"Perspicuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the same sentence. But the Greek has no such precise rules; and hence any literal translation of a Greek author is full of tautology. The tendency of modern languages is to become more correct as well as more perspicuous than ancient. And, therefore, while the English translator is limited in the power of expressing relation or connexion, by the law of his own language increased precision and also increased clearness are required of him. The familiar use of logic, and the progress of science, have in these two ...
— Charmides • Plato
... since we find it exceedingly full of pores: Do but plane off a thin chip, or sliver from one of these old trees, and interposing it 'twixt your eye and the light, you shall observe it to be full of innumerable holes (much more perspicuous and ample, by the application of a good{119:1} microscope.) But above all, notable for these extravagant damaskings and characters, is the maple; and 'tis notorious, that this tree is very full of branches ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... century afterwards, to put together, among several other books he wrote, a kind of Prose Synopsis of the whole Mythology; elucidated by new fragments of traditionary verse. A work constructed really with great ingenuity, native talent, what one might call unconscious art; altogether a perspicuous clear work, pleasant reading still: this is the Younger or Prose Edda. By these and the numerous other Sagas, mostly Icelandic, with the commentaries, Icelandic or not, which go on zealously in the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... words of Mrs. Coleman's not 430 over-perspicuous speech were addressed to Mr. Lowe Brown, who rose to take leave. This gentleman (for such I presume one is bound to designate him, however little appearance might warrant such an appellation) was a snort, stout, not to say fat personage, with an unmeaning pink ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... out his Preceptor, one of the most valuable books for the improvement of young minds that has appeared in any language; and to this meritorious work Johnson furnished 'The Preface,'[*] containing a general sketch of the book, with a short and perspicuous recommendation of each article; as also, 'The Vision of Theodore the Hermit, found in his Cell,'[*] a most beautiful allegory of human life, under the figure of ascending the mountain of Existence. The Bishop of Dromore heard Dr. Johnson say, that he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... whereas the Epicureans, who denied it, lived as if there were.... The next sect to the Epicureans, in point of incredulity, concerning the soul, 1 conceive to be the Sceptics, who were by some esteemed, not only the modestest, but the most perspicuous of all sects. They neither affirmed nor denied anything, but doubted of all things. They thought all our knowledge seemed rather like truth, than to be really true, and that for such like ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... General Hull was venerable and prepossessing. Beneath snowy locks, of nearly sixty winters' bleaching, he exhibited a countenance as fresh and blooming as a youth of eighteen. His eloquence was perspicuous ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... is perspicuous even as substance Whose grossness little characters sum up; And, in the publication, make no strain But that Achilles, were his brain as barren As banks of Libya—though, Apollo knows, 'Tis dry enough—will with great speed of judgment, Ay, with celerity, find Hector's purpose ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... every faculty to a new life; the stimulated associations of ideas brought all treasures of thought and knowledge within command; the spell, which often held his imagination fast, dissolved, and she arose and gave him to choose of her urn of gold; earnestness became vehemence, the simple, perspicuous, measured and direct language became a headlong, full, and burning tide of speech; the discourse of reason, wisdom, gravity, and beauty changed to that superhuman, that rarest consummate eloquence—grand, rapid, pathetic, terrible; the aliquid immensum infinitumque that Cicero might ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... where Richard fell; Besides, what of his knowledge he could say, He had authentic notice from the play, Which I might guess by's mustering up the ghosts And policies not incident to hosts; But chiefly by that one perspicuous thing, Where he mistook a player for a king, For when he would have said, that Richard died, And call'd, a horse! a ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... not allegorical, emblematic, or symbolic, as in the case of the positive seer, but are actual visions of facts just as they have happened, or will transpire in the future. Of the two orders, the passive is the more serviceable because the more perspicuous, but it has the disadvantage of being largely under the control of external influences, and hence is frequently incapable of "seeing" ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... Analytic and Synthetic Methods, in which the Principles of Arithmetic are explained in a perspicuous and familiar manner; containing also, practical systems of Mensuration, Gauging, Geometry, and Book-Keeping, forming a complete Mercantile Arithmetic, designed for Schools and Academies in the United States. By BENJAMIN GREENLEAF, A. M., ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... rude and false unless informed by intellection; and, however delicate be the touch in obedience to remote gradation, yet knowledge of the genus necessarily invests the representation with perspicuous and truthful relations that ignorance could not possibly have observed. Hence—Paint what you see; ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... performance would have been regulated by the water-clock,—as indeed we are told was formerly done. But the limit as fixed by the nature of the drama itself is this: the greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous. And to define the matter roughly, we may say that the proper magnitude is comprised within such limits, that the sequence of events, according to the law of probability or necessity, will admit of a change from bad fortune to good, or from good ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... Punctual Pride Superb, haughty Plenty Copious Pitch Bituminous Priest Sacerdotal Rival Emulous Root Radical Ring Annular Reason Rational Revenge Vindictive Rule Regular Speech Loquacious, garrulous, eloquent Smell Olfactory Sight Visual, optic, perspicuous, conspicuous Side Lateral, collateral Skin Cutaneous Spittle Salivial Shoulder Humeral Shepherd Pastoral Sea Marine, maritime Share Literal Sun Solar Star Astral, sideral, stellar Sunday Dominical Spring Vernal Summer Estival Seed Seminal Ship Naval, nautical Shell Testaceous Sleep Soporiferous ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... speaker and orator Cicero succeeded in gaining a place beside Demosthenes. His strongest point is his style; there he is clear, concise and apt, perspicuous, elegant and brilliant. He commands all moods, from playful jest to tragic pathos, but is most successful in the imitation of conviction and feeling, to which he gave increased impression by his fiery delivery.' —Teuffel. Quintilian ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... with this political sagacity, which made them in one day the judges and converts of a system they could scarcely have known before, even by name?