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Dissect   Listen
verb
Dissect  v. t.  (past & past part. dissected; pres. part. dissecting)  
1.
(Anat.) To divide into separate parts; to cut in pieces; to separate and expose the parts of, as an animal or a plant, for examination and to show their structure and relations; to anatomize.
2.
To analyze, for the purposes of science or criticism; to divide and examine minutely. "This paragraph... I have dissected for a sample."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dissect" Quotes from Famous Books



... power to present. Pick out from life some incident, character, temperament—whatever you will—and flash upon it the glare of the vaudeville spot-light; breathe into it the breath of life; show its every aspect and effect; dissect away the needless; vivify the series of actions you have chosen for your brief and trenchant crisis; lift it all with laughter or touch it all with tears. Like a searchlight your playlet must flash over the landscape of human hearts and rest upon some phase ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... dreams all that night. Never had she seen anything so lovely, and never was it more clear that as an honest woman she was in duty bound to refuse them. Why it was not equally clear to her that duty required more vigorous co-ordinate conduct as well, let those who dissect her say. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... thank you, count. Now do an act of charity, my friend: give the little dog in the stable a good meal, and then have a surgeon chloroform him into a peaceful and a merciful death. They will find the Rainbow Pearl in his intestines when they come to dissect the body. I starved him, count, starved him purposely, poor little wretch, so that he would be hungry enough to snap at anything in the way of food and bolt it instantly. Tonight, when I went up to take him ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... her to be true to her lofty traditions, to trample on base expediency and cleave to the brave and true! In what resounding jeremiads does he denounce woe upon her traitors and seducers! With what savage sarcasm and scorn does he dissect the soul of the "man in black"! No other writing more powerful, picturesque, and idiomatic has been done in this century. He will advocate no policy less austere than purity, courage, and truth. There is in his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... "An Introduction to Botany." Of this she had not read more than a page and a half before she determined to collect some specimens herself; and having found a blank copy-book she hastened into the garden, where, gathering a few common flowers, she proceeded to dissect them, not, it is to be feared, with much scientific nicety. Perhaps as many as three pages of this copy-book were bespread with her specimens before she discovered that ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... other side, but not opposite Mademoiselle Klosking; she was considerably to the right hand; and as the new-comer was much occupied, just at first, with Ashmead, who sat on her left, Zoe had time to dissect her, which she did without mercy. Well, her costume was beautifully made, and fitted on a symmetrical figure; but as to color, it was neutral—a warm French gray, and neither courted admiration nor risked censure: it was unpretending. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... results, it must, I repeat, be made practical. That is to say, in explaining to a child the general phenomena of Nature, you must, as far as possible, give reality to your teaching by object-lessons; in teaching him botany, he must handle the plants and dissect the flowers for himself; in teaching him physics and chemistry, you must not be solicitous to fill him with information, but you must be careful that what he learns he knows of his own knowledge. ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... I've a withering reply; And vanity I always do my best to mortify; A charitable action I can skillfully dissect; And interested motives I'm delighted to detect; I know ev'rybody's income and what ev'rybody earns; And I carefully compare it with the income-tax returns; But to benefit humanity however much I plan, Yet ev'rybody says I'm such a disagreeable man! And I can't ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... only the book of the year, perhaps, but of more years than one cares to count, for of books worth reading or remembering, there has been the fewest number within these latter days. And it must be conceded, in the beginning, that Hall Caine has written a book—a live book—and that no one will dissect it without finding ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... these northern wilds, and their views upon life in the wilderness and upon things in general. By a little skilful managing the girl got the young man away from the others, and then proceeded to dissect and classify him. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... are involved in a scar, it is best to dissect out the scar, and along with it the ends of the nerves pressed upon. When a nerve-trunk, such as the sciatic, is involved in cicatricial tissue, the nerve must be exposed and freed from its surroundings (neurolysis), and then stretched so as to tear any adhesions that may be present above or ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... no such sacrifice," declared May, who had listened to these facts. "Bricks and mortar, stone and timber are innocent things. One might as soon dissect a thunder-cloud to find the lightning as destroy material substances to discover what is hidden in this house. The unknown being, about his Master's business here, will no more yield its secret to four detectives, or an ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... was tired. And he wanted to think over the news he had so recently heard;—to dissect and analyse it and, if need be, to adjust himself to its awesome import. He sat back with half-closed eyes, puffing now and then mechanically at his pipe, his veiled glance resting here, there, and everywhere among the ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... laughed Grace. "You're thinking of vivisection. I wouldn't cut up anything alive for all the world. The girls did dissect crabs and lobsters, and even rabbits, last year, but they were dead long before they ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower

... is an unspeakable cruelty. Because it hardens the hearts and demoralizes those who inflict useless and terrible pains on the bound and helpless. If these vivisectionists would give chloroform or ether to the animals they dissect; if they would render them insensible to pain, and if, by cutting up these animals, they could learn anything worth knowing, no one ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... given me poyson; my veins swell With it, produce the Antidote, or I'le dissect thy Soul To find it out; what is't you know that can ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne

... intrinsic was concerned. That this is true may be seen in these essays; for even here she writes the best only when she has human motives, feelings and aspirations to weigh and explain. That she could dissect and explain the inner man they made apparent enough; but her genius demanded also the opportunity to create, to build up a life of high beauty and purpose from materials of its own construction. Her Review ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... which Nature brings: Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things: We murder to dissect. ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth

... will just ask you a plain, honest question. And I rely on you to answer me truthfully. . . . Do you think I should be a more attractive being; do you think I should be more capable of grappling with those great problems which—ah—surround us on all sides, if I could dissect rats—or even mice?" he added ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... "I do not dissect," said he. "You have made a generous offer, and I am not discontented with you, but with myself. In my first delight at your arrival, I disclosed more about the baron's circumstances and the ladies' anxieties than was right. I myself introduced ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... human body were the chief subjects of study. The human cadaver was never dissected, but a knowledge of anatomy was obtained from diagrams which were wholly hypothetical. In early times medical officers were appointed to experiment with medicines upon monkeys, and also to dissect the bodies of monkeys. From these dissections, as well as from the printed diagrams of Chinese books the imperfect knowledge which they had reached was derived. It was not till 1771 that Sugita Genpaku(89) and several other Japanese scholars had an opportunity to ...
— Japan • David Murray

... every part of the community, and to produce a due sympathy between the representative body and its constituents. This argument presents itself under a very specious and seducing form; and is well calculated to lay hold of the prejudices of those to whom it is addressed. But when we come to dissect it with attention, it will appear to be made up of nothing but fair-sounding words. The object it seems to aim at is, in the first place, impracticable, and in the sense in which it is contended for, is unnecessary. I ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... of fine salt, Cayenne pepper, and curry powder, with double the quantity of powder of truffles: dissect, secundum artem, a brace of woodcocks rather under-roasted, split the heads, subdivide the wings, &c. &c. and powder the whole gently over with the mixture; crush the trail and brains along with the yelk of ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... non-sectarian, dissect, insect, intersection, sickle, vivisection, segment; (2) bisect, trisect, insection, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... man sets around mostly," I once heard Stacy Shunk remark as he sat curled up on the store-porch, nursing a bare foot and viewing the world through the top of his hat. Did the most active man calmly and without egotism dissect the sum of his useful accomplishment, he would be highly discouraged, for time is a relentless destroyer. But a man can not take so disdainful a measure of his own value. He must live. To superior minds like the philosopher's or ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things We murder to dissect. ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... now dissect with hammers fine The granite-rock, the nodul'd flint calcine; Grind with strong arm, the circling chertz betwixt, 300 Your pure Ka-o-lins and Pe-tun-tses mixt; O'er each red saggars burning cave preside, The keen-eyed Fire-Nymphs blazing by your side; And pleased on WEDGWOOD ray your partial ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... collection was freely opened to him, and as the importance of studying the anatomy of many specimens became evident, the splendid collections of Messrs. Stutchbury, Cuming, and others were placed at his disposal, and he was permitted to open and to dissect unique specimens of great value. In fact, almost every naturalist of note who had any knowledge of the subject freely aided him, and the result was a masterly series of finely illustrated volumes; two on the living Cirripedia, issued by the Ray Society in 1851 and 1854; and two on the fossil ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... animal and vegetable life, he will lay a broad, and at the same time solid, foundation of biological knowledge; he will come to his medical studies with a comprehension of the great truths of morphology and of physiology, with his hands trained to dissect and his eyes taught to see. I have no hesitation in saying that such preparation is worth a full year added on to the medical curriculum. In other words, it will set free that much time for attention to those studies which bear directly upon the student's ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley

... cruel and superfluous to dissect the bodies of the living, but to dissect those of the dead is necessary for learners, for they ought to know the position and order which dead bodies show better than a living and wounded man. But even the other things which can only be observed in the living, practice itself will show in the ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... of the bill in its present stage, and the house went into committee upon it. On the 10th of June Sir Edward Sugden proposed on this occasion to omit the first clause of the bill, after which he proceeded to dissect its provisions with considerable acuteness. Mr. Labouchere defended the measure, and Messrs. Gladstone and Goulburn objected to it. The latter said that tire present bill differed but little from the former, and, in his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... about the inn at Burford, or to describe scenery with the word-painters; it is quite another to seize on the heart of the suggestion and make a country famous with a legend. It is one thing to remark and to dissect, with the most cutting logic, the complications of life, and of the human spirit; it is quite another to give them body and blood in the story of Ajax or of Hamlet. The first is literature, but the second is something besides, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... fish retains its vitality for some time after its removal from the body of the living animal, and the chromatophores will respond to artificial irritation for quite a while. In making my observations, however, I prefer to dissect up the skin and leave it attached to the body of the fish by a broad base. A few minims of chloroform injected hypodermatically rendered the animal anaesthetic, and I could then proceed at my leisure, without being inconvenienced by its movements. The causation of tinctumutation ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... in a low voice—"It would be a strange sight if it should. I should like to dissect it, save that its stony case would ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... loved sport, Mr. Eliphalet Hopper was at work like the industrious mole, underground. It is safe to affirm that Colonel Carvel forgot his new hand as soon as he had turned him over to Mr. Hood, the manager. As for Mr. Hopper, he was content. We can ill afford to dissect motives. Genius is willing to lay the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... had bestowed devout attention on his supper. But it appeared that the drift of our discourse had not been lost by him. 'Well,' he said, 'you finely fibred people dissect and analyse. I am content with the spettacolo. That pleases. What does a man want more? The Nozze is a comedy of life and manners. The music is adorable. To-night the women were not bad to look at—the Lucca was divine; the scenes—ingenious. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... young man's nature to refuse forgiveness or dissect generosity. He instantly, and almost without thought, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... How readily the great man admitted his fault! Though he never again upset Father's peace of mind, Master relentlessly continued to dissect me ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... although the manner of the union of GODHEAD and Manhood in His one Person we confess ourselves quite unable to comprehend. Even so, that there is a human as well as a Divine element in Holy Scripture,—who so blind as to overlook? who so weak as to deny? And yet, to dissect out that human element,—who (but a fool) so rash as to attempt?... To apply this to the matter before us. Certain parts of Holy Scripture you think, (for reasons to yourself best known,) are not to be looked upon as inspired in the same sense as the rest of ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... When years after his death the world agrees to call a man great, the verdict must be accepted. The historian may whiten or blacken, the critic may weigh and dissect, the form of the judgment may be altered, but the central fact remains, and with the man, whom the world in its vague way has pronounced great, history must reckon one way or the other, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... not die?—By my usual luck. The fellows were clumsy, and the noose would not work; so that the Mexican doctor, who meant to dissect me, brought me round again; and being a freemason, as I am, stood by me,—got me safe off, and cheated ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... in the most radical of the doctrines of evolution; she deemed it a clearly demonstrated fact that man is a development of the monkey, the monkey of the monad. She profoundly despised any one who permitted himself to doubt this. She did not count melancholy; to analyze or dissect everything, that was her ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... imminent to us always. There are many things not yet pigeonholed by our science nor catalogued by our philosophies. You can dissect a daisy and enumerate its parts; but you never know a daisy until you have seen the unseen things thereof, until you have felt the subtle appeal of its beauty. Bobbie Burns saw more of the daisy than the greatest botanist without his ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope

... salvation of my soul is so important. Indeed, any idea of immortality is awful How could it ever be a consolation—except to a smug, very self-satisfied egoism? Call it the burden—or the cross of immortality—if you call it anything. I wish it could be proved that we end when we die. But physicians dissect dead bodies to find the soul. It would not be a soul if they could find it in the dead. And imagine one becoming penitent when the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... fairly master even a test book on the subject—say, JOHN DALTON'S—and acquire with it the anatomical knowledge essential to a merely superficial comprehension of the subject? Did you ever dissect any, and attend the usual lectures? The Young Lady in question must ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... suffered, I had come at the end of two days to a point where I was tormenting myself with the idea that Brigitte had yielded too easily. Thus, like all who doubt, I brushed aside sentiment and reason to dispute with facts, to attach myself to the letter and dissect my love. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... quickly flicked in the index tape, and the stir of feeling about her subsided, their attention captured again for the moment. Her thoughts became to some degree detached, ready to dissect another problem in the familiar ways and present the answers to it. Not a very involved problem essentially, but this time it wasn't a school exercise. Her company waited, withdrawn, silent, aloof once more, while the index ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz

... especially, instilled the fear of God and of the British, into his servants and underlings in spite of his sportsmanship and generosity, for he had a great understanding of native character and, like a wizard, could, in the twinkling of an eye, dissect the mind and betray the soul of a false witness! None could look him in the face and persist in falsehood. He was a just man, and courageous; and when roused to wrath, both fierce and fluent. But the diplomatic domestic and cautious coolie, alike, respect justice ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... matter of course and—as Londoners—are rarely enthusiastic. It takes a Frenchman to give the splendid line of buildings which forms the finest front in the world the admiration that is certainly its due. When one has had time to dissect the great town, appreciation is keener; there are several Brightons; there is a town built on a cliff, another with spacious lawns on the sea level, and a third, the old Brighton, bounded by the limits of the original fishing village, and, with all its brilliance, having a distinctly briny ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... physician who lived into the 3rd century B.C., born at Chalcedon, and settled at Alexandria, where he devoted himself specially to anatomy and helped to found the medical school in that city; his zeal is said to have led him to dissect criminals alive; some of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... I passed successfully my mid-year examinations, and am now commencing work in the new semester. I am leaving chemistry—having completed the course in qualitative analysis—and am entering upon the study of biology. I approach this subject with some hesitation, as I understand that we dissect angleworms ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster

... the pursuit of their studies. Such were Benjamin Wolf Guenzberg and Jacob Liboschuets. The former was probably the only Jew at the Goettingen University. It was from there that he inquired of Jacob Emden "whether it was permissible to dissect on the Sabbath," and his thesis for the doctor's degree was De medica ex Talmudicis illustrata (Goettingen, 1743).[30] Liboschuets studied at the University of Halle. After graduation, finding that as a Jew he could not settle in St. Petersburg, he ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... all about that kind of study," he added aggressively. "We are accustomed to examine the nations of the past, to dissect them fibre by fibre, so that we recognize at a glance the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... speculative discussion, to the most ignorant of men; but what a world of other wonders should we discover should we penetrate into the secrets of physics, and dissect the inward parts of animals, which are framed according to ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... peace? I have not tried To analyze my faith, dissect my trust, Or measure if belief be full and just, And therefore claim thy peace. But thou hast died, I know that this is true for me, And, knowing it, I come, and cast my all ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... such love, but ties, tender, strong, and sacred. These bind up the many in the one. They are the fibres of the home-life, and cannot be wrenched without causing the heart to bleed at every pore. Death may dissect them and tear away the objects around which they entwine; and they will still live in the imperishable love which survives. From them proceed mutual devotions and confiding faith. They bind together ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... first, indeed, by the sports and struggles of animalcular life; but at length I find myself gazing beyond it into infinitude—using it as a lens through which the Godhead becomes visible to me. I can dissect from one another the muscles and arteries and veins and nerves and vital viscera of the human body, but the little insect that taps a vein upon my hand does it with an instrument and by the operation of machinery which are beyond my scrutiny. They belong to a life and are the servants ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... see him dissect one of Fontaine's fables or a passage from Racine, and to hear him explain why the accent should be on such a word or on such a syllable and not on another, to bring out the sense. Although this course was so instructive, few took it, for Delsarte was almost unknown to people. ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... 23. Dissect out a long bone from one upper and one lower limb and one of the largest ribs. Prepare cultures from the bone marrow in each case. Set aside these bones for the subsequent ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... criticize him in your presence, and do not discuss his weaknesses with others. I have known wives to meet in conclaves, and dissect husbands for an entire afternoon. And each wife seemed anxious to pose as the most neglected and unappreciated woman of the lot. With all the faults of the sterner sex, I never heard of such a ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... have completely dominated our age, and have displaced the epic and legendary themes of Scott, Byron, Campbell, and Southey. The Two Voices, In Memoriam, The Ring and the Book, Silas Marner, Vanity Fair, Bleak House, dissect brain and heart, but do not make their prime motive in any thrilling history. The crisis of modern romance goes on in the conscience, not in the outside world. Hence the enormous multiplication of the psychologic novel, a form of art which the eighteenth century would ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... life long enough to enable them to acquire a complete knowledge of one subject such as the human body! And then they seek to comprehend the mind of God, in which the universe is included, weighing it and splitting it into infinite particles, as if they had to dissect it! ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci

... have been by Gad, but it was by Worth. Four shades of grey, and pearls. Mrs. Beaumont distinctly thought that this was not the sort of dress to dash into the faces of a quiet country party. It was like letting off rockets at a five o'clock tea. Only a woman could dissect the enormity of it; ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... shall have to separate physiologically things which in consciousness exist undivided, since a philosophic description is bound to be analytic and cannot render everything at once. Where a poet might conceive a new composite, making it live, a moralist must dissect the experience and rest ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... of fine deadly sins; and let them hang before your eyes until they become racy. Then take them down, dissect them, and stew them for some time in a solution of weak remorse; after which they are to be devilled ...
— Every Man His Own Poet - Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book • Newdigate Prizeman

... it is hard indeed to discover what Mr. Leaf's opinion of the value of linguistic tests of lateness really is. "It is on such fundamental discrepancies"—as he has found in Books IX., XVI.—"that we can depend, AND ON THESE ALONE, when we come to dissect the ILIAD ... Some critics have attempted to base their analysis on evidences from language, but I do not think they are sufficient to bear the super-structure which has been raised on them." [Footnote: Companion, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... "No, not dissect, to tell you. That's why I came; to tell you several things, this among the rest. Elice, don't do that, don't cry. Please!—I don't intend to be a brute, I didn't mean anything. I'm simply ashamed to tell you straight ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... natural science, though most of the apparatus of schools nowadays was wanting, Mr. Allen's instruction was far beyond his time. Never shall I forget my excited interest when, occasionally, the village surgeon came in, and the whole school was assembled to see him dissect the eye or ear or heart of an ox. Physics, as then understood, was studied in a text-book, but there was illustration by simple apparatus, which fastened firmly in my mind the main facts ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... "copy," and a born writer after copy is, next to an Apache after a scalp or a Dyak after his enemy's head, the most ruthless of created beings. He will pick his mother's naked soul to pieces, bore into his wife's living brain, dissect his daughter's quivering heart, tear across his sister's mind, rip up his father's life and his best friend's character, lay bare the tomb itself, and make for himself an ink of tears and blood that he may write what he finds. Of such is the kingdom ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... pause to dissect his logic—but just tore about full speed with busy plans and questionings. He began to wonder how in the world he would satisfy them—and satisfy himself as well!—when the time should come to introduce them to Express and Cave and Passengers. For if he failed in that, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... it not serious and sad, O my cousin, that what the Deity hath willed to lie incomprehensible in His mysteries, we should fall upon with tooth and nail, and ferociously growl over, or ignorantly dissect? ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... he could dissect his tangled emotion was the predominating ingredient of his mood. Only once in his life had he felt so passionately grateful to any human being. On that occasion, too, the object of his gratitude had ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... words; by most profound theological discussions, ending in nothing but weariness; but were satisfied, that, if men would go to Christ, they would find truth. O, happy time! in which men had not learned to dissect their own hearts, and pry curiously into their feelings, and torture themselves by anxious efforts to feel right, and tormenting doubts as to whether their inward experiences were as they ought to be, but believed that all good feelings would come in their own time out of Christian ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... was followed with nearly so much eagerness or gave me so much pleasure as collecting beetles. It was the mere passion for collecting, for I did not dissect them, and rarely compared their external characters with published descriptions, but got them named anyhow. I will give a proof of my zeal: one day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin

... much regret that I did not receive these verses while you were here, that I might have given you, viva voce, a comment upon them, which would be tedious by letter, and after all very imperfect. If I have the pleasure of seeing you again, I will beg permission to dissect these verses, or any other you may be inclined to show me; but I am certain that without conference with me, or any benefit drawn from my practice in metrical composition, your own high powers of mind will lead ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... charm she possessed for him who had met in her his first woman of intellect and culture—all drove him to her. The other love was a vague something that troubled him. Madeleine Presson was near and visible, and he did not dissect the emotion which prompted ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... address his prayer. His instruments of worship are so fashioned that his magic may surpass the magic of these gods, and compel them to loosen their stores, full to overflowing. Take any one of the great Hopi ceremonies, analyze the paraphernalia worn by the men, dissect the various components of the altar or sand paintings, examine the offerings made to the Spring and those placed upon the shrines, and in everything and everywhere we see ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II

