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Assimilate   Listen
verb
Assimilate  v. t.  (past & past part. assimilated; pres. part. assimilating)  
1.
To bring to a likeness or to conformity; to cause a resemblance between. "To assimilate our law to the law of Scotland." "Fast falls a fleecy; the downy flakes Assimilate all objects."
2.
To liken; to compare. (R.)
3.
To appropriate and transform or incorporate into the substance of the assimilating body; to absorb or appropriate, as nourishment; as, food is assimilated and converted into organic tissue. "Hence also animals and vegetables may assimilate their nourishment." "His mind had no power to assimilate the lessons."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Assimilate" Quotes from Famous Books



... emperors of the Heian epoch had an "unbalanced craze for Chinese fashions, for Chinese manners, and above all for Chinese literature." Remarkable though the power of the Japanese people always seems to have been to assimilate foreign culture in large doses and speedily, it is hardly to be expected that at this period, any more than at a later one when there came in a sudden flood of European civilization, the nation should not have suffered somewhat—that it should not have had the defects ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... in a comatose state, should not be too suddenly called into action, lest they be overpowered by the awful revelation. Like the bodily senses, they require time and gentle though steadily increasing action to develop them, and assimilate them to their new surroundings in their new field ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... time, hinders our government, or any scheme of government, from being any more than a sort of approximation to the right, is it therefore that the colonies are to recede from it infinitely? When this child of ours wishes to assimilate to its parent, and to reflect with a true filial resemblance the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our constitution? are we to give them our weakness for their strength? our ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... and for the third time submitted the question of trying to colonize from the races still in the Abyss. If feasible, this would rapidly add to our population. The Folk are now civilized to a point where they could rapidly assimilate outside stock. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... stupidly obtuse to awaking and satisfying the pleasurable interest of the child in his play and the organization of it. Where there have been an un-American fear of immigration and feeling against the immigrant there has been all too little effort put forth to assimilate the foreign elements ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... a short time, intrusted to his keeping! How cruel and wooden that moral code of his by which he had relentlessly judged her, and often found her wanting! What an effort it must have cost her finer-grained organism to assimilate his crude youthful maxims, what suffering to her tiny feet to be plodding wearily in his footsteps over the thorny moral wastes which he had laid behind him! All this came to him, as by revelation, as he sat gazing into Emily's face, which looked very pathetic ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... nauseates one will nauseate the other. When the starosta unceremoniously threw open the door of the miserable cabin belonging to Vasilli Tula, Paul gave a little gasp. The foul air pouring out of the noisome den was such that it seemed impossible that human lungs could assimilate it. This Vasilli Tula was a notorious drunkard, a discontent, a braggart. The Nihilist propaganda had in the early days of that mistaken mission reached him and unsettled his discontented mind. Misfortune seemed to pursue him. In higher grades of life than his there are men who, ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... understand she would be able to put her new scheme before him very soon now, but in the meantime he must be patient. The memory of her defeat had already almost gone from her mind, as did all things which were disagreeable to it and which, therefore, it could not assimilate; and, if she conversed with him at all, it was only on the subject of her genius, her imagination making, if possible, still more gorgeous flights than in the first days ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... is often greater than fidelity to self will allow. The amount of text and the number of references assigned frequently leave no possible time for reflection, although reflection is the sole means by which the self can react on ideas so as truly to assimilate them. Not seldom both teachers and students are conscious of this fact and even lament it, yet they continue in the same course. The result is that the average student learns to disregard his own questions, doubts, and suggestions, and is smothered by his studies. Only the exceptional ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... like me in several particulars. That is, Nature had made her something like me, and the points of difference she was ceaselessly attempting to assimilate. There was only one marked difference, but that was easily changed. Her hair was brown; now it is exactly like mine. We were in the same classes and ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... was perhaps inevitable in a country that had grown too rapidly for its government to assimilate the new possessions. By the Oregon treaty, the war with Mexico and the annexation of Texas vast territories had suddenly been added to the Union, each with its problem that called for patient and wise deliberation, but that a passionate and half-informed ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... the public mind; it hung heavily, like a banner, in every newspaper, it was filtering through the slow British consciousness, solidifying as it travelled. In the end it might be expected to arrive at a shape in which the British consciousness must either assimilate it or cast it forth. They were saying in the suburbs that they wanted it explained; at Hatfield they were saying, some of them, with folded arms, that it was self evident; other members of that great house, swinging their arms, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... to in the Sixtine and the Loggie. But these inventions are due to Uccello's special and extraordinary studies of the problems of modelling and foreshortening; and when his contemporaries try to assimilate his achievements, and unite them with the achievements of other men in other special technical directions, there is an end of all individual poetical conception, and a relapse into the traditional arrangements; as may be seen by comparing ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... sanitation at Havana or Panama. So with the improvement of our rivers; it is no longer wise or safe to leave this great work in the hands of men who fail to grasp the essential relations between navigation and general development and to assimilate and use the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... would admit them only in proportion as they can be readily assimilated. This would admit annually, say, five per cent of those already naturalized, with their American children. The principle here seems to be that we can assimilate from any land in, and only in, proportion to the number already assimilated from that land. But the difficulty of applying such a test lies in the complexity of the assimilative process. No measure yet exists for assimilation. Anthropologists are convinced that various ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... about 25,000 Chinese in and around San Francisco. A small proportion of these have abandoned the worst features of their race, and make themselves comparatively useful as domestic servants. In order to retain their positions they have to assimilate themselves more or less to the manners and customs of the country, and they are only objectionable in certain respects. But the one-time dwellers in the Celestial Empire, who make their homes in Chinatown, have very few redeeming qualities, and most of them seem to have ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... the only familiar creature left to Mary's inner consciousness. He belonged to the hills—if not of them, and while his birthright made it possible for him to assimilate, he shared with Mary the feeling ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... it is one that will have to engage our serious attention and consideration before long. The first thing that we shall have to do is to get out of the dilettante and academic way of approaching it. We must collect and assimilate hard facts. It is a subject that ought to appeal to all thinking minds, and yet, you know, I find it surprisingly difficult to interest ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... active-minded Americans is apt to be a series of transformations. At each succeeding phase of mental development, an old skin drops from their growing intelligence, and they assimilate the ideas and tastes of their new condition, with a facility and completeness ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... Irish. Their class prejudices are not so violent; there is less unity of purpose among them, and they are, in consequence, more favorable subjects for the application of the rules given than are generally the Irish. It is, however, difficult to assimilate the German girls to American customs. They are not apt to learn, and great patience is required in teaching them. The virtues of order and cleanliness seem to be not only rare in them, but exceedingly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... alone, the most sublime of all material flowed to the musician, and not to him only, but to the artist, the architect, and the sculptor. The fullest stream—he was well aware of it—came from ancient pagan times, but from whatever sources the spring was fed, the Church had understood how to assimilate, preserve, and sanctify it. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... many cook the food, and the rest construct little huts by planting boughs in a circle in the ground and fastening the tops together, leaving the hut in the shape of a haycock, to which they further assimilate it by throwing grass above; and in rainy weather it is further covered by their mats, to secure them against getting wet. As only one or two men occupy a hut, to accommodate so large a party many of them have to be constructed. It is amusing to see how some men, proud of ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... it has to give—all of it at least that he can assimilate—is within the reach of the trained pupil, but for the untrained clairvoyant to touch it is hardly more than a bare possibility. It has been done in mesmeric trance, but the occurrence is of exceeding rarity, for it needs almost superhuman qualifications in the way of lofty spiritual ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... was neither so radical as the most radical could desire, nor so conservative as the ultra-conservative wished, at least it safeguarded the Union and secured the political achievements of the past. Moreover, the two great party organizations had done much to assimilate the foreign elements injected into our population. No doubt the politician who cultivated "the Irish vote" or "the German vote," was obeying no higher law than his own interests; but his activities did much to promote that fusion of heterogeneous elements which has been one of ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... discouragement of season, some of the most important portions of its rich vegetation; in many instances, however, in very imperfect conditions of fructification. Its general features led me decidedly to assimilate it to the striking character of the botany of the South Coast; a characteristic of which it is more than probable the mainland largely partakes, if we may draw an inference from its ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... of Antheus as no other hero had to such a degree; a singular virtue of growing to more gigantic proportions when the fall had been deepest and hardest; he had something like a strengthening power to assimilate the sap of adversity and of discredit, not through the lessons of experience, but through the unconscious and immediate reaction of a nature which thus fulfils its own laws. His personality as a warrior has in this characteristic the seal which ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... upon our own right thinking and living, upon the faithfulness with which we study, assimilate and demonstrate Truth," she said; then added: "Right environment is very desirable, but when we lean upon that instead of on God, or Principle, we are not 'working out our own salvation,' which everyone must do. You know what happened to the five foolish virgins who ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... bit in silence, Jimmie trying to assimilate these ideas. They were new—not in the sense that he had not heard them before, but in the sense that he had not heard them from a German. "How does your father feel?" ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... too weak to take possession of the big limb. It is like putting an ox yoke onto a calf. They can't adapt themselves. They hadn't strength to take hold of that limb and grow. That was a good illustration. Put a graft on a small limb, and it will assimilate and grow better than if you take ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... constitution, wrested from political and civil strife; will her moral stamina, bred from the heroism of an heroic past, stand the strain, the tremendous strain of the {437} new conditions? Will she assimilate the strange new peoples—strange in thought and life and morals—coming to her borders? Will she eradicate their vices like the strong body of a healthy constitution throwing off disease; or will she be poisoned by the toxins of vicious traits inherited from centuries of ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... postulate, before it becomes fully operative. Strange excursions and high-flying theories may interest, but they cannot rule behaviour. Our faith is not the highest truth that we perceive, but the highest that we have been able to assimilate into the very texture and method of our thinking. It is not, therefore, by flashing before a man's eyes the weapons of dialectic; it is not by induction, deduction, or construction; it is not by forcing him on from one stage of reasoning to another, that the man will be effectually renewed. He ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... confounded. Questions relating to marriage and personal status, naturalisation, the law of companies, all branches of commercial law, the law of contracts, and the law relating to devolution of property, should be dealt with by one body, whose aim should be to assimilate the law on these subjects over as wide an area as possible. Endless trouble, litigation and uncertainty arise from an unnecessary variety of laws on such subjects as these. It would be well, indeed, with regard to such subjects, to endeavour to assimilate the law of the Colonies and ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson

... ingenuity, and developed with consummate art. The character which particularly interested him was that of the hero, the more peculiarly, because he saw, or fancied that he saw, a resemblance to his own; with some differences, to be sure—but young readers readily assimilate and identify themselves with any character, the leading points of which resemble their own, and in whose general feelings they sympathize. In some instances, Harry, as he read on, said to himself, "I would not—I could not have done so and so." But upon the whole, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... I have read for some years. A decided likeness of myself recognizable in it, as in the celestial mirror of a friend's heart; but so enlarged, exaggerated, all transfigured,—the most delicious, the most dangerous thing! Well, I suppose I must try to assimilate it also, to turn it also to good, if I be able. Eulogies, dyslogies, in which one finds no features of one's own natural face, are easily dealt with; easily left unread, as stuff for lighting fires, such is the insipidity, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the idea that as manifested in the sexes they were opposite if not somewhat antagonistic, and required a union as in chemistry to form a perfect whole. The simile appeared to me far from a correct illustration of the true union. Minds that can assimilate, spirits that are congenial, attract one another. It is the union of similar, not of opposite affections, which is necessary for the perfection of the marriage bond. There seemed a want of proper delicacy in his representing man as being bold in the demonstration of the pure affection of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... was afterwards called, in opposition to the Federal party, led by Hamilton, Jay, and Gouverneur Morris, Of this new party Jefferson was the undisputed founder and life. He fancied he saw in the measures of the Federal leaders a systematic attempt to assimilate American institutions, as far as possible, to those of Great Britain. He looked upon Hamilton as a royalist at heart, and upon his bank, with other financial arrangements, only as an engine to control votes and centralize power at the expense of the States. He entered into the arena of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord

... rendered it incapable—without some destructive shock or convulsion—of any re-organization to incorporate or control these new factors. In the case of the British Empire an additional stress was created by the incapacity of the formal government to assimilate the developing civilization of the American colonies. Everywhere there were new elements, not as yet clearly analyzed or defined, arising as mechanism arose; everywhere the old traditional government and social system, defined and analyzed ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... that of liberty and responsibility. The domain of Political Economy is the labor of generations. But we reject with all our strength, the materialistic doctrine which, inexplicably confusing matters, endeavors to assimilate ideas so distinct as intelligence and things; and which would descend so low as to employ the dynamometer to measure the creative force of man and its results, and which sees only figures where there is a ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... any object unless he can not discover it or its like for himself. Each power must have developed before it can be used. Difficult as this procedure generally is, it is necessary in the teaching of children, and is there successful. It is a form of education by examples. The child is taught to assimilate to its past experience the new fact, e. g.: in a comparison of some keen suffering of the child with that it made an animal suffer. Such parallels rarely fail, whether in the education of children or of witnesses. The lengthy description of an event in which, e. g., somebody is manhandled, may ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... now become an example for imitation to the whole world. The friends of freedom in every clime point with admiration to our institutions. Shall we, then, at the moment when the people of Europe are devoting all their energies in the attempt to assimilate their institutions to our own, peril all our blessings by despising the lessons of experience and refusing to tread in the footsteps which our fathers have trodden? And for what cause would we endanger ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... many may strive to make some contribution towards the great end; and those who think they have such a contribution to make, or such a revelation entrusted to them, are bound to express it to the best of their ability, and leave it to their contemporaries and successors to assimilate such portions of it as are true, and to develop it further. From this point of view Professor Haeckel is no doubt amply justified in his writings; but, unfortunately, it appears to me that although he has been borne forward on the advancing wave of monistic ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge

... experience to another, especially if it be somewhat complicated, and you will find your own attitude toward your experience changing; otherwise you resort to expletives and ejaculations. Except in dealing with commonplaces and catch phrases one has to assimilate, imaginatively, something of another's experience in order to tell him intelligently of one's own experience. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... narrator of his own history never pretends to dive into the thoughts and feelings of the other parties; he merely describes his own, and gives his conjectures as to those of the rest, just as a real autobiographer might do; and thus an author is enabled to assimilate his fiction to reality, without withholding that delineation of the inward workings of the human heart, which is so much coveted. Nevertheless novels in the first person have not succeeded so well as to make that mode of writing become very general. It is objected ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... and die while eating large amounts of food. Obviously they are unable to digest or assimilate nutrients or they wouldn't be wasting. Eating further increases their toxic burden from undigested meals, further worsening their already failing organs. The real solution is to stop feeding them altogether so that their digestive functions can heal. ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... old Latin spirit proved stronger than Fate, stronger than numbers, stronger than brute force. It proved strong enough to assimilate the foreign barbarians, instead of becoming assimilated by them. It was strong enough to wipe out every trace of Asian and Slavic taint. It was strong enough to keep intact the Latin idea against the steely shock of Asian hordes, the immense, crushing weight ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... we may love God will never make us love Him; but the longing to be better and holier—expressed in daily watchfulness, and in striving to assimilate more of the divine character—this will mould and fashion us anew, until we awake in His likeness. We reach the Science of Christianity through demonstration of the divine nature; but in this wicked world goodness will "be evil spoken of," ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... known, as well in the practice of our own country as in the general law of nations: and that these secret agents were not on a level with messengers, letter-carriers, or spies, to whom it has been found necessary in argument to assimilate them. On the 30th March, 1795, in the recess of the Senate, by letters patent under the great broad seal of the United States, and the signature of their President, (that President being George Washington,) countersigned by the Secretary ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... proximity to the Continent laid her open to frequent invasion in early times, but after she secured a navy made her singularly safe from subjugation. It made the development of many of her institutions tardy, yet at the same time gave her the opportunity to borrow and assimilate what she would from the customs of foreign nations. Her separation by water from the Continent favored a distinct and continuous national life, while her nearness to it allowed her to participate in all the more important influences which affected ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... an hour before she had entered the Pot o' Stars with nothing on her mind but assessing the clients and the possible receipts for the day. Too much had happened and too rapidly. She could not assimilate details. ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen

... avail itself of the talents and experience of the ablest men, in whatever part of the Union they may be found. It can move on uniform principles of policy. It can harmonize, assimilate, and protect the several parts and members, and extend the benefit of its foresight and precautions to each. In the formation of treaties, it will regard the interest of the whole, and the particular interests of the parts as connected with that ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... the inhabitants sufficient strength to run away from home.' All these quick and lively sallies were said sportively, quite in jest, and with a smile, which showed that he meant only wit. Upon this topick he and Mr. Wilkes could perfectly assimilate; here was a bond of union between them, and I was conscious that as both of them had visited Caledonia, both were fully satisfied of the strange narrow ignorance of those who imagine that it is a land of famine.[222] But they amused themselves with persevering in the old jokes. When I claimed ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... a long walk after I left the studio. I wanted to assimilate a new fact, to get my ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... deserting, and much less disliking, the male part of society, but as being unfit for it; not hardy nor grave, not knowing enough, nor sufficiently acquainted with the every-day concerns of men. But my beloved creatures have minds with which I can better assimilate ... Think of you I must; and of me, I must entreat that ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... in a way characteristic. He said the whole tragedy was the inevitable result of broken traditions and the mixing of two races which to the end of eternity would never assimilate. He had washed his heart clean of all anger against her, but his days were nearing a close. He had lost the fight and for him life was done. Oblivion would be welcome, ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... Poland was not created, but a great State which, as she is, cannot live long, because there are not great foreign minorities, but a whole mass of populations which cannot co-exist, Poland, which has already the experience of a too numerous Israelitic population, has not the capacity to assimilate the Germans, the Russians and the Ukranians which the Treaty of Versailles has unjustly given to her against the ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti

... among them, yet seemed not to have sufficient courage to welcome him to their midst; those with whom he sat down frequently at the table of their common Lord seemed neither to know nor to desire to know him here; and Mr. Birge's effort to assimilate the different elements of his congregation seemed likely to prove a disastrous failure. A merry company were gathered around Dora Hastings. She held a book in her hand, and was struggling with the translation of a sentiment ...
— Three People • Pansy

... the Arctic Ocean on the north and the Isthmus of Panama on the south. But, even with the continuance of the present political divisions, conditions of trade and ease of travel are likely to gradually assimilate to one type all the countries of the hemisphere. Assuming that the country is so well settled that no great disturbance of ratios is likely to result from immigration, or any serious conflict of races, we may ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... problem of the manner of progress of magmas through adjacent rocks,—a subject which is still largely in the realm of speculation, but which is not thereby eliminated from the field of controversy. Facts of this kind seem to favor the position of certain geologists that magmas may assimilate the rocks they invade. ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... of a hundred years ago drank alcohol in various forms, in quantities which the system could not consume or assimilate, and it destroyed their organs and shortened their lives. Great agitations arose until the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages was prohibited over nearly all the world. At length the scientists observed that the craving was based on a natural want ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... grasping and assimilating the facts of grammar, and create a distaste for the study. It is therefore the leading object of this book to be both as scholarly and as practical as possible. In it there is an attempt to present grammatical facts as simply, and to lead the student to assimilate them as thoroughly, as possible, and at the same time to do away with confusing difficulties as far ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... work will be long accomplishing; because the same movement must be given to an immense body; the same leaven must assimilate an enormous mass of heterogeneous parts. But this movement shall be effected; its presages are already to be seen. Already the great society, assuming in its course the same characters as partial societies ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... in this connection, that every devachanic stage is conditioned by the earth-stage that precedes it, and the Man can only assimilate in Devachan the kinds of experience he has been gathering ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant

... of the parsonage can hear the voice of those sharp moral repulsions, those dismal moral questionings, to which Branwell's misconduct and ruin gave rise. Their brother's fate was an element in the genius of Emily and Charlotte which they were strong enough to assimilate, which may have done them some harm, and weakened in them certain delicate or sane perceptions, but was ultimately, by the strange alchemy of talent, far more profitable than hurtful, inasmuch as it troubled the waters of the soul, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... themselves. This, Comte denominates the "metaphysical" stage, mainly, because the solutions given were bound up with abstractions of physical realities. Thus, if you asked Aristotle why a vegetable grew, he would reply that it had a "nutritive soul," or principle, which enabled it to assimilate food. If one asked why heavy bodies fall, or why flame and smoke ascend, the answer would be because everything tends to go to its natural place, implying, thereby, that there was some occult power or tendency in bodies to behave in certain definite ways. Those were ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... expression not taken from the individual, but from human nature synthetized. Thus the student will not have the humiliation of being the slave or ape of any particular master. He will be only himself. Those who assimilate their imperfect natures to the perfect type will ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... story begins with Mehetabel before she could speak, before she could assimilate anything more substantial than milk, yet the author has no intention of inflicting on the reader the record of her early days, of her acquisition of the power of speech, and capacity for consuming solid food. Neither is it his purpose to develop at large the growth of her ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... to labour in the docks for 4d. an hour, and one-third of them will fight in vain, and be turned workless away." We worked for children's dinners. "If we insist on these children being educated, is it not necessary that they shall be fed? If not, we waste on them knowledge they cannot assimilate, and torture many of them to death. Poor waifs of humanity, we drive them into the school and bid them learn; and the pitiful, wistful eyes question us why we inflict this strange new suffering, and bring into their dim lives this new pang. 'Why not leave us alone? ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... company. I have seen men, in whose company I felt nothing but a thraldom, which it was a duty to my own self-respect to cast off as soon as possible; a feeling of utter incompatibility, with whose nature mine could never assimilate. But Livingstone was a character that I venerated, that called forth all my enthusiasm, that evoked nothing but ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... to assimilate themselves to the Romans, and the Roman laws sanctioned divorce. Let us then examine how far the comparison can, in this ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... mind becomes so rapidly possessed of an idea, is enabled to assimilate it so completely and speedily, that the possessor becomes unaware how very recently the notion was received, and deals with it as an old-established thought. This must be Lady Hunter's excuse (for no other can be found) for speaking of the ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... the Happy Warrior," which he endeavored to embody in his own life. It was ever before him as an exemplar. He thought of it continually, and often quoted it to others. His biographer says, "He tried to conform his own life and to assimilate his own character to it; and he succeeded, as all men succeed who are truly ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... vegetables, dried and half putrid fish in abundance, but they have an aversion to milk, which is very remarkable, as a great proportion of their country is admirably adapted for pasturage. In this respect, however, they assimilate to the Chinese, and many Indo-Chinese nations who are indifferent to milk, as are the Sikkim people. The Bengalees, Hindoos, and Tibetans, on the other hand, consume immense quantities of milk. They have no sheep, and few goats or cattle, the latter of which are kept for slaughter; they have, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... clear, an animal high in the organic scale only reaches this rank by passing through all the intermediate states which separate it from the animals placed below it. Man only becomes man after traversing transitional organisatory states which assimilate him first to fish, then to reptiles, then to birds and mammals." Serres was not altogether free from the besetting sin of the ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... to regard the Netherlands as a whole, and he hated the antiquated charters and obstinate privileges which interfered with his ideas of symmetry. Two great machines, the court of Mechlin and the inquisition, would effectually simplify and assimilate all these irregular and heterogeneous rights. The civil tribunal was to annihilate all diversities in their laws by a general cassation of their constitutions, and the ecclesiastical court was to burn out all differences ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... decency has been observed in the attacks upon me from authority; no protests have been offered against them. It is felt,—I am far from denying, justly felt,—that I am a foreign material, and cannot assimilate with the ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... it brought would tell most on their minds and manners. They had both been sent to schools where they had associated with young people of gentle breeding, which perhaps their partly foreign extraction, and southern birth and childhood, made it easier for them to assimilate. Their beauty and brightness had led to a good deal of kindly notice from the officers and ladies of the regiment, and they had thus acquired the habits and ways of the class to which they had been raised. Their father, likewise, had been a man of a chivalrous nature, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... effort. In fact, there is a faint pleasure in the absorption of this strength, when, in magnetic disturbances, there is an unusual amount of immortal food. Should we try to resist it, there would eventually be a greater pressure without than within, and we should assimilate involuntarily. We are part of the intangible universe, and can feel no hunger that is not instantly appeased, neither can we ever more know thirst." "Why," asked Cortlandt reverently, " did the angel with the sword of flame drive Adam from the Tree of Life, since with ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... and cottages straggling off toward Milton, which are occupied for the summer by people from the city. These birds of passage are a distinct class from the permanent inhabitants, and the two seldom closely assimilate unless there has been some previous connection. It seemed to me that our new neighbors were to come under the head of permanent inhabitants; they had built their own house, and had the air of intending to live in it all the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... homology; accordance; conformity &c. 82; agreement &c. 23; consonance, uniformness. regularity, constancy, even tenor,.routine; monotony. V. be uniform &c. adj.; accord with &c. 23; run through. become uniform &c. adj.; conform to &c. 82. render uniform, homogenize &c. adj.; assimilate, level, smooth, dress. Adj. uniform; homogeneous, homologous;of a piece[Fr], consistent, connatural[obs3]; monotonous, even, invariable; regular, unchanged, undeviating, unvaried, unvarying. unsegmented. Adv. uniformly &c. adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... education is itself always a slow process. People change their minds slowly. Slowness of action is one of the prices we have to pay for our democracy. On the other hand, an absolute monarchy can act quickly, for there may be but one individual to assimilate the new idea or to be convinced of the wisdom of ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... light had suddenly burst upon Mr. Hennage. Both by nature and training he was possessed of the ability to assimilate a hint without the accompaniment of a kick, and in the twinkling of an eye the situation was as plain to him as four aces and a king, with the entire company ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... I, as quick as a flash; 'we have always taken in more foreigners than we could assimilate!' I wanted to tell him that one Scotsman of his type would upset the national digestion anywhere, ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... dressed in a blue coat, with buttons of a similar color, a white waistcoat, over which was displayed a massive gold chain, brown trousers, and a quantity of black hair descending so low over his eyebrows as to leave it doubtful whether it were not artificial so little did its jetty glossiness assimilate with the deep wrinkles stamped on his features—a person, in a word, who, although evidently past fifty, desired to be taken for not more than forty, bent forwards from the carriage door, on the panels of which were emblazoned the armorial bearings ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... great, barrel-like body heaved and trembled, and it waved its long arms and threshed its feet upon the ground. Omega realized that it was the victim of its own abnormal appetite. With the relish of a gormandizer it had taken more of its peculiar food than even its prodigious maw could assimilate. Soon its struggles became fiercer. It rolled over and over in contortions of agony, the sweat streaming from its body, while a pitiful moaning came from its horrid mouth. But at last it became quiet, its moanings trailed ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow

... aid him in sustaining life. Both on this account and for fear of injuring the common life they were not usually killed. But it was necessary to primitive man that the tie should take a concrete form and that he should actually assimilate the life of the sacred animal by eating its flesh, and this was accordingly done at a ceremonial sacrifice, which was held annually, and often in the spring, the season of the renewal and increase of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... way in which the extreme form of book-hunger shows itself in the reader whose appetite has become over-developed. He wants to read so many books that he over-crams himself with the crude materials of knowledge, which become knowledge only when the mental digestion has time to assimilate them. I never can go into that famous "Corner Bookstore" and look over the new books in the row before me, as I enter the door, without seeing half a dozen which I want to read, or at least to know something about. I cannot empty my purse of its ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... by what we may call 'intact ideas'. It co-ordinates every part of the crocus to all the other parts; one stage of its growth to the whole process; and having framed its organism to assimilate certain external elements, it does not cheat it of those elements, soil, air, moisture. Well, if the 'idea' of man is to be intact, he must be enveloped in a supernatural world; and nature always works by intact ideas. The spiritual life is the highest development of the idea of ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... nearly resembles himself, he writes: "Daniel would not admit the existence of talent without profound metaphysical knowledge. At this moment he was in the act of despoiling both ancient and modern philosophy of all their wealth in order to assimilate it. He desired, like Moliere, to become a profound philosopher first of all, a writer of comedies afterwards." Some readers there are, indeed, who think that philosophy superabounds with Balzac, that the surplus of ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... They take in oxygen and give off carbonic-acid gas. The air enters the tree through the leaves and small openings in the bark, which are easily seen in such trees as the cherry and birch. Trees breathe constantly, but they digest and assimilate food only during the day and in the presence of light. In the process of digestion and assimilation they give off oxygen in abundance, but they retain most of the carbonic acid gas, which is a plant food, and whatever part of it is ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack

... in manuscript by General Bourcet, an officer who during the campaigns of half a century had assisted as Quartermaster-General a number of the best Generals of France. Napoleon's phenomenal power of concentration had enabled him to assimilate Bourcet's doctrine, which in his clear and vigorous mind took new and more perfect shape, so that from the beginning his operations are conducted on a system which may be described as that of Bourcet ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson

... opportunities here, rather than deplore the limitations which help in one direction more than they fetter in another. In fact, we should never deplore any condition, each has its lesson. If we try to learn what that lesson is and to assimilate the experience which may be extracted therefrom, we are wiser than those who waste time ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... discovers in Quaker Hill that is uncommon and exceptional, one would say that the social peculiarity of the Hill is: first, the consistent working out of an idea in a social population, with the resultant social organization, and communal integrity; and second, the power of this community to assimilate individuals and make them part ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... as they had inherited his manuscripts; and in spite of a grievous inability to edit either of them, they held to one legacy as fast as to the other. Kendal thought with a somewhat repelled amusement of any attempt of theirs to assimilate Elfrida. It was different with the Cardiffs; but even under their enthusiastic encouragement he was disinclined to be anything but discreet and cautions about Elfrida. In one way and another she was, at all events, ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... the Habsburgs could continue in their efforts to assimilate, by one process or another, the Southern Slavs in the Empire, it was necessary to induce them to accept the Pragmatic Sanction, for Charles VI., the reigning Emperor, had lost his only son and wished to secure the succession ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... are not convinced of the necessity for any special action by them. They feel that, as the child grows, it will assimilate this knowledge, but they do not give consideration to the source from which the knowledge may be obtained, or the manner in which it will ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.

... connection with the entrances to the aisles; and the finest feature of the great French facades is wanting. But the size of the west window has other disastrous effects. It would have been difficult, almost impossible, to assimilate an opening so large, and of such an elaborate pattern, to the rest of the design, and hardly an effort even has been made to do so. It appears, therefore, like the porches, to have been cut bodily out of the front without regard for the rest of the plan, and ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock

... possessed, furthermore, in full measure that amazing adaptability which seems to be innate with most American women of any walk in life; whatever she might lack to her detriment or embarrassment she was quick to mark, learn, assimilate, and make as much her own as if she ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... social economy for the hordes of European immigrants with their many diverse national characteristics, so the intellectual basis of Americanism must be broad enough to include and vigorous enough to assimilate the special ideals and means of discipline necessary to every kind of intellectual or moral excellence. The technical ideals and standards which the typical American of the Middle Period instinctively under-valued are neither American nor European. They are merely ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... musical and technical training. If they were divided into two, and one half sung on one evening and the other on the next, it would be a gain for the public and the artists. It is impossible for even the musically cultivated to absorb and assimilate the whole of such an opera as "Siegfried" or "Tristan and Isolde" in one evening, and it is too much to expect any artist to sing them through without ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... physical action and shape material things with their own impress. Whether a discord is too violent or no, depends on what we have been accustomed to, and on how widely the new differs from the old, but in no case can we fuse and assimilate more than a very little new at a time without exhausting our tempering power—and hence presently ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... tradition, no effective discipline, and no definite, comprehensive, far-reaching, concentrated aim. The characteristic of his activity is dispersiveness. Its distinction is to popularise such detached ideas as society is in a condition to assimilate; to interest men in these ideas by dressing them up in varied forms of the literary art; to guide men through them by judging, empirically and unconnectedly, each case of conduct, of policy, or of new opinion as it arises. We have no wish to exalt the office. On the contrary, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... is as yet faintly understood. Its meanings go on crutches. They must be helped out by words. What does this piece say to you? Interpret it. You cannot. You must be taught much before you can know all. It must be translated from music into speech before you can entirely assimilate it. Musicians do not trust alone to notes for moods. Their light shines only through a glass darkly. But in some other sphere, in some happier time, in a world where gross wants shall have disappeared, and therefore the grossness of words shall be no longer necessary, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... nor a historic past to cling to, nor any particular religious belief, they are all of the Orthodox Faith. In assuming the customs and civilization of the Russians, the Lapps often abandon their own tribe, and assimilate with the stronger race. I have often heard such sayings as the following from Lapps who have more or less settled down: "I'm not a Lapp at all, I'm a Russian now," or "He's a good man" (i. e., active, energetic) "and not ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... theological doctrines of relatively late creedal formulation yet have behind the formulation a long history of actual acceptance in the teaching of the Church. They are theologically certain long before they are embodied in authoritative formulae. What the individual Christian has to do is to try to assimilate the meaning of theological teaching and to find a place for it in his devotional practice and experience. His best attitude is not one of doubt and scepticism, but of meditation and experiment. It is through this latter attitude that each one is helping to form the mind of the Church, and ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... ways than the average European imagines. I wear for instance this 'ao' dress as you see, cut in one piece and allowing the limbs free play—because it is manifestly a more rational and comfortable attire than your fashionable skirt from Paris. On the other hand we are ready to assimilate such notions from the West as will really prove beneficial to us." Beauty is a matter of education: when you have become accustomed to anything, however quaint or queer, you will not think it so after a while. When I first went abroad and saw young girls going about in the ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... his statements. His previous life now proved a great advantage to him in most respects, but he had become accustomed to dealing and conversing with a certain class of men, and this made it difficult for him to assimilate himself to a wholly different class. Sumner's ardent temperament required constant self-control in this new and trying position; and a man who continually reflects beforehand on his own actions acquires an appearance of greater reserve than a ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... somethings close beside the piled-up rocks, and for some moments he could not be sure that they were men prostrated on their chests crawling towards the entrance to the cattle corral, for they seemed to assimilate with the colour of the earth; and though he strained his eyes, not a trace of ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn

... brown blotches. The nostrils are scarcely visible, and are situated in a narrow cleft at the base of the bill, and against the median ridge. The tongue is very small and entirely out of proportion to the vast buccal capacity. This is a character that might assimilate the balaeniceps to the pelican. The robust head, the neck, and the throat, are covered with slate-colored feathers verging on green, and not presenting the repulsive aspect of the naked skin of the adjutant. As in the latter, the skin of the throat is capable of being ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various

... led on imperceptibly, by travelling mile after mile by land from my own home, to accustom my senses to the gradual change of country. There has been no border to pass, where the language, the dress, the habits, and outward appearances assimilate. There has been no blending of colours—no dissolving views in the retrospect—no opening or expanding ones in prospect. I have no difficulty in ascertaining the point where one terminates and ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... the acidity of the solution disappears, we obtain potassium and sodium sulphates, basic chromium sulphate, salt and vanadic acid. While, therefore, the unchanged parts of the paper remain acid, the changed parts acquire a neutral reaction, and while the first will readily assimilate bases, the second will not. Exposed in an atmosphere laden with water and aniline, the aniline will be absorbed in those parts where the solution remains acid and in proportion ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois

... found No ingrateful food: and food alike those pure Intelligential substances require As doth your Rational; and both contain Within them every lower facultie 410 Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste, Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate, And corporeal to incorporeal turn. For know, whatever was created, needs To be sustaind and fed; of Elements The grosser feeds the purer, earth the sea, Earth and the Sea feed Air, the Air those Fires Ethereal, and as lowest first the Moon; Whence in her visage round ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... sort of soft paste before swallowing it. In these conditions you will digest it properly, and so feel no discomfort, inconvenience, or pain of any kind either in the stomach or intestines. You will assimilate what you eat and your organism will make use of it to make blood, muscle, strength and ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue

... non-carnivorous nature and omnivorism, it is sometimes said that though man's system may not thrive on a raw flesh diet, yet he can assimilate cooked flesh and his system is well adapted to digest it. The answer to this is that were it demonstrable, and it is not, that cooked flesh is as easily digested and contains as much nutriment as grains and nuts, this does not prove it to be suitable for human food; for man ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon

... century, employ the Babylonian language and system of writing, and reveal a high Semitic civilization, closely patterned after that of Babylonia. When the Israelites settled in Canaan and began to intermarry and assimilate with the older inhabitants, as the earliest Hebrew records plainly state (cf. Judg. I.), they found there, among the Canaanites, established civil and religious institutions and traditions which were largely a reflection of those of Babylonia. Also, when in the eighth and seventh centuries ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent

... gall of an honest man, even after the lapse of two centuries and a half, to turn over those long forgotten pages and mark the depths to which political and theological party spirit could descend. That human creatures can assimilate themselves so closely to the reptile, and to the subtle devil within the reptile, when a party end is to be gained is enough to make the very name of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... himself at one time found help and inspiration in Spinoza, the dryest and most abstract of thinkers;[93] and after all, 'nature' comes off about as well in 'Wallenstein' as in 'Faust'. It is a question of personal endowment, of what the mind can assimilate and turn to account. There are many kinds of the poetic temper, the intellectual element blending variously with the emotional, the instinctive and the visional. For Schiller poetry was not 'somnambulism', but a very deliberate process; wherefore it was quite ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... long a time to assign for the building of the nave, because there is so little difference in detail as we examine the work from east to west; and even when later work in a large building is purposely made to assimilate to what had been built some years before, the experienced eye can usually discover slight variations in mouldings or ornamentation which indicate something of a new fashion in architecture. Here we detect nothing of the sort. We can well understand how much reason there was ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting

... who were unworthy of love. I have led the life of a libertine; I bear on my heart certain marks that will never be effaced. Is it my fault if calumny, and base suggestion, to-day planted in a heart whose fibres were still trembling with pain and ready to assimilate all that resembles sorrow, have driven me to despair? I have just heard the name of a man I have never met, of whose existence I was ignorant; I have been given to understand that there has been between you and him a certain intimacy, which proves nothing. I do not intend to question you; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the mind what eating is to the body. So to eat without giving nature time to assimilate is to rob her, first of health, then of life; so to read without reflecting is to cram the intellect and paralyze the mind. In all cases, dear friends, reflect more than you read, in order to present what you read to your hearers. (S. A. Wesson, ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various

... on which this revision, or, as it was called, Improvement, was made, were in direct conflict with the reverence due to the genius of the Slavic language. The revisers, in their unphilosophical mode of proceeding, tried only to imitate the Greek original, and to assimilate the grammatical part of the language, as much as possible, to the Russian of their own times. They all acted in the conviction, that the language of the Bible and liturgical books was merely obsolete Russian. Even the ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... of Punans into settled communities that assimilate more or less fully the Kayan culture is still going on. We are acquainted with settled communities which still admit their Punan origin; and these exhibit very various grades of assimilation of the Kayan culture. Some, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... function proper to the eye, to the ear, to the various organs of the human body: there must be a function proper to man as such. That can be none of the functions of the vegetative life, nor of the mere animal life within him. Man is not happy by doing what a rose-bush can do, digest and assimilate its food: nor by doing what a horse does, having sensations pleasurable and painful, and muscular feelings. Man is happy by doing what man alone can do in this world, that is, acting by reason and ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... Ireland. Hitherto, as Lord Palmerston explained the matter, England had treated conspiracy to murder as a misdemeanor, punishable with fine and imprisonment. In Ireland it had long been a capital crime; and, though he did not propose to assimilate the English to the Irish statute in all its severity, he proposed to enact that conspiracy to murder should be a felony, punishable with penal servitude, by whomsoever the conspiracy might be concocted, or wherever the crime might be designed to ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... himself, and not to give him any supper, as hunger would, the next morning, much facilitate his studies. Pain and hunger alone will tame brutes, and the same remedy must be applied to conquer those passions in man which assimilate him with brutes. Johnny was conducted to bed, although it was but six o'clock. He was not only in pain, but his ideas were confused; and no wonder, after all his life having been humoured and indulged—never ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... the offering of the first fruits, as a demonstration of filial dependance on, and gratitude to, the Supreme Cause; the prohibition to feed on certain loathsome animals, and reptiles and insects, in order not to assimilate to the human body substances of a low, imperfect, and possibly deteriorated organization; the interdiction of marriages between certain degrees of relationships, because wanting in the antagonism required in connubial unions;[5] the duty of offering up prayer, one of the noblest ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio

... to a lot of intellectual darkness and legalized social and political proscription. Associated from adolescence with S. J. Prescod, the greatest leader of popular opinion whom Barbados has yet produced, Mr. Reeves possessed in his nature the material to assimilate and reflect in his own principles and conduct the salient characteristics of his distinguished Mentor. Arrived in England to study law, he had there the privilege of the personal acquaintance of Lord Brougham, then one of the Nestors of the great Emancipation conflict. ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... Art, to be fully appreciated, must be true to contemporaneous life. It is not that we should ignore the claims of posterity, but that we should seek to enjoy the present more. It is not that we should disregard the creations of the past, but that we should try to assimilate them into our consciousness. Slavish conformity to traditions and formulas fetters the expression of individuality in architecture. We can but weep over the senseless imitations of European buildings which one beholds in modern Japan. We marvel why, among the most progressive ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura

... whose work is muscular and carried on in the open air, as is that of the farmer and of the fisherman, will have the power to assimilate almost anything, and can maintain abundant health on the coarsest food poorly prepared, provided, only, that it is abundant and composed of the chemical ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards

... advance and would not retire. The artillery only kept the battle going, and the huge naval gun from behind was joining with its deep bark in the deafening uproar. But the Boers had already learned—and it is one of their most valuable military qualities that they assimilate their experience so quickly—that shell fire is less dangerous in a trench than among rocks. These trenches, very elaborate in character, had been dug some hundreds of yards from the foot of the hills, so that there was hardly any guide to our artillery fire. Yet it is to the artillery fire ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... that confronted Moses was one of practical politics, not a question of philosophy or of absolute or final truth. The laws he put forth were for the guidance of the people to whom he gave them, and his precepts were such as they could assimilate. ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... billions of tiny animals," he went on, "those infusoria that live by the millions in one droplet of water, 800,000 of which are needed to weigh one milligram, their role is no less important. They absorb the marine salts, they assimilate the solid elements in the water, and since they create coral and madrepores, they're the true builders of limestone continents! And so, after they've finished depriving our water drop of its mineral nutrients, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... soon as we are a little composed and reconciled to our surroundings, as soon as we have appropriated some of its temperature, we feel an extraordinary sense of satisfaction, as in bathing in cool water; we assimilate ourselves to the new element, and cease to have any necessary pre-occupation with our person. We devote our attention undisturbed to our environment, to which we now feel ourselves superior by being able to view it in an objective and disinterested fashion, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer

... the elite of the Old World. Must not this perpetual invasion of strangers promptly transformed into citizens, have necessarily introduced into the decision of public affairs some elements of immorality? I admire the honorable and religious spirit of the Americans which has been able to assimilate and rule to such a degree these great masses of Irish and Germans. Few countries would have endured a like ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... slowly, sir—with an Eye to the Interests of our Children. We must preserve the Continent for Races which will assimilate with Ours. We must not ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... is a polymerization, or condensation, to speak roughly, of the oxygen of the air. The oxygen takes this form which the lungs cannot assimilate except with great difficulty and with great damage to the tissues. The oxyzone will break down rapidly under the influence of sunlight or of any ray whose wave-length is shorter than indigo. As a result, it disappears as soon as the sun is up and it will reappear after dark. That is why ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... Homeric beauty and the divine irony of his great peer. But this was not to be. The spirit of the times which governed his education, with which he was not revolutionary enough to break, which he strove as a critic to assimilate and as a social being to obey, destroyed his independence, perplexed his judgment, and impaired his nervous energy. His best work was consequently of unequal value; pure and base metal mingled in its composition. His worst was a ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... between them, that it is not possible to class them under the same title. To deliver a hundred dollars by compulsion to him who says "Stand and deliver," or voluntarily to pay the same sum to him who sells you the object of your wishes—truly, these are things which cannot be made to assimilate. As well might you say, it is a matter of indifference whether you throw bread into the river or eat it, because in either case it is bread destroyed. The fault of this reasoning, as in that which the word tribute is made to imply, consists in founding ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... glory and majesty. We can but bow and adore the perfect love. We look more deeply into the depths of Deity than unaided eyes could ever penetrate, and what we see is the movement in that abyss of Godhead of purest surrender which, by beholding, we are to assimilate. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... why do you want me to wear an astrological bangle?" I ventured this question after a long silence, during which I had tried to assimilate Sri ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... a living organism—to despise pithy and apt colloquialisms, and even slang. In order to remain healthy and vigorous, a literary language must be rooted in the soil of a copious vernacular, from which it can extract and assimilate, by a chemistry peculiar to itself, whatever nourishment it requires. It must keep in touch with life in the broadest acceptation of the word; and life at certain levels, obeying a psychological law which must simply be accepted as one of the conditions of the problem, ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... topics of conversation. Sir Thomas was a man of old family, of good income and of sufficient education, who, while reserving the power of comporting himself like a gentleman, preferred as a rule to assimilate his demeanour to that of one of his own tenants (with whom, it may be mentioned, he was extremely popular). Many young men habitually dined out on Sir Thomas's brogue and his unwearying efforts to dispose ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... and their perpetual broils, originated the persecutions which they and their proselytes suffered in China. The most violent of these disputes was carried on between the Jesuits and the Dominicans. The Jesuits endeavoured to assimilate their doctrines and their opinions to those of the Chinese, at least as far as they conscientiously could venture to do, in conformity to the nature of their mission; by which means, together with their apparently disinterested conduct, ...
— 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

... moral impulse, was proved fearfully by his rapid indistinct muttering and jabbering, mixed with deep sighs, and the peculiar sound of the repressed sobs which I have already mentioned, but cannot assimilate to any sound I ever heard. All my efforts to remove the devoted wife by entreaty were vain; she still clung to him, as if he had been on the eve of being taken from her by death. Her sobbing continued unabated, and her tears fell on his cheek. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... rayceived with open arms that sometimes ended in a clinch. I was afraid I wasn't goin' to assimilate with th' airlyer pilgrim fathers an' th' instichoochions iv th' counthry, but I soon found that a long swing iv th' pick made me as good as another man an' it didn't require a gr-reat intellect, or sometimes anny at all, to vote th' dimmycrat ticket, an' befure I was here a month, ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne

... mine at twenty years of age. And I have resolved that in my daily reading of the newspapers I will endeavor to look up on the map and remember the various places concerning which I read any news item of importance, and to assimilate the facts themselves. It is my intention also to study, at least half an hour each day, some simple treatise on science, politics, art, letters or history. In this way I hope to regain some of my interest in the activities of mankind. If I cannot do this I realize now that it ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... best way was to explain to each priest in turn the general scope of the movement, and then to pay a second visit a few weeks later. The priest would have considered the ideas that I had put into his head, he would have had time to assimilate them in the interval, and I could generally tell in the second visit if I should find in him a friend, an ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... myself, in order to eke out as long as possible my resources. I dine and breakfast at a second-class restaurant. Cat, dog, rat, and horse are very well as novelties, but taken habitually, they do not assimilate with my inner man. Horse, doctors say, is heating; I only wish it would heat me. I give this description of my existence, as it is that of many others. Those who have means, and those who have none, unless these means are in Paris, row in the ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... the action has started, is ridiculous. The limits of one man's sphere of action, at such a time, are extremely small. If the men have been properly instructed, beforehand, and then given a good start, they will do the rest. It is just this ability to assimilate individual instruction that has made the Canadian superior to the native-born Briton. He is better educated, as a rule, has lived a freer and more varied life and, as a result, possesses that initiative and individual ingenuity which are so often necessary ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride

... make an organic complex, the trend of which is necessarily in the direction of serviceability to the life process. When it is attempted to assimilate systematic waste or futility, as an end in life, into this organic complex, there presently supervenes a revulsion. But this revulsion of the organism may be avoided if the attention can be confined to the proximate, unreflected purpose of dexterous or emulative exertion. Sports—hunting, ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... spirit of contempt for the Korean. Good administration is impossible without sympathy on the part of the administrators; with a blind and foolish contempt, sympathy is impossible. They started out to assimilate the Koreans, to destroy their national ideals, to root out their ancient ways, to make them over again as Japanese, but Japanese of an inferior brand, subject to disabilities from which their overlords were free. Assimilation ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... which enables the artist to characterize them with beauty, and wherever they lift their vast bulks they deform the whole neighborhood, throwing the other buildings out of scale, and making it impossible for future edifices to assimilate ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... above. The nofu which is also met with on the coasts of Australia, is a devil undisguised, and belongs to the angler family. Like the octopus or the death-adder (Acanthopis antarctica) of Australia, he can assimilate his colour to his environment. His hideous wrinkled head, with his staring goggle eyes, are often covered with fine wavy seaweed, which in full-grown specimens sometimes extends right down the back to the tail. From the top of the upper jaw, along the back and sides, ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke

... between two forces, a force within and a force without, but the force within does all the struggling. The air does not struggle to get into the lungs, nor the lime and iron to get into our blood. The body struggles to digest and assimilate the food; the chlorophyll in the leaf struggles to store up the solar energy. The environment is unaware of the organism; the light is indifferent to the sensitized plate of the photographer. Something in the seed we plant avails itself of the heat and the moisture. ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... we walked to Noordwyk-Binnen, the real town, parent of the seaside resort; and there, at a table at the side of the main street, by an avenue so leafy as to exclude even glints of the sky, we sipped something Dutch whose name I could not assimilate, and waited for the tram for Leyden. It was the ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... abstracting, and the modifying powers of the Imagination, immediately and mediately acting, are all brought into conjunction. The stone is endowed with something of the power of life to approximate it to the sea-beast; and the sea-beast stripped of some of its vital qualities to assimilate it to the stone; which intermediate image is thus treated for the purpose of bringing the original image, that of the stone, to a nearer resemblance to the figure and condition of the aged Man; who is divested of so much of the indications of life ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot



Words linked to "Assimilate" :   assimilative, assimilatory, acculturate, take in, imbibe, dissimilate, alter, conform, adjust, absorb, change, assimilator, assimilation, phonetics, acquire, ingest, learn, modify, larn



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