—At the deposition of the King, the French, (speaking at large,) had as perspicuous a notion of republics, as they may be supposed to have of mathematics, and would have understood Euclid's Elements as well as the Social Contract. Yet an assemblage of the worst and most daring men from every faction, elected amidst massacres ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... teaching; with his education, had he been without resources, he would probably have chosen an academic career, and have done service in it. There was nothing deep in his style of narrative and criticism, and here depth was not wanted; sufficient that he was perspicuous and energetic. He loved the things of which he spoke, and he had the power of presenting to others his reason for loving them. Not one in five hundred men inexperienced in such work could have held the ears of the class as he did for the first two or three evenings. It was impossible ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... On this the emperor took up two forks, and explained the problem in seamanship, which is not an easy one, in so short, scientific, and practical a way, that Captain Usher assured me he knew none but professional men, and very few of them, who could off-hand have given so perspicuous, seamanlike, and satisfactory solution of the question. Any board of officers would have inferred, from such an exposition, that the person making it had received a naval education, and was a practical seaman. Yet how different ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... worthless as it is as history, one may obtain side lights upon oriental life. Manners are portrayed in vivid colors, so that one may come to have a very accurate knowledge of them. Customs are depicted from which one may learn of the formality and regard for precedents which is a perspicuous trait of oriental character. The rigid etiquette of court and home may be remarked. From the view of morals here described, one may appreciate how far we have progressed in ethical culture from that prevailing in former times among the ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... now answered all your calumnies, and have but a word to add, that I may yet incline you to accept of your best interest, and prevent that dreadfull ruine which your obstinacy does threaten. Is it not as perspicuous as the Sun, that it lies in your power to reform his Counsell, introduce your selves, make what composition you can desire, have all the security that mortall men can imagine, and the greatest Princes of Europe to engage in the performance? This were becoming worthy men, and honourable indeed; ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... and sparkling wines, the vintage of Champagne and Burgundy. Accordingly the Frenchman is lightsome and buoyant. He is a great theorist and classifier. He adheres to the ornate worship of the Mother Church when religiously disposed. His literature is perspicuous and clear. He is an admirable doctrinaire and generalizer,—witness Guizot and Montesquieu. He puts philosophy and science into a readable, comprehensible shape. The Teutonic diet of sauer-kraut, sausages, cheese, ham, etc., is indigestible, giving ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... like the one, was inexhaustible in resources, so composite and so averse from theory as to appear incongruous, but justified in the result; not formal, not always entirely perspicuous. Webster's mind, like the other, is eminently logical, reduced into principles, orderly, distinct, reconciling abstraction with convenience, various in manifestation, yet pervaded by ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... such wood, and will chaunt such a charm over your funeral pyre, that all incantations shall thereafter assail you in vain. Be it enough, that you have once been brought back to life! Tripods, and the voice of oracles deal in ambiguous responses; but the voice of the dead is perspicuous and certain to him who receives it with an unshrinking spirit. Spare not! Give names to things; give places a clear designation, speak with ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... shows herself equal to the subject. From Elizabeth also we have some lines in verse, not exactly of a poetic strain, not very harmonious in expression, but full of high thoughts and resolves. Her letters are skilful but, owing to their allusions and antitheses, far from perspicuous products of reflection, although succinct and rich in matter. She was acquainted with the learned languages, had studied the ancient classics and translated one or two, had read much of the church-fathers: ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... I really have some historic sense, I feel that in my bones. Then there's another thing. Scott never knew the Highlands; he was always a Borderer. He has missed that whole, long, strange, pathetic story of our savages, and, besides, his style is not very perspicuous to childhood. Gad, I think I'll have a flutter. Buridan's Ass! Whither to go, what to attack. Must go to other letters; shall add to this, if ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... In a brilliant review of Mr. Leslie Stephen's work in Macmillan's Magazine, February 1877, Mr. James Cotter Morison remarks on the Deists' view that natural religion must be always alike plain and perspicuous, 'against this convenient opinion the only objection was that it contradicted the total experience ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... or may not, perceive the resemblance suggested; but the rest of the indentures afford strong confirmation of Peters' idea. The upper range is evidently the Arabic verbal root "To be white," whence all the inflections of brilliancy and whiteness. The lower range is not so immediately perspicuous. The characters are somewhat broken and disjointed; nevertheless, it can not be doubted that, in their perfect state, they formed the full Egyptian word. "The region of the south.' It should be observed that these interpretations confirm the opinion of Peters in regard to the "most ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... know no author who has so successfully blended the romantic, the rural and beautiful with the poetical, the useful, and true, as has Dr. Blake. This is a peculiar feature of all his works. His style is plain, simple, and perspicuous; and, with unusual tact and judgment, he so manages to insinuate himself upon you, that you are at once amused, delighted, and instructed with the subject he is discussing. In this respect he relieves the study of agricultural ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... were the conspirators; for with so much secrecy had the arrangements of the Consul been made, that although Catiline knew himself suspected, knew that his motives were perspicuous, and his measures in some sort anticipated, he yet believed that the time ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... little book is one of his latest productions in the Italian language. In a style at once concise and perspicuous, and with a form of reasoning suited to the scientific requirements of the times, he introduces the student to an enlarged view of Religion, ascends with him to the heavenly source from which it emanated, and leads him, through the paths of virtue and love, to the ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... Introduction to his Text be brief and perspicuous, drawn from the Text itself, or context, or some parallel place, or ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... style too perspicuous? It is precisely that which Philostratus admires. Is it obscure? Such is that of Cicero to Attica. Negligent? An agreeable negligence in letters is more graceful than elaborate ornaments. Laboured? Nothing can be more proper, since we send epistles to our friends as a kind ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is the Pace; Encrease of Science, the Way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the End. And on the contrary, Metaphors, and senslesse and ambiguous words, are ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... adapted to the taste and capacity of children. The Latinity of Phaedrus is not exempt from an alloy of the silver age; but his manner is concise, terse, and sententious; the Thracian slave discreetly breathes the spirit of a freeman; and when the text is found, the style is perspicuous. But his fables, after a long oblivion, were first published by Peter Pithou, from a corrupt manuscript. The labours of fifty editors confess the defects of the copy, as well as the value of the original; ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... a spirit past the flesh can find. Her mind was at the same time alive to our worldly conventions when other people came under its light; she sketched them and their views in her brief words between the gasps, with perspicuous, humorous bluntness, as vividly as her twitched eyebrows indicated the laugh. Gower Woodseer ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... foundation of verse, whereas this is really the characteristic of prose as distinguished from verse. These exact organic rhythms "differ from