstood ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... only advantage of a comparative study of religions. The Science of Religion will for the first time assign to Christianity its right place among the religions of the world; it will show for the first time fully what was meant by the fulness of time; it will restore to the whole history of the world, in its unconscious progress towards Christianity, its ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... of the gods knew that 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

... the third canon, i.e., Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles, the formation of which we assign to the Hasmonaean gerusia, were multifarious, differing widely from one another in age, character, and value—poetical, prophetic, didactic, historical. Such as seemed worthy of preservation, though they had not been ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson

... tides of the Euboean Sea, drowned himself in it. So this astronomer, who was a king,—Alphonsus of Portugal,—unable to unravel the loops of the planets, said, in his wrath, that if he had been called on by the Creator to assign the planets their paths, he would have managed the matter a great deal better. The plates of the old astronomical books became more and more confusing, and cost more and more ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various

... Geoffrey refers, or at worst later Welsh transcripts of them. But when the study of the matter grew, and especially when Welsh literature itself began to be critically examined, uncomfortable doubts began to arise. It was found impossible to assign to the existing Welsh romances on the subject, such as those published in the Mabinogion, a date even approaching in antiquity that which can certainly be claimed by the oldest French texts: and in more than one case the Welsh bore unmistakable ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... 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 desire ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... we have now shown that there is a tendency in nature to the continued progression of certain classes of varieties further and further from the original type—a progression to which there appears no reason to assign any definite limits—and that the same principle which produces this result in a state of nature will also explain why domestic varieties have a tendency, when they become wild, to revert to the original type. This progression, by minute steps, in ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... still uncertain. The German excavators assign it to the 'Amr[a]n mound, its tower having stood in a depression immediately to the north of this, and so place it south of the Qasr; but E. Lindl and F. Hommel have put forward strong reasons for considering it to have been north of the latter, on a part of the site which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... Danforth of her first graduating class, Dr. Stone said: "You may ask if they are going to run away and earn large sums for themselves. No, they are going to stay and help me in the hospital work, or earn money for the hospital. You see, I assign each one to a department of work, and she is the head-nurse of that department. Then by turn I send them out to do private nursing, and the sums they earn are turned into the hospital for caring for the poor who cannot help themselves. Mrs. Wong is nursing Mrs. B—— of ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton

... Prophets; "the creature which is made subject to vanity" is the Roman world still pursuing its idolatry; the demoniacs are mad men whom it was only necessary to bind in order to render perfectly harmless. With such a system of interpretation as this, no one who adopted it could pretend to assign for himself a limit to his skepticism. Whatever defied the critic's acumen or the believer's spiritual grasp was unraveled on the principle that it was local and temporary. Surely Rationalism was making a bold stroke for supremacy, and it had the rare fortune ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... the generality are dull and empty. They have taken up gravity, thinking it was philosophy and English, and so have acquired nothing in the room of their natural levity and cheerfulness. However, as their high opinion of their own country remains, for which they can no longer assign any reason, they are contemptuous and reserved, instead of being ridiculously, consequently pardonably, impertinent. I have wondered, knowing my own countrymen, that we had attained such a superiority. I wonder no longer, and have a little ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... search out, set free, restore to honor the true life, assign things to their proper places, and remember that the center of human progress is moral growth. What is a good lamp? It is not the most elaborate, the finest wrought, that of the most precious metal. A good lamp is a lamp that gives good light. And so also ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... said that," he said peevishly. "Whatever happens I'm going to assign it to you for action while I sit on the bench and cheer." He rang for Gerry. "What's happening now ... I haven't been out of ...
— If at First You Don't... • John Brudy