... coarse threadbare Blue: Red says to Blue, 'Be hanged and anatomized;' Blue hears with a shudder, and (O wonder of wonders!) marches sorrowfully to the gallows; is there noosed up, vibrates his hour, and the surgeons dissect him, and fit his bones into a skeleton for medical purposes. How is this; or what make ye of your Nothing can act but where it is? Red has no physical hold of Blue, no clutch of him, is nowise in contact with him: neither are those ministering Sheriffs and Lord-Lieutenants ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... exciting for Craddock Dene. We shall have another household to dissect and denounce. Providence watches over us all, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... the ingredients out of which both the monster and the legends are compounded have been preserved in Egypt, and in perhaps a more primitive and less altered form than elsewhere. Hence, if Egypt does not provide dragons for us to dissect, it does supply us with the evidence without which the dragon's evolution would be ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... indifferent. One of his biographers states that "he was neglectful of flowers," because he had no interest in botany; but one who derived such full delight from the contemplation of their external forms, could hardly be expected to feel very strongly the impulse to dissect them. He derived exceeding pleasure from Greek literature, especially from the works ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... name on one of them. The other was addressed "To the person who may find my body." She tore the envelope open. It contained one of Mr. Vimpany's cards, with these desperate words written on it in pencil: "Take me to the doctor's address, and let him bury me, or dissect me, whichever he pleases." Iris showed the card to the foreman. "Is it near here?" she asked. "Yes, Miss; we might get him to that place in no time, if there was a conveyance of any kind to be found." Still preserving ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins

... there are limits to illusion. At any rate, your maxim leads directly and practically to the inference that, since I do not belong to Mars and cannot have come from any other world, I am not here, and in fact do not exist. Surely it was somewhat illogical to shoot an illusion and intend to dissect a spectre! Is not a fact the complete and unanswerable refutation ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... honest to her nature in her attitude towards the young stranger. She did not dissect her emotions: she did not even question them. In becoming her hero Done had levelled all the conventional barriers, and her friendship and concern were sincere. She had never recurred to the incident of the rescue, feeling that the ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... to write confessions, and one of the two may dissect every nerve and fibre of his inmost soul, while the other may ramble carelessly on about the places he has seen, and the people he has met; yet in the ultimate result it may turn out that it is the latter rather than the former who has ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... the first public work of Mondino, for, according to a document of the Maggiore Consiglio of Venice of 1308, it appears that there was a college of medicine at Venice which was even then authorized to dissect a body every year. Common experience tells us that the embodiment of such regulations into formal law would occur only after a considerable preceding period of discussion, and in this particular field of clandestine practice. It is too much to ask us to ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... is a gentle term for what he has to undergo. In due season he shall be scorpioned and rattlesnaked. When I take him in hand it shall be to dissect him alive, and make a preparation of him to be exhibited in terrorem, an example to all future pretenders to criticism. He has a forehead of native brass, and I will write upon it with aqua-fortis. I will serve him up to the public like ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... freebooter, ready for any task, the Ant is the first to come hastening and begin, particle by particle, to dissect the corpse. Soon the odour of the corpse attracts the Fly, the genitrix of the odious maggot. At the same time, the flattened Silpha, the glistening, slow-trotting Horn-beetle, the Dermestes, powdered with snow upon the abdomen, and the slender Staphylinus, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... which were imbedded and twisted many of the great arteries. In this operation it became necessary to take out entire the right clavicle or collar bone, to lay bare the membrane which surrounds the lungs, to search for and dissect around the arteries which ran through the tumor, to make forty ligatures, and to remove an immense mass of diseased matter. This terrible operation had never been attempted before, and was performed by Dr. Mott without the aid of chloroform; yet it was done so skillfully ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... sublimate any good use out of such an invention. Yet this only is what I request to gain from this reason, that it may be held a dangerous and suspicious fruit, as certainly it deserves, for the tree that bore it, until I can dissect one by one the properties it has. But I have first to finish, as was propounded, what is to be thought in general of reading books, whatever sort they be, and whether be more the benefit or the ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... one of the extremities of the first incision. After having formed in this way a flap of integuments, he is to let it be drawn upwards by the assistant who holds the leg. There is no occasion to dissect and reflect the flap, for the cellular substance connecting the skin with the subjacent aponeurosis is so loose, that it can easily be drawn up above the place where the joint of the calcaneum with ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... mucilaginous covering. Here and there an isolated specimen was all that could be seen. So closely were these small crystals enveloped with the mucilaginous matter that it was almost impossible to separate or dissect them from it. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... tie between tea-drinking and gossip. It is over their dainty cups that women dissect us men and damn their sisters. Some of the quality of the lemon they take in their tea gets into their tongues. Tea is to talk what dew is to a plant, a gentle nourishing influence, which gives to its product much of its own quality. There are two acids in the ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... and what made his greatness was the strict subordination of all these to his love of truth." This, as an analysis of Darwin's mental equipment, seems to us incomplete, though we do not pretend to mend it. We do not think it is possible to dissect and label the complex qualities which go to make up that which we all recognise as genius. But, if we may venture to criticise, we would say that Mr. Huxley's words do not seem to cover that supreme ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... which is at this moment classifying one hundred and fifty thousand species of insects, giving them all the termination us, so that a Silbermanus is the same individual in all countries for the learned men who dissect a butterfly's legs with pincers—that we still want a nomenclature for the chemistry of the kitchen, to enable all the cooks in the world to produce precisely similar dishes. It would be diplomatically agreed that French should be the language of the kitchen, as Latin has been adopted by the scientific ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac

... fire in the stove and then shutting the flue, or keeping down the ball of the cistern by some abdominal hooks, and then, before the invasion of smoke and water takes place, quietly joining a knot of new men who are strenuously endeavouring to dissect the brain and discover the hippocampus major, which they expect to find in the perfect similitude of a sea-horse, like the web-footed quadrupeds who paw the "reality" in the "area usually devoted to illusion," or tank, at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... he could spread a New York Success on the marble-top Table and dissect it until nothing was left but the Motif, and then he would heave that into the Waste Basket, thereby leaving the Stage in America ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... preferred the tortuous to the straight path. He published, accordingly, the Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis. But Pope had mistaken his powers. He was a great master of invective and sarcasm; he could dissect a character in terse and sonorous couplets, brilliant with antithesis; but of dramatic talent he was altogether destitute. If he had written a lampoon on Dennis, such as that on Atticus or that on Sporus, the old grumbler would have been crushed. But Pope ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... family long associated with the profession, his father occupied the position of apothecary to Charles V, whom he accompanied on his journeys and campaigns. Trained at Louvain, he had, from his earliest youth, an ardent desire to dissect, and cut up mice and rats, and even cats and dogs. To Paris, the strong school of the period, he went in 1533, and studied under two men of great renown, Jacob Sylvius and Guinterius. Both were strong Galenists ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... this was a sincere tribute. Clemens always regarded with awe William Dean Howells's ability to dissect and photograph with such delicacy the minutiae of human nature; just as Howells always stood in awe of Mark Twain's ability to light, with a single flashing sentence, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... a weakness for doctors, only fancy. I am very sorry my husband is not a doctor. What courage any one must have to perform an operation or dissect a corpse, for instance! Horrible! Aren't you frightened? I believe I should die of terror! Of course, ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... claim of mere understanding to settle the merits of poetry; Wordsworth, the profoundest, though by no means the most cogent or connected, thinker of the three, denounced the "meddling intellect" which murders to dissect, and strove to strip language itself of every element of logic and fancy, as distortions of the truth, only to be uttered in the barest words, which comes to the heart that watches and receives. On all these issues Browning stands in sharp, if not quite absolute, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... intelligible language, I will admit that he will have some reasons for doubting a God. If this should seem too much like artificial mind, he may take some little animal, all constructed at his hands, and dismember its limbs and dissect its body, and then within some vessel let him throw its various parts at random, and seizing that vessel shake it most lustily till bone shall come to bone, joint to joint, and the little creature be restored to its ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880

... the cabin; and, without, the banshee wailing of the storm wind around the eaves, the occasional crash of thunder, the creaking of limbs and fitful dashes of rain. He found himself leaning back in his chair and mentally attempting to dissect and study not the bodies, but the personalities, of the three who were the representatives of a type, in manners and customs at least, ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... infantine ignorance, in order to hunt trite truth in couples with them, and detect, by joint experiment, that rainbows cannot, or else will not, be walked into, nor Jack-o'-lantern be gathered like a cowslip; and that, dissect we the vocal dog—whose hair is so like a lamb's—never so skilfully, no fragment of palpable bark, no sediment of tangible squeak, remains inside him to bless the inquisitive little operator, &c., &c. When they advanced from these elementary branches to Languages, History, Tapestry, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... leisure hours, between the forenoon and afternoon lectures, I go to the dissecting-room, where, in company with another young naturalist who has appeared like a rare comet on the Heidelberg horizon, I dissect all manner of beasts, such as dogs, cats, birds, fishes, and even smaller fry, snails, butterflies, caterpillars, worms, and the like. Beside this, we always have from Tiedemann the very best books for reference ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... indeed of these my woes? Or must my forced tongue my griefs disclose? And must myself dissect my tatter'd state, Which mazed Christendome stands wond'ring at? And thou a child, a Limbe, and dost not feel My fainting weakened body now to reel? This Physick purging portion I have taken, Will bring Consumption, or an Ague quaking, Unless some Cordial, thou fetch from high, Which present ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... also the arch-enemy of the papacy, the Emperor Frederick II, showed his free-thinking tendencies by granting, from time to time, permissions to dissect the human subject. In the centuries following, sundry other monarchs timidly followed his example: thus John of Aragon, in 1391, gave to the University of Lerida the privilege of dissecting one ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... in the original edition of his "Joan of Arc") she "appall'd the doctors." It's not easy to do that: but they had some reason to feel bothered, as that surgeon would assuredly feel bothered, who, upon proceeding to dissect a subject, should find the subject retaliating as a dissector upon himself, especially if Joanna ever made the speech to them which occupies v. 354-391, B. III. It is a double impossibility; 1st, because a piracy from Tindal's Christianity ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... afraid,' said Robert Hall in his charge to a young minister, 'of devoting whole sermons to particular parts of moral conduct and religious duty. It is impossible to give right views of them unless you dissect characters and describe particular virtues and vices. The works of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit must be distinctly pointed out. To preach against sin in general without descending to particulars ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... one of Epistemon's visit to Hades, when he saw Alexander a patcher of clouts and Xerxes a crier of mustard. Aphrodite, the dabbler tells me, is a kind of dirty mud-worm, and much dissected by spectacled pretenders to the London B.Sc.; every candidate, says the syllabus, must be able to dissect, to the examiner's satisfaction, and demonstrate upon Aphrodite, Nereis, Palaemon. Were the gods ever so insulted? Then the snaky Medusa and Pandora, our mother, are jelly-fish; Astraea is still to be found on coral reefs, a poor thing, and much browsed upon by parrot fish; and Doris and Tethys ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... man as accomplishing a deed, as a factor in an event. His primary business is to report action, not to philosophize or to dissect character or to paint landscape. Yet so sensitive is he to the environing circumstances of action, and so bent upon displaying the varieties of human motive and conduct, that he cannot help reflecting in his verse ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... by some sharp steel. I carefully cut the rind, and without once Breaking the fine apartments of the fruit, Or spilling thence a drop of golden juice, Find that one room through which the steel has passed. This I dissect, and, testing as I can, Fail to ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey

... 'Hazlitt used to say, "I am nothing if not critical." The case with me,' says Macaulay, 'is precisely the reverse. I have a strong and acute enjoyment of works of the imagination, but I have never habituated myself to dissect them. Perhaps I enjoy them the more keenly for that very reason. Such books as Lessing's "Laocoon," such passages as the criticism on "Hamlet" in "Wilhelm Meister," fill me with wonder and despair.' If ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... of those dreadful scrapes which it is a part of his art to invent outright, or to steal from the lives of men and women he has known or heard of. People who can analyse their own feelings are never feeling enough to hurt them much; a medical student could not take his scalpel and calmly dissect out his own nerves. You may try to analyse pain and pleasure when they are past, but nothing is more strangely and hopelessly undefined than the memory of a great grief, and no analysis of pleasure can ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... the world,—and when, half sympathising with the follies we satirise, there is a gusto in our paintings which atones for their exaggeration. As we grow older we observe less, we reflect more; and, like Frankenstein, we dissect ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... was, indeed, better qualified to dissect the concrete and distasteful fruits of actual life than to construct a coherent system of abstract philosophy. In spite of her respect for Law, she was never at home with a generalisation. Thus, though the great achievement of her life lay in ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... who knew how to dissect the human soul and to extract from it a psychologic method founded on ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue

... unerringly dramatized; Richard Walton Tully, when he left the Belasco fold, imitated the Belasco manner, in "The Bird of Paradise" and "Omar, the Tentmaker." And that same ability Belasco possesses to dissect the heart of a romantic piece was carried by him into war drama, and into parlour comedies, and plays of business condition. I doubt whether "The Auctioneer" would read well, or, for the matter of that, "The Music Master;" Charles Klein has written more coherent ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco



Words linked to "Dissect" :   break down, cut, take apart, vivisect, synthesize, anatomise, anatomize, botanise, analyze, botanize, dissection



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