ordinary prose rhythms," says Miss Lowell, "in being more curved, and containing more stress"; which, though not very perspicuous, seems to mean that free-verse is more carefully cadenced, or, in other words, more nearly metrical, than ordinary prose. Perhaps it would be no injustice to the upholders of free-verse in its best manifestations to say that, while metre requires that beneath all variations the regular ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... into parts, that it can scarce be united into a syllogism; yet, in obedience to him, I will abbreviate, and comprehend as much of it as I can in few words, that my answer to it may be more perspicuous. I conceive his meaning to be what follows, as to the unity of place: (if I mistake, I beg his pardon, professing it is not out of any design to play the Argumentative Poet.) If one stage cannot properly present two rooms or houses, much less two countries ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... in vain for any writer who has conveyed so much information, from so many and such recondite sources, with so many just and original reflections, in a style so lively and poignant, yet so uniformly classical and perspicuous; no one, in short, who has combined so much wisdom, with so much wit; so much truth and knowledge, with so much life and fancy. His prose is always intelligible, and always entertaining. It is Southey's almost unexampled felicity, to possess the best gifts of talent and genius, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... me, O perspicuous Asad? Are not thine eyes as sharp, thy wits as keen at least as mine, that what is clear to me should be hidden from thee? Or hath this Sakr-el-Bahr bewitched ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... translation. When delivered into my hands, I transmitted him a decypher, and a translation immediately. The following is my translation, which, in that gentleman's account of Ashantee, is coupled with another translation, not perspicuous, but unintelligible; for which see Bowdich's "Account of a Mission to Ashantee," ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... these quotations, if they fail of giving a fair representation of the poet, serve at least to characterise the critic,) could have won upon her only by a seeming air of profundity, by their utter contempt of perspicuous language, and a petulant disregard of even that rhythm, or regulated harmony, which has been supposed to distinguish verse from prose. For very manifest reasons, however, these are not the occasions on which we prefer to test the critical powers of Mrs Margaret Fuller. It is more advisable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... soil, however, that most prized by foreigners, as well as most used and esteemed in China, is tea. To the history of this celebrated plant, Mr. Dobell has devoted a whole chapter, but we confess that we have found it less perspicuous, except as to the commercial value of the various qualities offered for sale, than we desired or expected, after the opportunities of observation which he possessed. We infer, that he agrees with the prevailing ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the foreman of a sentimental jury is commissioned to inform an awful Bench exact in perspicuous English, of a verdict that must of necessity be pronounced in favour of the hanging of the culprit, yet would fain attenuate the crime of a palpable villain by a recommendation to mercy, such foreman, standing in the attentive eye of a master of grammatical ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... friend Mr. Wilberforce for having at length introduced this great and important subject to the consideration of the house. He thanked him also for the perspicuous, forcible, and masterly manner, in which he had treated it. He was sure that no argument, compatible with any idea of justice, could be assigned for the continuation of the Slave-trade. And, at the same time that he was willing to listen ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... and said among other things, "What an excellent work is that with which our common friend Mr. Adam Smith has enriched the public! An extensive science in a single book, and the most profound ideas expressed in the most perspicuous language. He proposes visiting you very soon, and I find he means to exert his most strenuous endeavours to persuade Mr. Hume to return with him to town. I am sorry to hear that the health and spirits ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... The simple and perspicuous style in which Mr. Hitchcock tells these stories of unhappy loves is not less admirable than the learning and the extensive reading and investigation which have enabled him to gather the facts presented in a manner so engaging. His volume is an important contribution to literature, ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... Notwithstanding Avogadro's perspicuous investigation, and a similar exposition of the atom and molecule by A. M. Ampere, the views therein expressed were ignored both by their own and the succeeding generation. In place of the relative molecular weights, attention ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... the papal answer was: "Such an association could not be sanctioned by the Holy See, being founded on a theological error, to wit, that Christians owed any duties to animals." This language has the inestimable and rather unusual merit of being perspicuous. Nevertheless, Ouida's flaming letters to "The Times" inaugurated an era of truer humanity. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... too,—of invariably shutting the eyes, and covering up heads under blankets, petticoats, or whatever else might come in use for a shelter, on these occasions. Of course, as everybody knows, when the bodily eyes are thus out of the lists, the spiritual eyes are uncommonly vivacious and perspicuous; and, therefore, there were abundance of full-length portraits of the ghost, abundantly sworn and testified to, which, as if often the case with portraits, agreed with each other in no particular, except the common family peculiarity of the ghost tribe,—the wearing of a ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... duplicity of conduct. His talents were of a high order: in debate, he was argumentative and explicit; never pretending to any of the arts of the orator; but logically pursued his subject to a conclusion; never verbose, but always perspicuous. As a lawyer, he was well read; and the analytical character of his mind appeared to have been formed upon the model of Judge Blackstone. Before the juries of the country he was all-powerful. These, in the main, were composed of men of very limited ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... seldom indeed that we find history so written,—in a style at once vigorous, perspicuous, and picturesque. The author's heart is thoroughly with his subject; and he exhibits, ever and anon, flashes of the old Scottish spirit, which we are glad to believe has not ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... legitimate; but there is such evident absence of sophistry, and even of that refining and hair-splitting which usually beget the suspicion of sophistry—his statements are so sincere, and his conclusions so direct, the language is so perspicuous, and the appeal is made so honestly to each reader's understanding, that his popularity as a reasoner is inevitable. We need not say that the author of the Pilgrim possessed imagination; but it is important to note the service it rendered to his preaching, and the charm which it still imparts ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... wish to occupy time; but I cannot perceive the justice of the criticisms made upon these resolutions of the Convention. They seem to me to be perspicuous and intelligible in every part and in every sentence. I do not see where the difficulty is to arise. Gentlemen need not tell us here, in respect to these resolutions, that a member of the Convention told them thus and so. No matter ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... book which furnishes such information and such illustrations in so compact and attractive a form. For greater excellence with the object in hand there is not one more perspicuous."—The Building News. ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... appreciation, as in creation, expression results in intuition. Appreciation is no mere imagining, transitory and lawless like a daydream. The activity of the imagination is so organized in a permanent and perspicuous form that we not only live it, but possess it as an object. The activities engaged in building up the work of art in my own mind are not the whole of me; judgment remains free to watch and synthesize those that are being crystallized there. In looking at a portrait, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... is not. This perspicuous proverb from the Persian (which I made up myself for the occasion) is cited in mitigation of the Tyro's regrettable fickleness, he—to his shame be it chronicled—having practically forgotten the woe-begone damsel's very existence within eighteen short hours after his adventure in knight-errantry. ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sense, and which only appeared to be abstruse from the unprofitable subtleties with which they were loaded, and the barbarous jargon in which they were expressed. The deepest doctrines of morality have since that time been treated in the perspicuous and popular style, and with some degree of the beauty and eloquence of the ancient moralists. That philosophy on which are founded the principles of our duty, if it has not become more certain (for morality admits no discoveries), is at least less "harsh and crabbed," less obscure and haughty ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... journals are perfect types of this custom. The result is often a wearisome page of words and rhetoric. It may be good rhetoric; but life is too short for so much of it. The necessity of filling this space causes the writer, instead of stating his idea in the shortest compass in which it can be made perspicuous and telling, to beat it out thin, and make it cover as much ground as possible. This, also, is vanity. In the economy of room, which our journals will more and more be compelled to cultivate, I venture to say ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... dissents from this popular notion, and with much confidence and plausibility broaches a new theory of his own. His style is always forcible, and so perspicuous that he cannot be misunderstood. In his "Dissertation on the Prophecies," he lays down the following canon or rule for expositors:—"Before a commentator can reasonably expect his own system to be adopted by others, he must show ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... wishes to form to himself clear, perspicuous ideas of his soul, let him throw himself back on his experience—let him renounce his prejudices—let him avoid theological conjecture—let him tear the bandages which he has been taught to think necessary, but with which he has ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... a fine style, but simple, perspicuous, and agreeable. We now come to Cecilia, written during Miss Burney's intimacy with Johnson; and we leave it to our readers to judge whether the following passage was not at ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the simplest and most perspicuous of Historians, has borrowed many noble images from Homer; and Plato is often indebted to this Poet, whom yet he banished from his Commonwealth. Cicero in his most serious pieces studies the diction, and copies the manner ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... clerk, merchant, and a large circle of readers outside of these classes will find in the volume a wide range of counsel and advice, presented in perspicuous language, and marked throughout by vigorous good sense; and who, while deriving from it useful lessons for the guidance of their personal affairs, will also be imbibing valuable instruction in an important branch of political economy. We wish it could ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... perfume in England, has produced generally confused ideas in this country as to the true origin of the odor now under discussion. Cassie, casse, cassia, it will be understood now, are three distinct substances; and in order to render the matter more perspicuous in future, the materials will always be denominated ACACIA, if prepared from the Acacia Farnesiana; CASSE, when from black currant; and CASSIA, if derived from the ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... familiarity with the subject-matter of theological criticism, and an initiation into its technical phraseology." Another critic said that "whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the German, must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic force of the English style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning to the original, he finds that the rendering is word for word, thought for thought and sentence for sentence. In preparing so beautiful a rendering as the present, the difficulties can have been ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Arab al Ariba," She no doubt meant to convey that she was of the true Arab blood as distinguished from the naturalised Arabs, the descendants of Ismael, the son of Abraham and Hagar, who were known as "al Arab al mostaraba." The dialect of the Koreish was usually called the clear or "perspicuous" Arabic, but the Hamaritic dialect approached nearer to the purity of the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Itala (Italian) was not an independent version, but one of these revisions, apparently made in Italy, and as some think, under ecclesiastical auspices. This, Augustine recommends as more faithful and perspicuous than ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... memory of that generation, had ever seen Mrs. Prockter ill-at-ease. Helen inquired as to the health of the sick relative at Nottingham, and received a reply in which vagueness was mingled with hesitancy and a blush. It then became further obvious to the perspicuous Helen that Mrs. Prockter must have heard of her stepson's singular adventure, and either resented Helen's share in it, or was ashamed of Emanuel's share ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... Lord Brougham have occupied their leisure, or consoled themselves in retirement from office, by the composition of works which have become part of the standard literature of the world. Thus 'Caesar's Commentaries' still survive as a classic; the perspicuous and forcible style in which they are written placing him in the same rank with Xenophon, who also successfully combined the pursuit of letters with the ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... legitimate pleasure to be found, no doubt, in a complex intrigue which is also perspicuous. Plays such as Alexandre Dumas's Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle, or the pseudo-historical dramas of Scribe-Adrienne Lecouvreur, Bertrand et Raton, Un Verre d'Eau, Les Trois Maupin, etc.—are amusing toys, like those social or military ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... is assuredly proper in a maritime people, especially as many of the phrases are at once graphic, terse, and perspicuous. How could the whereabouts of an aching tooth be better pointed out to an operative dentist than Jack's "'Tis the aftermost grinder aloft, on the starboard quarter." The ship expressions preserve many British and Anglo-Saxon words, with their quaint ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... This perspicuous and truly elegant performance having been thrice subjected to the critical examination of the friends, (the paragraph concerning Huckaback having been inserted at the instance of that gentleman, who wished to be mixed up from the beginning with so promising an affair,) was ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... indefatigable researches, authorized the most favorable auguries of his success. These were justified by the character of the first volume, which brought the narrative of early discovery to the period of Bobadilla's mission, written in a perspicuous and agreeable style, with such a discriminating selection of incident and skilful arrangement, as convey the most distinct impression to the mind of the reader. Unfortunately, the untimely death of the author crushed his labors in the bud. Their fruits were not ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... thought, with much probability, to have belonged to the Aesculapian temple in the Insula Tiberina. The present translation, in which some errors either of the artist or copyist are rectified, is extracted from the first volume of Gruter's Corp. Inscriptionum. The narrations are perspicuous and laconic. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... is intended to unfold the natural objects of female education. This is accomplished in a series of lectures written in a perspicuous, pleasing style, and treating of the various studies pursued in a well regulated school for young ladies. It is really and truly what it proposes to be, a guide in the intellectual education of woman, and will, ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... 'perspicuous au grautin,' as the fellow said," chuckled Bobby. "There! the whistle ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... Means of the session 1790-91 was entirely prepared by me, known to be so, and laid the foundation of my reputation. I was quite astonished at the general encomiums bestowed upon it, and was not at all aware that I had done so well. It was perspicuous and comprehensive; but I am confident that its true merit, and that which gained me the general confidence, was its being founded in strict justice, without the slightest regard to party feelings or popular prejudices. The principles assumed, and which were carried into effect, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... explored these intricacies of human nature, so can the tracing of them be interesting only to a few. But an epitaph is not a proud writing shut up for the studious: it is exposed to all—to the wise and the most ignorant; it is condescending, perspicuous, and lovingly solicits regard; its story and admonitions are brief, that the thoughtless, the busy, and indolent, may not be deterred, nor the impatient tired: the stooping old man cons the engraven record like ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... required set speeches Pym generally took the lead. Hampden very seldom rose till late in a debate. His speaking was of that kind which has, in every age, been held in the highest estimation by English Parliaments, ready, weighty, perspicuous, condensed. His perception of the feelings of the House was exquisite, his temper unalterably placid, his manner eminently courteous and gentlemanlike. "Even with those," says Clarendon, "who were able to preserve themselves from his infusions, and who discerned ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... literally means "orator" (from the verb tlatoa, to harangue). In the far south, among the Araucanians of Chili, and their relatives the migratory hordes of the Pampas, no gift is in higher estimation than that of an easy and perspicuous delivery. This alone enables the humblest to rise to the position of chieftain.[61] So it was ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... that the Language of an Heroic Poem should be both Perspicuous and Sublime. [1] In proportion as either of these two Qualities are wanting, the Language is imperfect. Perspicuity is the first and most necessary Qualification; insomuch that a good-natur'd Reader sometimes overlooks ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... pellucid, transparent, diaphanous, limpid, perspicuous, unadorned, distinct, lucid, plain, unambiguous, evident, manifest, straightforward, unequivocal, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... merits of the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, and of the relative importance and size of the heavenly bodies. By it we are afforded an opportunity of learning how accurate and precise a knowledge Milton possessed of both theories, and in what clear and perspicuous language he expresses his arguments in favour of or against the ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... then proceeded to read from the letters of each, with the design of showing that John's writing was more perspicuous, and that there was more method in his argument. Nor was it a ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... there lurked a true ecclesiastic's mind. He would have made in later times an admirable Jesuit, and no doubt in his own time a very brilliant Pope. His objects in his present mission were clear and perspicuous; any breach between Warwick and the king must necessarily weaken his own position, and the power of his House was essential to all his views. The object of Gloucester in his intercession was less defined, but not less personal: in smoothing the way to his brother's marriage ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Superintendent-General in Weimar) the philosophy of feeling gained a finer, more perspicuous and harmonious nature, who shared Lessing's interest in history and his tendency to hold fast equally to pantheism and to individualism. God is the all-one, infinite, spiritual (non-personal) primal force, which wholly reveals itself in ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... pecuniary classes or conditions, with correspondingly (at least potentially) divergent pecuniary interests, need imply no degree of approval or disapproval of the arrangement which is so recognised. The recognition of it is necessary to a perspicuous control of the argument, as bears on the possible systematic and inherent discrepancy among these men in respect of their material interests under the projected Imperial rule. Substantially, it is a distinction ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... preface that they comprise the results of all the study and research of modern European scholars, and embrace every thing which has been brought to light up to the present time. They are very copiously and clearly illustrated by neat and perspicuous engravings, which frequently do more than pages of description to give a distinct impression to the scholar's mind. The construction of Roman ships, the mode of a naval battle, the style of conducting a siege, the form of chaplets, of temples, of household utensils, of coins, ornaments, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... the Baptist Register of 1842, exhibits the statistics of the Regular or Associated Baptists in a perspicuous light:— ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... said Pantagruel, in former days would not like us have walked under this arbour. There was a mystical reason, answered our most perspicuous lantern, that would have hindered her; for had she gone under it, the wine, or the grapes of which 'tis made, that's the same thing, had been over her head, and then she would have seemed overtopped and mastered by ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Nepos is pure, his style perspicuous, and he holds a middle and agreeable course between diffuseness and brevity. He has not observed the same rule with respect to the treatment of every subject; for the account of some of the lives is so short, that we might ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... a learned and perspicuous critic says "A performance exhibiting stronger marks of genius, finer animation, or happier display of intellect we have seldom witnessed. Mr. Young has studied this masterpiece of Shakspeare with infinite care, not merely as to the text and general scope of the character, but throughout ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... used to the last,—and read it through several times with profound attention, as he has often told me; expressing himself as having been charmed by the purity and beauty of Blackstone's style, his remarkable power of explaining abstruse subjects, and his perspicuous arrangement. The next book which he read was, I believe, "Cruise's Digest of the Laws of England, respecting Real Property," in seven volumes octavo, a standard work of great merit; which, while at college, he read, I think, twice over, and continued perfectly familiar ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... the "Lauh al-Mahfz," the Preserved Tablet, upon which are written all Allah's decrees and the actions of mankind good (white) and evil (black). This is the "perspicuous Book" of the Koran, chaps. vi. 59. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... These things are in my presage, and myself Am part of them and know not; but in dreams The gods are heavy on me, and all the fates Shed fire across my eyelids mixed with night, And burn me blind, and disilluminate My sense of seeing, and my perspicuous soul Darken with vision; seeing I see not, hear And hearing am not holpen, but mine eyes Stain many tender broideries in the bed Drawn up about my face that I may weep And the king wake not; and my brows and lips Tremble and sob in ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... a strict guard over them, and punishing them severely who shall be detected in attempting to join our opposers, this will only be making bad worse, and serve to render our inconsistence, oppression and cruelty more criminal, perspicuous and shocking, and bring down the righteous vengeance of heaven on our heads. The only way pointed out to prevent this threatening evil, is to set the blacks at liberty ourselves by some public acts and laws, and then give them ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the language of an heroic poem should be both perspicuous and sublime. In proportion as either of these two qualities is wanting, the language is imperfect. Perspicuity is the first and most necessary qualification; insomuch that a good-natured reader sometimes overlooks a little slip even in the grammar ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... language under consideration. I have written a purely flash song, of which the great and peculiar merit consists in its being utterly incomprehensible to the uninformed understanding, while its meaning must be perfectly clear and perspicuous to the practised patterer of Romany, or Pedlar's French. I have, moreover, been the first to introduce and naturalize amongst us a measure which, though common enough in the Argotic minstrelsy of France, has been hitherto ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... falling within the description of travels. It is full of matter, physical, statistical, political, commercial, &c.; but heavily written, and displaying rather extent and accuracy of research, than a perspicuous and profound mind. ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... over them, and punishing them severely who shall be detected in attempting to join our opposers, this will only be making bad worse, and serve to render our inconsistence, oppression, and cruelty more criminal, perspicuous, and shocking, and bring down the righteous vengeance of Heaven on our heads. The only way pointed out to prevent this threatening evil is to set the blacks at liberty ourselves by some public acts and laws, and ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... there was much that was vague, as well as much that was visionary, in their notions of the Redemption and the Kingdom. We may well suppose that the views of the multitude were still less correct and perspicuous. Some, perhaps, expected that Christ, as a prophet, would decide the ecclesiastical controversies of the age; [189:7] others, probably, anticipated that, as a Redeemer, he would deliver His countrymen from Roman domination; [189:8] whilst others again cherished the hope that, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Crowned, and internally fiery King of Philosophers, coming forth from his Glassy Sepulchre, in an external fiery Body glorified, more then perfect with all the Colours in the world, as a shining Carbuncle, or perspicuous, compact and ponderous Crystal, a Salamander Spewing out Waters, and by the benefit thereof in the Fire washing Leprous Metals, as I my self have seen. What? How shall they see the Abyss of the Spagyrick Art? when as this Royal Art hath so long lain ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... forget the swan. Fa, mi, la, sol," continued Schaunard, rattling over the keys. "Lastly, an adieu of the young girl, who determines to throw herself into the blue lake, to rejoin her beloved who is buried under the snow. The catastrophe is not very perspicuous, but decidedly interesting. We must have something tender, melancholy. It's coming, it's coming! Here are a dozen bars crying like Magdalens, enough to split one's heart—Brr, brr!" and Schaunard shivered in his spangled ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... THOMAS MORE'S (1480-1535) chief work in English is the Life and Reign of Edward V. It is written in a plain, strong, nervous English style. Hallam calls it "the first example of good English— pure and perspicuous, well chosen, without vulgarisms, and without pedantry." His Utopia (a description of the country of Nowhere) was written ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... but not to leave them with him. The first resolution is copied almost verbatim from the addresses. If you turn to them, you will see what I have omitted, and that I have inserted nothing but what I thought absolutely necessary, in order not to clog the resolution, and render it thereby less perspicuous. ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... to be perspicuous—and the black, I say, unlocking the recess, pulled forth A quantity of clothes fit for the back Of any Mussulman, whate'er his worth: And of variety there was no lack— And yet, though I have said there was no dearth,— He chose himself to point ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... construction of other languages,—of languages which do not in these points accord with our own, but which differ considerably from it,—we may naturally expect grammatical schemes that will be neither perspicuous nor consistent, and that will tend rather to perplex than to inform the learner."—Murray and Hall cor. "Indeed there are but very few who know how to be idle and innocent, or who have a relish for any pleasures that are not criminal; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... fragments and extracts of the rest. As it is, however, it is one of the most valuable historical works that has come down to us. His style, indeed, will not bear a comparison with the great masters of Greek literature: he is not eloquent, like Thucydides; nor practical, like Herodotus; nor perspicuous and elegant, like Xenophon. He lived at a time when the Greek language had lost much of its purity by an intermixture of foreign elements, and he did not attempt to imitate the language of the Attic writers. He wrote as he spoke: he gives us the first rough ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... utility in the operations connected with the support of public credit," he had earnestly recommended its adoption in the first general system which he presented to the view of congress; and, at the present session, had repeated that recommendation in a special report, containing a copious and perspicuous argument on the policy of the measure. A bill conforming to the plan he suggested was sent down from the senate, and was permitted to proceed, unmolested, in the house of representatives, to the third reading. On the final question, a great, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... thrown down by the earthquake. Whether a familiar of the Inquisition was griping her in his clutches, or whether she was taking to account by some disappointed votary, I will not pretend to answer.' Are the expressions here italicized either perspicuous or graceful? Whatever we are to have in their place, we should be thankful to ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... reel; had caught him up into a higher air, on no wings of his own; had added another lover to her company of lovers—and the first impostor she had ever had. She who had known only honest men as friends, in one blind moment lost her perspicuous sense; her instinct seemed asleep. She believed in the man and in his healing. Was there ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the brief sickness and speedy death of Washington is so short, yet circumstantial and perspicuous, and may not be condensed without injury to its completeness, that we will give ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... prejudiced, to be a deep, metaphysical work, though abstruse, etc. etc. Caius Gracchus must have been little accustomed to abstruse disquisitions, if he deem Mr. Godwin's work abstruse:—A chief (and certainly not a small) merit is its perspicuous and "popular" language. My chapter on modern patriotism is that which has irritated you. You condemn me as prejudiced—O this enlightened age! when it can be seriously charged against an essayist, that he is prejudiced in favour of gratitude, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... an intellectual brilliancy which Madison lacked. Ames, who respected Madison's abilities and