... external enchantment, yet his intellect did not feel the necessity of analyzing or classifying it. His heart vibrated in unison with the exquisite scenery around him, although he was not able at the moment to assign the precise source of his blissful tranquillity. Like a true musician, he was satisfied to seize the sentiment of the scenes he visited, while he seemed to give but little attention to the plastic material, the picturesque frame, which did not assimilate with the form of his ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... been four years in England for their education: and, recommending to me, by a very moving letter, her little baby, and that I would not suffer it to be called by her name, but Goodwin, that her shame might be the less known, for hers and her family's sake; she got her friends to assign her five hundred pounds, in full of all her demands upon her family, and went up to London, and embarked, with her companions, at Gravesend, and so sailed to Jamaica; where she is since well and happily married, passing to her husband for ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... The Inventions.—Assign one to each student. Satisfactory accounts are to be found in any good encyclopedia, especially ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... if it will 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 ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... and if this sort of thing is a part of the process of education, I am in favor of it, and wish I knew how to set my boys and girls going on such excursions. I wish I might have gone to school to Agassiz just to get my eyes opened. If I had, I'd probably assign to my pupils such subjects as the evolution of a snowflake, the travels of a sunbeam, the mechanism of a bird's wing, the history of a dewdrop, the changes in a blade of grass, and the evolution of a grain of sand. If I could only take them ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... reverse the order of nature and assign woman to the sterner duties devolved upon the male sex, and to attempt to assign man to the more refining, delicate, and ennobling duties of the woman, man would be found entirely incompetent to the discharge of the obligations which nature has devolved upon ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... 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, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... "Well, we'll assign you to a watch," said the old man. "Of course, you will live aft. Keep your present berth with Billy. You had better join the starboard watch, I think. The bosun is a great hand to break in ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... other army in the world, a chief of the staff who would assign to a division a post so advanced, so isolated, so cut off from the rest of the army, as was Gen. Casey's position,—such a chief of the staff would be at once dismissed. Here, oh here, nobody is hurt, nobody is to be hurt—only ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... divisions of excellent troops, as originally planned, the Germans had little by little cast into the fiery furnace thirty divisions. This enormous sacrifice could not be allowed to count for nothing. The German High Command therefore decided to assign a less pretentious object to the abortive enterprise. The Crown Prince's offensive had fallen flat; but, at all events, it might succeed in preventing a French offensive. For this reason it was necessary that Verdun ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... recognized in respect of its fundamental or ultimate attitude to my ideals. In the sense, then, conveyed by this term attitude my god will invariably possess the characters of personality. But the degree to which these characters will coincide with the characters which I assign to human persons, or the terms of any logical conception of personality, cannot be absolutely defined. Anthropomorphisms may be imagination or they may be literal conviction. This will depend, as above maintained, upon the degree to which they determine ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... one expected from them, and which do not identify themselves with their original design. This has happened to the House of Lords especially. The most obvious instance is the judicial function. This is a function which no theorist would assign to a second chamber in a new Constitution, and which is matter of accident in ours. Gradually, indeed, the unfitness of the second chamber for judicial functions has made itself felt. Under our present arrangements this function is not entrusted to the House of Lords, ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... certain measure of temporary confusion and dislocation; it will accordingly be the principal object of the following chapters to clear up misapprehensions which have arisen in connection with the idea of immanence, to assign to it its approximately proper place in Christian thought, and to safeguard an important truth against the injury done to it—and {22} so to all truth—by a zeal that is not according to knowledge. Corruptio optimi pessima: in unskilled hands this doctrine is ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... Poe was also a very fine French scholar. Yet, with all his superiorities, he was not the master spirit nor even the favorite of the school. I assign, from my recollection, this place to Howard. Poe, as I recall my impressions now, was self-willed, capricious, inclined to be imperious, and, though of generous impulses, not steadily kind, nor even amiable; and so what he ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... when they fled from the land of Egypt, an inscrutable fate lies before us, hiding with a dark and shadowy veil the course of every future day: while behind us the wide-spread past is open to the view; and as we mark the steps that we have taken, we can assign to each its due portion of pain, anxiety, regret, remorse, repose, or joy. Yet how short seems the past to the recollection of each mortal man! how long, and wide, and interminable, is the cloudy future to the gaze ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... that it inhabits the Rocky Mountains from southern California to Alaska. This is sufficiently vague, and I shall endeavor a little further on to indicate a few places where this species may still be found, though even so I am unable to assign their ranges to the various forms that have ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... career. He flattered himself that it would be as glorious as that he had just brought to a close, but it was to be far otherwise. Before entering on a recital of the events of the year 1810, I shall narrate some recollections, jotted down at random, which, although I can assign them no precise date, were, nevertheless, anterior to the period we ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... however, another most interesting feature in the policy of Venice which will be often brought before us; and which a Romanist would gladly assign as the reason of its irreligion; namely, the magnificent and successful struggle which she maintained against the temporal authority of the Church of Rome. It is true that, in a rapid survey of her career, the eye is at first arrested by ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... course it is easy enough to assign explanations of it, from the vehicle of criminals to the scaffold downwards; but it remains a convention—very much of the same kind as that which ordains (or used to ordain) that a gentleman may not carry a parcel done up in newspaper, though no other form of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... to act as judge in a lawsuit he was interested in. Anan refused in these circumstances to accept a gift from the litigant. To demonstrate his single-mindedness, the applicant urged the Rabbit to take the fish and assign the case to another judge. Anan acquiesced, and he requested one of his colleagues to act for him, because he was incapacitated from serving as a judge. His legal friend drew the inference, that the litigant introduced to him was a kinsman of Rabbi Anan's, and ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... the well known reference to his brother Tom's suspected authorship: "We intended here to conclude this long article, when a strong report reached us of certain transatlantic confessions, which, if genuine (though of this we know nothing), assign a different author to those volumes than the party suspected by our Scottish correspondents. Yet a critic may be excused for seizing upon the nearest suspected person, or the principle happily expressed by Claverhouse in a letter to the Earl of Linlithgow. He had been, it seems, in search ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... two years ago, respected and regretted. The last two years of his life were clouded with a settled melancholy for which his friends could assign no reason. The bulk of his comfortable fortune was made from the land he obtained ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... 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 of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... unsuspicious companion amid ruins, in which the false spirit, it is said, daily walks his rounds. Midnight and Noon are the times, it is rumoured, of his appearance. I will go no farther with you, unless you assign me a fit reason for ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... customary in school music to assign the boys to the lower part, in part music. This practice continued from the time part-singing begins in the music course, compels the boys to use the thick register. As the larynx gains in firmness from year to year, they experience more and more difficulty ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard

... devised, and until opinion is willing to accept, some mode of plural voting which may assign to education as such the degree of superior influence due to it, and sufficient as a counterpoise to the numerical weight of the least educated class, for so long the benefits of completely universal suffrage can ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... he was born in 1672[15]. For the place; it was said by himself, that he owed his nativity to England, and by every body else that he was born in Ireland. Southern mentioned him with sharp censure, as a man that meanly disowned his native country. The biographers assign his nativity to Bardsa, near Leeds, in Yorkshire, from the account given by himself, as ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... speedily travel to my lord the Mahdi, and he would send a troop of horse to bring you to him. Therefore, though I would fain honour you, I see that it is best that you should, to all save myself, continue to be Mudil. I will not even, as I would otherwise have done, assign you a house, and slaves, and horses in token of my gratitude to you for having saved the life ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty

... explaining these courses in detail, assign for reading in the class room the following articles ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper

... us first explain why we are generally led to regard them as activities of which one is superior to the other and based upon it, whereas in reality they are not things of the same order: they have not succeeded one another, nor can we assign to ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... and, with a very bad grace, consented to admit her into his coach; though he soon convinced us, that he was determined she should not be too much obliged to him, for he seemed absolutely bent upon quarrelling with her: for which strange inhospitality I can assign no other reason, than that she appeared ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... gross multitude who are only capable of judging from external appearances. As their numbers increased their labors became proportionally greater, and it was necessary to provide assistance and more agreeable to good order to assign to each his proper function. Inferior ministers were therefore instituted, who derived their appellations from the office ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... you, flunk this course, don't read a single play I assign to you, be disrespectful, disbelieve all my contentions. And I shall still be content. But do not, as you are living souls, blind yourself to the fact that there is a world-wide movement to build a wider new world—and ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... may have appeared rude enough to him. I cannot say that he elicited my admiration. On the contrary, his appearance produced an opposite effect. I beheld him with, what might be termed an instinct of repulsion: since I could assign no precise reason for the dislike with which he had inspired me on sight. He was a man of about thirty years of age; of a thin spare body, less than medium height; and features slightly marked with, the bar sinister. A face without beard—skin of cadaverous hue—nose ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... its principle was not unwise; but, like most other of his well-meant designs, it failed in his hands. It failed partly from mere ill-fortune, to which speculators are rarely pleased to assign that very large share to which she is justly entitled in all human affairs. The failure, perhaps, in part was owing to his suffering his system to be vitiated and disturbed by those intrigues, which it is, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... being managed after the manner of geometrical figures; nor is it in any degree useful that they should. It is true there are divers of them perceived at once, and more of some and less of others: but accurately to compute their magnitude and assign precise determinate proportions between things so variable and inconstant, if we suppose it possible to be done, must yet be a very trifling and ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley

... of Australian savages, I remember thinking that Natural Selection would come in, and likewise with the Esquimaux, with whom the art of fishing and managing canoes is said to be hereditary. I rather differ on the rank under the classificatory point of view which you assign to Man: I do not think any character simply in excess ought ever to be used for the higher division. Ants would not be separated from other hymenopterous insects, however high the instinct of the one and however low the ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... hints of good news-items concealed in obscure paragraphs. The Morris Prison scandal was an example of this. He found in the New England edition of The World a six-line item giving an astonishing death rate for the Morris Prison. He asked the City Editor to assign him to go there; and within a week the press of the entire country was discussing the News-Record's exposure of the barbarities of torture and starvation practised by Warden Johnson and ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... right to the ballot and to place his own business interests and general welfare at the mercy of the votes of others? Would you not resent an attempt on the part of any man, or set of men, to fix your mental status, assign your work in life and lay out with mathematical precision your exact sphere in the world? And yet men undertake to adjust the limitations of the Elizabeth Cady Stantons, the Susan B. Anthonys, the Harriet Beecher Stowes, the Frances ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... to be elected by a purely Northern vote, and then assign this fact as a reason why the Sections cannot live together. If the Disunion candidate—(Breckinridge) in the late Presidential contest had carried the united South, their scheme was, the Northern candidate successful, to seize the Capital last ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... no period nor appointed date, Nor bounds to their dominion I assign; An endless empire shall the race await. Nay, Juno, too, who now, in mood malign, Earth, sea and sky is harrying, shall incline To better counsels, and unite with me To cherish and uphold the imperial line, The Romans, rulers of the land and sea, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... tendencies rather than in states. Especially (and this is the point on which finalism has been most seriously mistaken) harmony is rather behind us than before. It is due to an identity of impulsion and not to a common aspiration. It would be futile to try to assign to life an end, in the human sense of the word. To speak of an end is to think of a pre-existing model which has only to be realized. It is to suppose, therefore, that all is given, and that the future can be read in the present. It is to believe that life, in its movement and in ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... which bedecked the finger of your deity, a Chinese counterpart, which might indeed have enabled all admiring gazers to say, 'these two are truly a pair.' As for yourself, who would fain pass for nobody in the munificent gift, I thank you at least for the flattering place you assign me in your recollection. Be assured I feel its full value, and you may confidently reckon upon the disposal of my poor credit as well as command the little influence I may be said to possess in the castle. Adieu, madame, I entreat your acceptance of the expression ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... that day. I maintained the intention until sunset; then, seeing that it was too late, I postponed my departure until the morrow. I can assign no reason for my dallying mood. Perhaps it sprang from the inertness that pervaded me, perhaps some mysterious hand detained me. Be that as it may, that I remained another night at the Hotel de l'Epee was one of those contingencies which, though slight and seemingly inconsequential in ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... sorting] sieve, riddle, screen, sorter. V. reduce to order, bring into order; introduce order into; rally. arrange, dispose, place, form; put in order, set in order, place in order; set out, collocate, pack, marshal, range, size, rank, group, parcel out, allot, distribute, deal; cast the parts, assign the parts; dispose of, assign places to; assort, sort; sift, riddle; put to rights, set to rights, put into shape, put in trim, put in array; apportion. class, classify; divide; file, string together, thread; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion. The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... panic following the fall of New Orleans, was truly to rely upon moral effect without adequate physical force to support it. It is due to the Navy Department to say that they expected the army from the North to advance more rapidly than it did; but, without seeking to assign the blame, the utterly useless penetration of the United States fleet four hundred miles into the heart of the enemy's country and its subsequent mortifying withdrawal, when contrasted with the brilliant success resulting from Farragut's ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... at four; and the last time he discovered that life was extinct. Hawthorne had died in his sleep as quietly and peacefully as he had lived. There is the same mystery in his death that there was in his life, and it is difficult to assign either an immediate or a proximate cause for it. With such a physique, and his simple, regular habits of life, he ought to have reached the age of ninety. General Pierce believed that he died of paralysis, and that is the most probable explanation; but it was not like ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... captains, seamen and soldiers aboard, and was ready to sail at the time appointed. She embarked, and when the squadron was at sea, told the commander her intention. "Make all the sail you can," said she, "and chase the merchantman that sailed last night out of this port. If you capture it, I assign it to you as your property; but if you ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... as rivals in the glorious enterprise to which I have vowed myself? Yes, De Vaux, I confess my weakness, and the wilfulness of my ambition. The Christian camp contains, doubtless, many a better knight than Richard of England, and it would be wise and worthy to assign to the best of them the leading of the host. But," continued the warlike monarch, raising himself in his bed, and shaking the cover from his head, while his eyes sparkled as they were wont to do on the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... she said to him: "A few pennies must be put by for Amanda." That was the name of the little girl who flourished merrily in her cradle. "You must assign some ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... disposition of the mind. He also attributes all sorts of disorders to a vicious system of diet. For more than twenty centuries his pathology was the foundation of all the medical sects. He was well acquainted with the medicinal properties of drugs, and was the first to assign three periods to the course of a malady. He knew, of course, but little of surgery, although he was in the habit of bleeding, and often employed his knife. He was also acquainted with cupping, and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... that, at any rate, the chief elegance of science is economy, and that therefore, for scientific purposes, whatever we may write further about conditionals must be an ugly excrescence. The scientific purpose of Logic is to assign the conditions of proof. Can we, then, in the conditional form prove anything that cannot be proved in the categorical? Or does a conditional require to be itself proved by any method not applicable to the Categorical? If not, why go on ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... this involved considerable logical difficulty. From the first he had striven to maintain "impartiality of thought," or at least of speech. He had said that the war was no concern of America's; it would be the task of long historical research to assign the responsibility for its outbreak; that "with its causes and objects we are not concerned. The obscure foundations from which its tremendous flood has burst forth we are not interested to search for and explore." It was a war which should be ended by a peace without a victory. Whatever meaning ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan

... and imported grain, this far western corner of Ireland had a trade of its own. I am not prepared to believe that the enormous warehouses of Westport were ever filled to overflowing with merchandise, being inclined rather to assign their vast size to that tendency towards overbuilding which is a permanent characteristic of a generous and hopeful people. Perhaps the trade of Westport might have expanded to the dimensions of the gaunt warehouses ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... species are fetched from the lumber-room of scholastic philosophy, they must be defined with logical exactness, particularly at present, when the very existence of such a thing as a species depends on the meaning which we assign to it. Nature gives us individuals only, and each individual differs from the other. But "species" is a thing of human workmanship,[5] and it depends entirely on the disputed definition of the term, whether species vary or not. In one sense, Mr. Darwin's book, "On the Origin of Species," may be ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... the governor of the province of New-York has openly declared it with regard to himself, to the assembly there; but because the present governor of this province has repeatedly refused to accept of the usual grant for his support, tho' he has not been so explicit as to assign a reason for it. The charter of this province recognizes the natural Right of all men to dispose of their property: And the governor here, like all other governors, kings and potentates, is to be supported by the free grants of the Representatives ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... from Sutherlandshire that year. In June eight families arrived in Greenock, and two other contingents—one of one hundred and the other of ninety souls—were making their way to the same place en route to America. The cause of this emigration they assign to be want of the means of livelihood at home, through the opulent graziers engrossing the farms, and turning them into pasture. Several contributions have been made for these poor people in towns through ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... Are your pupils good in memory work? Do you ever give them material to memorize the meaning of which is not wholly clear to them? What help do you give the children when you assign them memory work? Do you instruct them how to memorize what you assign? To what extent are you following the laws of memory as stated in ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts

... say what Manilov's real character was. A class of men exists whom the proverb has described as "men unto themselves, neither this nor that—neither Bogdan of the city nor Selifan of the village." And to that class we had better assign also Manilov. Outwardly he was presentable enough, for his features were not wanting in amiability, but that amiability was a quality into which there entered too much of the sugary element, so that his every gesture, his every attitude, seemed to connote ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... that act—would remove this difficulty. It is also important that the laws regulating the pay and emoluments of officers generally should be more specific than they now are. Those, for example, in relation to the Pay Master and Surgeon General assign to them an annual salary of $2.500, but are silent as to allowances which in certain exigencies of the service may be deemed indispensable to the discharge of their duties. This circumstance has been the authority ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson

... uncertainty, and it would seem that the figure and the chest upon which it lies are not of the same date. Sir W. V. Guise in "Records of Gloucester Cathedral," vol. i., part 1, p. 101 (now out of print), says, "I am disposed to assign to the effigy a date not very remote from the period at which the duke lived. The hauberk of chain-mail and the long surcote ceased to be worn after the thirteenth century," and on p. 100, "The mortuary chest on which the figure rests is probably ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse

... properly adapted to the end intended in nature. But, it is this very system of the earth which is here the subject of investigation; and, it is in order to discover the true system that we are to examine, by means of final causes, every theory which pretends to show the nature of that system, or to assign efficient ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton

... duty would be considered in his wages, has become one of the standard jokes of our jest-books. We would, however, place the religious teaching of the school on an entirely different footing from its religious services. We would assign to it its separate class and its separate time, just as we would assign a separate class and time to the teaching of English grammar, or history, or the dead languages. And whether the remuneration was specified or merely understood, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... unskill'd Have I the future and the past combin'd In quiet meditation. Long, perchance, Hath ripen'd in the counsel of the gods The great event. Diana wish d to leave This savage region foul with human blood. We were selected for the high emprize; To us it is assign'd, and strangely thus We are conducted to ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



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