who regarded him as the leading member of the House, wrote that "he speaks low, his person is little and ordinary; he speaks decently as to manner, and no more; his language is very pure, perspicuous, and to the point." Why Fitzsimmons should be opposed to the appearance of the Secretary in person in the House, as had been Robert Morris's practice when he was Superintendent of Finance, is plain enough. Maclay's ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... never be taken where the beauties of nature are concerned, unless they can be cooked. There is another grave objection to the article; which consists in the undue frequency of Italian and French words and phrases, foisted into the narrative. We have a strong attachment to plain, perspicuous English. Ours is a noble language, a beautiful language; and we hold fully with SOUTHEY, who somewhere remarks that he can tolerate a Germanism, for family sake; but he adds: 'He who uses a Latin or a French phrase where a pure old English word does as well, ought ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... was far from being equally perspicuous. A guest in the house dreaded by her father? Here was mystery indeed. Who could ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... a complete collection of useful directions clothed in perspicuous language, this can ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... All the better, I am glad on't; for the issue was very perspicuous. Come let's discover, and salute the knight. ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Minstrel," replied the archer, displeased at Bertram's interference, "believe me, that armies have ere now depended on my report to the general, which has always been perspicuous and clear, according to the duties of war. Your walk, my worthy friend, has been in a separate department, such as affairs of peace, old songs, prophecies, and the like, in which it is far from my thoughts to contend with you; but credit me, it will be most for the reputation, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Excuse the defect of all idea, or spiritual intuition of God, and allow yourself to bring Him as plaintiff or defendant into a common-law court,—and then I cannot conceive a clearer or cleverer piece of special pleading than Asgill has here given. The language is excellent—idiomatic, simple, perspicuous, at once significant and lively, that is, expressive of the thought, and also of a manly proportion of feeling appropriate to it. In short, it is the ablest attempt to exhibit a scheme of religion without ideas, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... protect their property—their slave property—in that Territory, before it should become a State. That this promise was openly violated, in the adjustment forced upon the South at the time of the admission of Missouri, is a matter of recorded history. The perspicuous and unanswerable exposition of Mr. Justice Catron, in the opinion delivered by him in the Dred Scott case, will remain through all time as an ample vindication ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... which could convince a Nonconformist that it was his duty and his interest to prefer an alliance with the Church to an alliance with the Court were condensed into the smallest compass, arranged in the most perspicuous order, illustrated with lively wit, and enforced by an eloquence earnest indeed, yet never in its utmost vehemence transgressing the limits of exact good sense and good breeding. The effect of this paper was immense; for, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... perdition. The hypothesis of Dr. Williams is already exploded. It was examined and refuted by the Rev. William Parry, of Wymondly, in a piece entitled "Strictures on the Origin of Moral Evil." For reasoning, acute, profound, and perspicuous, both metaphysical and moral, this work has seldom been surpassed. And the devout and courteous spirit in which it is written, presents an example, beautiful and instructive, ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... newly made noble delinquent. Mr. Cobbett took up the discussion of these proceedings, with his accustomed zeal and ability; and his Weekly Political Register was universally read, not only in the metropolis, but all over the kingdom. His clear, perspicuous, and forcible reasoning upon this transaction, convinced every one who read the Register; he proved to demonstration that Mr. Pitt had been privy to and connived at his friend Lord Melville's delinquency, and it was made evident, to the meanest understanding, that ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... being whose mind was quite as firmly toned at eighty as at forty. But that Schomberg's intellectual powers had been little impaired by years is sufficiently proved by his despatches, which are still extant, and which are models of official writing, terse, perspicuous, full of important facts and weighty reasons, compressed into the smallest possible number of words. In those despatches he sometimes alluded, not angrily, but with calm disdain, to the censures thrown upon his conduct by shallow babblers, who, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... out; if they cannot, we must find them in all mankind alike, and they must be clear in everybody; and if they may suffer variation from adventitious notions, we must then find them clearest and most perspicuous nearest the fountain, in children and illiterate people, who have received least impression from foreign opinions. Let them take which side they please, they will certainly find it inconsistent with visible matter ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... made a first lieutenant. I shall conclude with a few remarks on the diction, or, to speak metaphorically, the dress in which the story is clothed. It has all the requisites of a good style; it is concise, perspicuous, simple and occasionally sublime. The poetry is not of that tumid nature which Pindar uses, but of the graceful simplicity of Homer's verse. The poet has diversified the language by the intermixture of the Doric dialect, in imitation of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... several varieties of this disease; it will be more perspicuous, however, for our purpose to speak of it under the two ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... countenance[732]." Dr. Johnson's method of conversation was certainly calculated to excite attention, and to amuse and instruct, (as it happened,) without wearying or confusing his company. He was always most perfectly clear and perspicuous; and his language was so accurate, and his sentences so neatly constructed, that his conversation might have been all printed without any correction. At the same time, it was easy and natural; the accuracy of it had no ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... tenements; and, fortuitously, one of its rooms is used as a school for young children. It is grateful to know this, even were it only for associating the appropriation of this apartment with the master-mind of Locke, as developed in his "Thoughts on Education," and his perspicuous "Essay on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... part—of our business is to practise it. Yes, I seriously propose to you that here in Cambridge we practise writing: that we practise it not only for our own improvement, but to make, or at least try to make, appropriate, perspicuous, accurate, persuasive writing a recognisable hall-mark of anything turned out by our English School. By all means let us study the great writers of the past for their own sakes; but let us study them for our guidance; that we, in our turn, ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Mr. Jones has the candour to quote, puts the matter as neatly as may be. "I am very sorry indeed that you have been so clever as to make up so good (or bad) a story: but I willingly recognise that no one has brought the matter into so clear a light as you have done. You are always perspicuous, and nothing but good can come of such conscientious work as yours. Still, you must remember that you proved Darwin to be an arch-impostor; and there was no fault in your logic. It is not the logic that fails in this book." No. It ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... though their narratives are as much based on original and contemporary authorities as any histories can be, the quotations are usually given in an abbreviated form in the notes, and the text is, in general, an unbroken narrative, in their own perspicuous and graphic language. Thence, in a great measure, the popularity and interest of their works. Michaud indulges more in lengthened quotations in his text from the old chronicles, or their mere paraphrases into his own language; ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... re-written at a time when, as she had said, something had happened to him; when that same gross actual world was making its claims felt through all his senses. And he was suffering now the deep melancholy of perspicuous youth, unable to part with its dreams but aware that its dreams are hopelessly divorced from reality. That was so; but how on earth ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... read from the letters of each, with the design of showing that John's composition was more perspicuous, and that there was more method in his argument. Nor was it a very ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... is disliked; the cry is all against it; some of the lines are pretty, but it is not perspicuous enough, and is deficient ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... now agitated in the British Parliament concerning slavery, is illustrated with great information, able argument, and perspicuous expression, in a work entitled, "Doubts on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, by an Old Member of Parliament;" printed for Stockdale, in Picadilly, 1790. It is ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... I have a perspicuous mind wonder how I came during my boyhood and youth to put faith in creeds, the impossibility of which has since been so clearly revealed to me. Nothing, however, can be more simple, and it is very probable that if an extraneous ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... remained unflinchingly loyal to his ancestral faith, "the exalted hobby of his soul"—a model for three generations. Jewish literature owes to him a scientific style. He wrote epigrammatic, incisive, perspicuous German, stimulating and suggestive, such as Lessing used. The reform movement he supported as a legitimate development of Judaism on historical lines. On the other hand, he fostered loyalty to Judaism by lucidly presenting to young Israel the value of his faith, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... and perspicuous is, he hints in his preface, better than to be graphic and entertaining; and we entirely agree with him, especially when the subject discussed is Rossetti, about whom so many fancies that are neither precise ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... was remarkable for its straightforward and perspicuous simplicity, and, especially after the time of Alfred, it had a marked preference over the Latin. Translations were early made from the Latin, particularly versions of parts of the Scriptures, which come next, in point of date, to the Moeso-Gothic translation ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... James] version, the language is, in general, correct and perspicuous; the genuine popular English of Saxon origin; peculiarly adapted to the subjects; and in many passages uniting sublimity with beautiful simplicity. In my view, the general style of the version ought ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... censure on the immorality of certain passages in the works of Tatius, and would scarcely have omitted to inveigh against the further scandal of their having proceeded from the pen of an ecclesiastic. "In style and composition this work is of high excellence; the periods are generally well rounded and perspicuous, and gratify the ear by their harmony ... but, except in the names of the personages, and the unpardonable breaches of decorum of which he is guilty, the author appears to have closely copied Heliodorus both in the plan and execution of his narrative." In another passage, when treating ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... some cases the application of the parable which the Lord himself makes at the moment is full and perspicuous, it is in other cases like the parables themselves, and doubtless for good reasons, short, sententious, and partially veiled. In some cases the subjoined doctrine must be read in the light of the parable itself ere it can be understood. "Majus vero et certius auxilium interpreti ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... defending of walled towns, no poet of the present day greatly excels Homer,—no, not the Scotch schoolmaster even who wrote Wolfe's Ode, or the gentleman who sends us abstruse verses which we unluckily cannot understand, and then scolds us in perspicuous prose for not giving them a place in ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... talks very plainly and sensibly, and makes very many important suggestions. He does not mince matters at all, but puts every thing in a straightforward and, not seldom, homely way, perspicuous to the dullest understanding. His style is lively and readable, and the book is very entertaining as well as instructive. ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... pulchritude of those things which so visibly appeared to us; for they concluded that nothing beauteous could casually or fortuitously be formed, but that it was framed from the art of a great understanding that produced the world. That the world is very resplendent is made perspicuous from the figure, the color, the magnitude of it, and likewise from the wonderful variety of those stars which adorn this world. The world is spherical; the orbicular hath the pre-eminence above all other figures, for being round itself it hath its parts like itself. (On this account, according ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Sometimes when I found a new paper, I took a particular pleasure in reading a single number of the current novel; but I never could bear more than three instalments; and even the second was a disappointment. As soon as the tale became in any way perspicuous, it lost all merit in my eyes; only a single scene, or, as is the way with these feuilletons, half a scene, without antecedent or consequence, like a piece of a dream, had the knack of fixing my interest. The less I saw of the novel, the better ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and above all so boldly stated, and backed by such shrewd arguments and such apposite illustrations, that it is difficult not to yield to his common-sense view of the question he is discussing. His plain and perspicuous style is often elegant. He may sometimes be coarse and rude, but it is in the thought rather than in the expression. It is true, that, in the heat of conflict, he is apt to lose his temper and break out into the bitter violence of his French associates; but even the scientific and reverend ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... beastly curmudgeon. It is the last verse. "Newly budded" is off the venue; and haven't you gone ahead to make a poetry daybreak instead of sticking to your muttons, and comparing with the mysterious light of stars the plain, friendly, perspicuous, human day? But this is to be a beast. The little poem is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the case of Swift and Kelly—a written judgment and at great length. I thought it remarkably well done, embracing all the points of the case, and laying down the law and the reasons for reversing the decree of the court below in a very forcible and perspicuous manner. He must have written this judgment with great rapidity, for it was only on Tuesday afternoon that it was settled to be given on Thursday, all of which is a proof of his admirable talents. His conduct on the last day of the hearing and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Giving proof that real Captains, taciturn Sons of Anak, are still born in England; and Sea-kings, equal to any that were. Luckily, too, he had some chaplain or ship's-surgeon on board, who saw good to write account of that memorable VOYAGE of his; and did it, in brief, perspicuous terms, wise and credible: a real Poem in its kind, or Romance all Fact; one of the pleasantest little Books in the World's Library at this date. Anson sheds some tincture of heroic beauty over that otherwise ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle |
