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Revert   Listen
verb
Revert  v. i.  
1.
To return; to come back. "So that my arrows Would have reverted to my bow again."
2.
(Law) To return to the proprietor after the termination of a particular estate granted by him.
3.
(Biol.) To return, wholly or in part, towards some preexistent form; to take on the traits or characters of an ancestral type.
4.
(Chem.) To change back, as from a soluble to an insoluble state or the reverse; thus, phosphoric acid in certain fertilizers reverts.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Revert" Quotes from Famous Books



... embraces nearly the first quarter of the present century. This information, again, may perhaps be anything but agreeable to thee; it is a long time to revert to—but fret not thyself, many matters which at present much occupy the public mind originated in some degree towards the latter end of that period, and some of them will be ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... on his bed; he had tried to sleep, but his brain was too active. As he lay listening to the roar of the surf and the shrill wail of the wind, his thoughts would revert to Bart and what his return meant; particularly to its effect on the fortunes of the doctor, of Jane ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... we reach a point in thinking where we cannot proceed further, a fathomless landmark, must we revert to the theological error of "thinking," and assume it must be of supernatural character? Because the unknown in the past has been assigned to the supernatural is no indication for us also, in the present age, to relegate the unknown to divine cause. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... of glee, for though they did not revert to it in words, each boy kept thinking of the past quarrel, and rejoicing at its end, while he looked forward to days of enjoyment in companionship ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... greed, the lust of mammon, and the pride of the flesh that expresses itself in the demand, 'Who shall be greatest?' to dictate the course of conduct that shall shape the destinies of a great people, is to admit the failure of free government, and to revert to a condition of mind that we had thought long since outgrown. To yield our dear-bought liberties to Italian ecclesiastics, on the other hand—well, Doctor, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... quite possible, and we may indeed say probable, that all these causes come into play, and that they take various shares in the production of the several results. But difficulties stand in the way of definite conclusions. Nevertheless, if we revert to the hypothesis of nebular genesis, we are furnished with partial explanations if ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... a cat or a crow the same verse was used with an alteration of the second line so as to force a rhyme; instead of 'meikle caire', the words were 'a blak shot' for a cat, and 'a blak thraw' for a crow or craw. To revert again to the ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... the restoration of foreign accents is accompanied by awkward attempts to revert to the foreign pronunciation of these words, which of course much lessens their usefulness in conversation. Sometimes this, as in nuance, or timbre* practically deprives us of a word which most ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English

... I would revert in the chapter of fishes to that marvellous transformation of the crocodile which has been explained by the torrent of water he draws into his stomach. You could understand nothing about it the other day; but after what we have just seen the explanation suggests ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... reversion, though I enter in detail on some cases of reversion of a special character. I have not as yet put all my facts on this subject in mass, so can come to no definite conclusion. But as single characters may revert, I must say that I see no improbability in several reverting. As I do not believe any well-founded experiments or facts are known, each must form his opinion from vague generalities. I think you confound two rather distinct considerations; ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... referring to these invaluable pictures, does one's mind revert to the day when, before the hammer of Robins had resounded in these rooms—before his transcendent eloquence had been heard at Strawberry—Agnes Strickland, followed by all eyes, pondered over that group of portraits: how, as she slowly withdrew, we of the commonalty scarce ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... fields, according to the present rate of increase in the consumption. Whichever view we take, sooner or later the end must ultimately come when the coal will be exhausted; when the great mainspring of our commercial enterprise will be gone, and we shall revert to that condition in which we were before the coal fields were worked. In this point of view, therefore, coal has an especial interest to us as engineers. If coal is important in this direction, it is no less important ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various

... they found very powerful political helpers. But never since Bismarck took the helm of Prussia had one word in behalf of Democracy and Freedom been lisped by Monarch or Minister. For Italy to abandon her democratic ideal and to revert to the feudal-despotic ideal of the ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... To revert to the subject of names; from all that I have read, and from personal observation, it seems that all Borneans recognize the sanctity of names; of this we may find traces among all the primitive people of the earth. Before the formal ceremony of naming a child, for instance, has been ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness

... been allowed to sleep; I will not say that it was forgotten, but no one seemed disposed to revert to it. But after the twenty-second Protocol, when Piedmont was allowed to threaten Austria, and neither England nor France defended her, Buol got alarmed. He feared that Austria might be left exposed to the vengeance of Russia on the ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... statue in a square at Constantinople, though I should be scourged for an idolater, I would kiss the pedestal. As this, however, is less likely than that I should suffer for writing satirically, and as criticism is less likely to mislead me than speculation, I will revert to ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... charioteer, pursued his lord, His death ennobled by Ulysses' sword. There slain, they left them in eternal night, Then plunged amidst the thickest ranks of fight. So two wild boars outstrip the following hounds, Then swift revert, and wounds return for wounds. Stern Hector's conquests in the middle plain Stood check'd ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... the thing because of the rare opportunity it afforded for the exercise of his lowest tones. Perhaps it had been deemed wise to indulge him in this, lest in rebellion he break all bonds of propriety and revert to the "Bedouin Love Song." At any rate he sang "Drinking," a song that lauds the wine-cup as chiefest of godless joys, and terminating in "drinking" thrice reiterated, of which each individual one finishes so much lower ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... revert to the period of your mother's marriage, Lucie," said Madame de la Tour, "and, as briefly as possible, detail those unhappy circumstances which so soon deprived you of her protecting love. You will no longer be surprised that ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... slow, Or by the lazy Scheldt, or wandering Po?" Nay, gentle GOLDSMITH, it is thus no more, None now need fear "the rude Carinthian boor," The bandit Greek, the Swiss of avid grin, Or e'en the predatory Bedouin. Where'er we roam, whatever realms to see, Our thoughts, great Agent, must revert to thee. From Parthenon or Pyramid, we look In travelled ease, and bless the name of COOK! Eternal blessings crown the wanderer's friend! At Ludgate Hill may all the world attend. Blest be that spot where the great world instructor Assumed the role of Personal Conductor! Blest be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various

... time, upon Goldsmith, round whom the clouds of misfortune were fast settling, and who was planning a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences as a means of extrication from his embarrassments. In such circumstances, it was not unnatural for Goldsmith to revert to his own past travels, and to the reflection that he was unlikely again to set out upon them, unless sheltered like Johnson behind a pension. He assured Boswell that he would never be able to lug the ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... no stationery I wrote on the walls. Beginning as high as I could reach, I wrote in columns, each about three feet wide. Soon the pencil became dull. But dull pencils are easily sharpened on the whetstone of wit. Stifling acquired traits, I permitted myself to revert momentarily to a primitive expedient. I gnawed the wood quite from the pencil, leaving only the graphite core. With a bit of graphite a hand guided by the unerring insolence of elation may artistically damn ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... disharmonious quarters. Trusting, therefore, that the practical administration of the war is drifting into the right policy, based on the true theory of its causes and legitimate termination, we may leave these merely political and military questions, and revert, in conclusion, to the possible remaining eventualities of the war. These may be, for the time, (1.) Seemingly prosperous and fortunate, or, (2.) Seemingly accompanied with disaster, discouragement, and dismay—ulterior even to the eventual triumph of our arms over the open enemies ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the tenant acknowledge the tenement to be the right of the demandant, and for that acknowledgment the demandant grant to the tenant that he shall hold of him for life, and that afterwards the tenement shall revert to him (the demandant), that acknowledgment is as stable as if a fine were levied in a ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... her very unkind, but showed no desire to revert to the topic upon which they had been conversing, when she had thought fit to ask her that jocular question which Phyllis had ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore

... does," said Dolf, and he cut the tart into four pieces, having an idea that the last slice would revert to him ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... note behind addressed to the chief of the police here—no, you need not start—to be sent to him only if my return were unduly delayed. You can guess what that note contained. It is not necessary for us to revert ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Johnson was seventy five pounds (or guineas) a volume, and twenty five pounds for the second edition. I will sell this either at that price or for sixty[2], the first edition of which he shall himself fix the number, and the property then to revert to me, or for forty pounds, and I have the profit that is retain half the copy. I shall have occasion for thirty pounds on Monday night when I shall deliver the book which I must entreat you upon such delivery to procure me. I would have it offered to Mr. Johnson, but have no doubt of selling ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell

... how different are the views of this worthy, this heavenly-gifted son! He is anxiously studious to discover how he may apply the wealth that may revert to him most to benefit that society from which it first sprang. The best application of riches is one of our frequent themes; because it will be one of our first duties. The diffusion of knowledge, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... will not be lost. Let her persevere, and success, earlier or later, shall crown her toils and hopes. What power is there in her intercessions before Heaven, "Years have passed away," says the grateful brother, as his thoughts revert to his distant home, "and Heaven has prospered me. Often, when temptations have assailed me, should I have yielded to them, had not a still small voice have whispered, thy sister prays ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... Bosnia as the Young Turks were preparing for the general elections. The two provinces were nominally part of the Turkish Empire, and the Turks would claim that they should be represented in their Parliament. Europe had never intended the provinces to revert to Turkey; they had been entirely Austrian for thirty years, and the change was in name only. It would also make it possible to give the provinces a liberal and civilian government, a thing not possible when it was ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... somewhat drifted us away from the matter under consideration, so that it becomes necessary to revert again to the main subject. Now, even at the risk of being regarded as wearisome, I propose to consider somewhat fully the different steps to be followed in the preparation of a simple salad, for it will be noticed that in all the cookery books the directions ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... explained," Venner replied. "I sent him. To go back to the beginning of things, I have to revert to the night when I first saw Mark Fenwick at the Great Empire Hotel, posing as a millionaire, and having for company a girl who passed as his daughter. Seeing that this pseudo Miss Fenwick was my own wife, you can imagine ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White

... attempts to revert from bourgeois scepticism to mysticism as a safeguard against the moral and material crisis of the present time, attempts which make us think of those lascivious women who become pious bigots on growing old[86]—henceforth ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... only an incident, and I hope the most romantic reader will let me revert from him to the Alcazar gardens. We were always reverting to them on any pretext or occasion, and we mostly had them to ourselves in the gentle afternoons when we strayed or sat about at will in them. The ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... seated there," murmured the little woman, pointing at the great chair. "You were not—quite—quite yourself," she softly explained, wondering at her own composure. Then quickly, as she saw his thoughts revert to the dead friend at his feet, "Bela was not hurt here. He was down town when it happened; but he managed to struggle home and gain this place, which he tried to hold against the men who followed him. He thought you ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... harm in your pranks," the Emperor said. "I certainly should not encourage you to continue or repeat such conduct or to revert to it, but I see no real ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... booksellers have now no other security in future for any literary purchase they may make but the statute of the 8th of Queen Anne, which secures to the authors assigns an exclusive property for 14 years, to revert again to the author, and vest in him for 14 years more.' Ann. Reg. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... vermilion spotted Mignonette, on their breast, and the chaplet of wilding shrubs upon their brows, give them a charm in the most common-place observation. With me, truant as I have been to the Classic page, it seemed a natural process of my desultory mind, to revert from a contemplation of such pensive dreamy realities of waking enjoyment as I have described, to visions, startling in their august grandeur, of the everlasting past,—visions of their great Architect, Aurelian; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... near the territory occupied by the Indians. Five pounds per annum was named as the quit rent, payment to begin eight years later; and such part of the tract as was not cleared and improved during the next eighteen years was to revert to the Trustees. The Trustees also agreed that they would reserve two hundred acres near the larger tract, and whenever formally requested by Count Zinzendorf, would grant twenty acres each "to such able bodied Young Men Servants as should arrive and settle ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries

... "His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." Whilst in the Book of Ecclesiastes, the melancholy words of the Preacher revert over and over again to that which is done "under the sun." "What profit hath a man of all his labour which ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... able to escape in her, should an exasperated country ever rise in its might and demand his blood. It was rumoured that the Seahound was ballasted with bars of solid gold and provisioned for a two years' cruise. Mr. Buller, however, claimed that the tendency of nature was to revert to original conditions, and that some fine morning Druce would hoist the black flag, sail away, and become ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... God in the name of the people for the preservation of the United States is my first duty in addressing you. Our thoughts next revert to the death of the late President by an act of parricidal treason. The grief of the nation is still fresh. It finds some solace in the consideration that he lived to enjoy the highest proof of its confidence by entering on the renewed term of the Chief ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson

... detective, might imagine that crime stalked abroad endlessly in Riverbank and that criminals crowded the streets, but this would be mere imagination. For weeks before he took on the case of the Anonymous Wiggle, he had been obliged to revert to his ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... lifetime—perhaps for several generations—they tend to retrograde, instead of advancing. They drop away from the standard which highly civilized nations have reached. As with harsh and dangerous labor they bring the new land up towards the level of the old, they themselves partly revert to their ancestral conditions; they sink back towards the state of their ages-dead barbarian forefathers. Few observers can see beyond this temporary retrogression into the future for which it is a preparation. There is small cause ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... supplement so as to empower the President to prescribe the term within which they should remove to the Green Bay lands, and that if they neglected to do so within the period limited so much of the land as should be unoccupied by them at the termination thereof should revert to the United States. To these lands the New York Indians claimed title, which was resisted, and, for quieting the controversy, by the treaty of 1831 the United States paid a large consideration; and it will be seen that by using the power given in the treaty ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... to a peculiar mental property; and when Societies and individuals failed to extract my secret, they never failed to traduce the inventor and the invention. Among the learned Societies, the Royal Society of London played a very base part. When I have more space and time at my disposal, I will revert to this ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... Type: dependent territory of the UK; scheduled to revert to China in 1997 Capital: Victoria Administrative divisions: none (dependent territory of the UK) Independence: none (dependent territory of the UK); the UK signed an agreement with China on 19 December 1984 to return Hong ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... personal merit in doing so. Even when the older language was half forgotten there were within our memory some who would use it if they could, and perhaps did so when they felt strongly, as a Scotsman in strange lands may, when deeply moved, revert to what convention insists on calling his ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson

... unnecessary to mention these here, for they are sufficiently obvious; our present business lies with considerations which may somewhat tend to humble our pride and to make us think seriously of the future prospects of the human race. If we revert to the earliest primordial types of mechanical life, to the lever, the wedge, the inclined plane, the screw and the pulley, or (for analogy would lead us one step further) to that one primordial type from which all the mechanical kingdom has been developed, we mean to the lever itself, and if ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler

... that every useful organ will be kept up nearly to its higher limit of size and efficiency. Now Mr. Galton has proved experimentally that, when any part has thus been increased (or diminished) by selection, there is in the offspring a strong tendency to revert to a mean or average size, which tends to check further increase. And this mean appears to be, not the mean of the actual existing individuals but a lower mean, or that from which they had been recently ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... shall revert to the subject of electric response; meanwhile it is necessary to say a few words regarding the electric disturbance caused by the injury itself. Since the physico-chemical conditions of the uninjured A and the injured B are now no longer the same, it follows that their ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose

... one of the bridle paths of Afghanistan," and then continues: "The special rate of carriers is like the delicate fluid that anoints and lubricates the joints of the human body. It is an essential oil. Without it the wheels of commerce would cease and we should quickly revert to the period when the stage-coach and the overland teamster fixed the limits of commerce and the ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... at all. I was satisfied with Madame d'Albret's company, and had no wish to leave her. I may say that I was truly happy, and my countenance was radiant, and proved that I was so. My thoughts would occasionally revert to my father and my brother Auguste, and make me melancholy for the time, but I felt that all was for the best, and I built castles, in which I imagined my suddenly breaking in upon them, throwing myself in my father's arms, and requesting him to share the wealth ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... highly favored to have lived through such a half century. But it seems to me that in walking the streets of London and Paris I shall revert to my student days, and appear to myself like a relic of a former generation. Those who have been born into the inheritance of the new civilization feel very differently about it from those who have lived their way into it. To the ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... politics, as they move me less, suit me better; but of these I begin to be tired, and shall for my amusement revert to more ancient times. The history of the Bourbons is become thread-bare, and their lustre too is extinguished, as suddenly as that of a farthing candle. This Revolution is by no means unprecedented, but being transacted ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... said lingeringly: "To Mademoiselle Elise Malboir, the memory of whose devotion and solicitude gives me joy in my last hour, I bequeath fifty thousand francs. In the event of her death, this money shall revert to the parish of Pontiac, in whose graveyard I wish my body to lie. The balance of my estate, whatever it may now be, or may prove to be hereafter, I leave to Pierre Napoleon, third son of Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, of whom I cherish ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... and choose that because it seems good, unless the choice is based on a people's present fitness to adapt that other experience or other scheme of life to their own experience. The proposition to revert to an earlier period suggests nothing more than the repetition of an experience out of which the present ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot

... now opened to Madame Campan. At Coubertin, surrounded by her nieces, she was fond of directing their studies. This occupation caused her ideas to revert to the subject of education, and awakened once more the inclinations of her youth. At the age of twelve years she could never meet a school of young ladies passing through the streets without feeling ambitious of the situation and authority of their mistress. Her abode at Court had diverted but ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... certainly have to economize," Bland admitted; "and that is a thing I'm not accustomed to; but I may get some appointment, and by and by a small share in some family property will revert to me. Though I must go straight back to my garrison duties now, I'll come down for an hour or two and explain things to Sylvia, as soon as I can." He paused and broke into a faint smile. "I dare say the surprise will ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... accustomed to see there. When she looks with well-practised critical eye down the hotel dining-room, which is now quite clean and orderly, when she is scolding a servant, or serving a customer, her mind will revert to the room in its former rough state, and she will remember another customer who used to eat there. When the spring comes, and far and near there is the smell of wet moss, and shrubs on the wide flat land shoot forth their leaves, and the fields ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... complain of the slowness of the process, that the slowness is ours, not God's. The process is slow because men will not consent to become the instruments of God's love for the world, will not transmit the crucified love of God's Son to their fellows. They continually, in their impatience, revert to force of some sort, for the attainment of spiritual ends. They become the tools of all sorts of secular ambitions which promise support in return for their co-operation. And the result may be read by any one not blinded by prejudice in the futility ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... but I have missed you horribly. 'There's no luck about the house' when you are not in it. We have all been out of sorts,—Geoff quite down in the mouth, little Geoff not at all contented with me as a mother; even Euphane has worn a long face and exhibited a tendency to revert to the Isle of Man, which she never showed so long as you were to the fore. As for me, I have felt like a person with one lung, or half a head,—all broken up, and unlike myself. Oh, dear! how good ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... pulsing with the vital currents of the universe, and that what it holds of living forms were not arbitrarily imposed upon it from without, but vitally evolved from within and that man himself is one of its products as literally as are the trees that stand rooted to the soil. Revert to the time when life was not, when the globe was a half-incandescent ball, or when it was a seething, weltering waste of heated water, before the land had yet emerged from the waves, and yet you and I were there in the ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... scant interest. The Giants had knocked the Braves' pitcher out of the box, and an earthquake seemed a small matter. His mind did not once revert to the mysterious message from Pax the day before. He was thinking ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... oblivion would be the natural wish of every British and Irish heart, were it not that scenes still more disgraceful to both countries and more calamitous to one of them have succeeded—scenes which force the mind to revert with regret to those days of poverty and peace, when, as there existed little wealth to excite avarice, and little spirit to aggravate the ambition of party, that little remained inviolate, and the miserable cabin, though filled with objects of disgusting ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous

... an hour before the ceremony, when the marriage canopy had already been erected in the courtyard, did the farmer sum up courage to revert to the warning of the unknown letter-writer. Taking his future son-in-law aside, ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert

... Hardy joined in the hunt throughout Tuesday. He had a feverish desire for employment—occupation for his mind which, in spite of the efforts he made to dwell upon the villainies of Ephraim Shine and the wrong he had done Frank, and the good reasons he had to hate him, would revert again and again to Christina; and then a wish, a cowardly wish, traitorous to his brother, cruel to his mother, and false to himself, stole into his heart, and he felt for one burning moment a hope that the searcher might escape for her sake, for the ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... flavour and even in the names. There is the additional inducement that the food may be attractive and palatable to friends who lack sympathy with the aesthetic and humane principles of the diet. After a while many of them incline to simpler flavoured foods. They revert to the unperverted taste of childhood, for children love sweets, fruits, and mild-flavoured foods rather than savouries. One who loves savouries, as a rule, cares much less for fruits. By compounding ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan

... planted. Some insist that it was planted by Sir Walter Raleigh himself, but as that famous knight did not realize his wish to visit his new possessions in North America, the honor of having planted the vine must revert to Amadas and Barlowe. It seems to be endowed with perennial youth, and the harvest from its branches is an ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten

... possesses that cash. By the conditions of his trade, the bill-broker is forced to belong to a class of 'dependent money-dealers,' as we may term them, that is, of dealers who do not keep their own reserve, and must, therefore, at every crisis of great difficulty revert to others. ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot

... a reasonable theory; but I think we shall go farther and get nearer the heart of the problem if we revert to the general clue which I have followed already more than once—the clue of the necessary evolution of human Consciousnss. In the first or animal stage of human evolution, Sex was (as among the animals) ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... Otway's announcement of inability to carry out the scheme they had formed together, turned in another direction. A year passed; John Jacks again wrote; and, Moncharmont's other projects having come to nothing, the friends decided at length to revert to their original plan, with the difference that a third partner supplied capital equal to that which Moncharmont himself put into the venture. The arrangement was strictly business-like; John Jacks, for all his kindliness, had no belief in anything else where money ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... Kalmucks; and as if their sufferings were incomplete unless they were rounded and matured by all that the most dreadful agencies of summer's heat could superadd to those of frost and winter. To this sequel of their story we shall immediately revert, after first noticing a little romantic episode which occurred at this point between Oubacha and his ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... Manila Railway Co., Ltd," was issued in February, 1888. The line was to be completed within four years from July 21, 1887, and at the end of ninety-nine years the railway and rolling-stock were to revert to the Spanish Government without compensation. The rails, locomotives (36 tons and 12 tons each), tenders, coaches, waggons, and ironwork for bridges all came from England. The first stone of the Central Station in Manila (Bilibid Road, Tondo) was laid by Gov.-General ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... afternoon when he had debated with himself whether he should not, after all, go and intercept her at Charing Cross, plead his mother's age and frail health, implore her to give him time; not to break off all relations; to revert, at least, to the old friendship. He had actually risen from his seat in the House of Commons half an hour before the starting of the train; had made his way to the Central Lobby, torn by indecision; and had there been pounced upon by an important ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... excellent models for chaste decoration. In our time such a procedure would be impossible, as the national dress of both our men and women has become utilitarian rather than beautiful, and now has little artistic to recommend it. If we wish classic draperies and faultless styles of hair-dressing we must revert to the past ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett

... instead of freeing it, they try to elude it. Not free enough themselves morally, but bound to the world partly by piety and partly by industrialism, they cannot think of rising to a detached contemplation of earthly things, and of life itself and evolution; they revert rather to sensibility, and seek some by-path of instinct or dramatic sympathy in which to wander. Having no stomach for the ultimate, they burrow downwards towards the primitive. But the longing to be primitive is a disease of culture; it is archaism ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... thus, 'And this is the yarn of Loudon Dodd'; add, 'not as he told, but as he wrote it afterwards for his diversion.' This becomes the more needful, because, when all is done, I shall probably revert to Tai-o-hae, and give final details about the characters in the way of a conversation between Dodd and Havers. These little snippets of information and FAITS-DIVERS have always a disjointed, broken-backed appearance; yet, readers like them. In this ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the colonial people, produced an impression far more general and more deep than all that had ever been written or declaimed against system of West India slavery; and looking back on the consummation of all our hopes in 1833 and 1838, we at once revert from this auspicious era to that ever memorable occasion as having laid the solid ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... only thing to do. The (to Somerset) surprising accident that the committee of architects should have pronounced the designs absolutely equal in point of merit, and thus have caused the final choice to revert after all to Paula, had been a joyous thing to him when he first heard of it, full of confidence in her favour. But the fact of her having again become the arbitrator, though it had made acceptance of his plans all the more probable, made refusal of them, should it happen, all the more crushing. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... deeply stirs him, as an insult, or a falling out with a friend, or the loss of money,—something which disturbs what we call his poise or peace of mind. He becomes sleepless because, when he goes to bed and the shock-absorbing objects of daily interest are removed, his thoughts revert back to his difficulty; he becomes again humiliated or grieved or thrown into an emotional turmoil that prevents sleep. After the first night of insomnia a new factor enters,—the fear of sleeplessness and ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... heretofore said, that you have offered as much as you ought, in offering to live single. If you were never to marry, the estate they are so loth should go out of their name, would, in time, I suppose, revert to your brother: and he or his would have it, perhaps, much more certainly this way, than by the precarious reversions which Solmes makes them hope for. Have you put this into their odd heads, my dear?—The tyrant word AUTHORITY, as they use it, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... of delight from the solitary young lady, as she now sat at midnight looking over these gracious testimonies to her lover's merit. A theme so delightful to Paulina could not be unseasonable at any time; and never did her thoughts revert to him more fondly than at this moment, when she so much needed his protecting arm. Yet the emperor, she was aware, must have some more special motive for enlarging upon this topic than his general favor to Maximilian. What this could be, in ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... an unavoidable tendency to become literally the embodiment of that quality upon which one most constantly thinks. Let, therefore, the object of your meditation be above and not below, so that every time you revert to it in thought you will be lifted up; let it be pure and unmixed with any selfish element; so shall your heart become purified and drawn nearer to Truth, and not defiled and dragged ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen

... Hawthorne sleeps by the tranquil Concord, upon whose shores the Old Manse was his bridal bower, those who knew him chiefly there revert beyond the angry hour to those peaceful days. How dear the Old Manse was to him he has himself recorded; and in the opening of the Tanglewood Tales he pays his tribute to that placid landscape, which will always be recalled with pensive tenderness by ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... at best, a pageant. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that from the first the Boeotian school is forced to season its matter with romantic episodes, and that later it tends more and more to revert (as in the "Shield of Heracles") to ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... whether it carves up the tribe into two, or, as sometimes in North America and elsewhere, into more than two primary divisions, under which the clans tend to group themselves in a more or less orderly way, has all the appearance of a natural development out of the clan-system. Thus, to revert to the imaginary case of the Cockatoos and Crows practising exogamy across the river, it seems easy to understand how the numbers on both sides might increase until, whilst remaining Cockatoos and ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... which was ordinarily fixed in the direction of the distant hills, turned toward the young pair, who seemed doomed to so early a death, with a slight indication of pity crossing his composed features, but it would immediately revert again to its former gaze, as if already looking into the womb of futurity. Much of the time he was chanting a kind of low dirge in the Delaware tongue, using the deep and remarkable guttural ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... when I write these lines, old and infirm, my legs scarcely able to sustain me, my thoughts revert involuntarily to that epoch of my life when, young and vigorous, I bore the greatest fatigues, and walked day and night, in the mountainous countries which separate the kingdoms of Valencia and Catalonia from the kingdom of Aragon, in order to reestablish our geodesic ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... own country, he gave them an assurance that, so long as they remained faithful to the Government, they should receive every consideration; he told them that a new era had commenced in Oudh, and that henceforth they would be allowed to revert to the conditions under which they had held their estates prior to the annexation of the province. When Lord Canning had finished speaking, a translation of his address in Urdu was read to the Talukdars ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... window. He said, "Hello!" and Maurice said, "Hello!" and added that it was a cold day. The fact that Maurice said not a word about that recovering little patient in Medfield made the doctor's mind revert to the possibilities he had ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... destinies are in his hands, and that any bad behaviour in the ring will lose them the victory. But in an impromptu turn-up like this one, the combatants show a tendency to ignore the rules so carefully mapped out by the present Marquess of Queensberry's grandfather, and revert to the conditions of warfare under which Cribb and Spring won their battles. Kennedy and Walton, having clinched, proceeded to wrestle up and down the room, while Jimmy Silver looked on from his eminence in pained surprise at the sight of two men, who ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... disputes arose regarding the title to Jersey that the whole thing finally reverted to the crown in 1702. When there was any trouble over titles in those days it was always settled by letting it revert to the crown. It has been some years now, however, since that ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... this is to revert to a form of civilization in which it was frankly admitted that sex-impulses could not be controlled, either by men or by women, and society was therefore organized on a basis which, quite logically, ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden

... the decline of burgesses, and the increase of slaves, were most apparent. So Gracchus, after entering upon his office, proposed the enaction of an agrarian law, by which all State lands, occupied by the possessors, without remuneration, should revert to the State, except five hundred jugera for himself, and two hundred and fifty for each son. The domain land thus resumed was to be divided into lots of thirty jugera, and these distributed to burgesses and Italian allies, not as free property, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... but to vouch and call to warranty those principles of original justice from whence alone our title to everything valuable in society is derived? Can it be thought to arise from a superfluous, vain parade of displaying general and uncontroverted maxims, that we should revert at this time to the first principles of law, when we have directly under our consideration a whole body of statutes, which, I say, are so many contradictions, which their advocates allow to be so many exceptions from those very principles? Take them in the most favorable light, every ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... proceed with the order of subjects which I have proposed to myself as the proper one to follow, I feel that I must revert for a moment to the question of "ladies at lunch." You may remember that some two or three weeks ago I ventured to offer some observations on this topic. Dear ladies, you can read for yourselves the winged words in which your adoring Punch settled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various

... repertory to which the mind may revert in order to see broadly the general opinion of an epoch—and what connected it with those that followed or preceded it. It aims above all at being a frame in which can conveniently be inscribed, in the ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet

... was "Up from Slavery," and it brought home to me as nothing else could have done what was the real trouble with myself and all the rest of the struggling, ill-paid, wretched working women with whom I had come in contact during my apprenticeship. What that trouble was I shall revert to later. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... Syvorotka," she said, "we cannot live in such a miserable way. I'll have to change it. There are no reasons why we should revert to cannibalism!" ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... substituted for your own. His lordship suggested an immediate secret marriage. But you cannot run out into the street, knock up a clergyman, and get married on the spot, and Mary knew that the moment she was gone his lordship's will would revert to his mother's keeping. Then his lordship suggested flight, but flight requires money, and the countess knew enough to keep his lordship's purse in her own hands. Despair seized upon ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... To revert to the little Sikkim rhododendron, I shall give here the description of a still more diminutive specimen, met with by Dr Hooker during his journey, and which he has figured and described in his beautiful work, The Rhododendron of Sikkim-Himalaya. It ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various

... mind that the early sixteenth century represents the end of a distinct historical period; and, as we have pointed out in the Introduction, the expiring effort, half-conscious and half-unconscious, of the people to revert to the conditions of an earlier age. Nor can the significance be properly gauged unless a clear conception is obtained of the differences between country and town life at the beginning of the sixteenth century. From the earliest periods of the Middle ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... revert to the many beauteous haunts and hidden retreats of nature, whose varied phases of quiet sweetness and sublime grandeur are heightened and intensified by the charm of ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... twenty-four hours, seeming annoyed if he were aroused or disturbed. Yet there were portions of the time, when he was comparatively comfortable, and conversed intelligently; but his mind seemed to revert to former scenes, and he tried to amuse me with stories of his boyhood—his college days—his imprisonment in France, and his early missionary life. He had a great deal also to say on his favorite theme. "The love of Christ:" but his strength was too much impaired for any continuous mental ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... streets, sacred only to gain and worldly commerce. He doated on his girls, and to lose one was to lose half the joy of his existence. The effect of this calamity was otherwise on my mother; and I revert to the difference in order to make clear to you their respective natures. My mother wept at the death of her child—she would not else have been a woman; but as I have seen weak watery clouds pass across the moon's surface, leaving the planet untouched and tranquil in their transit, so ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... does not mean that crowds, skilfully influenced, are not capable of heroism and devotion and of evincing the loftiest virtues; they are even more capable of showing these qualities than the isolated individual. We shall soon have occasion to revert to this point when we come to ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... to the first group, and there is nothing in his temperament to make him anything else. Free Trade never did convince him; he broke away from the enchanting tyranny of Laurier; and, though born on a farm, he never could revert to the plough-handles for a vision ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... trying not to shiver. He replied in native speech, but a few words exhausted his knowledge and he had to revert to his own language. "Take the gifts with you. They are yours, no matter ...
— Bolden's Pets • F. L. Wallace

... come to talk with Miss Mavis because she was attractive, but I had been rather conscious of the absence of a good topic, not feeling at liberty to revert to Mr. Porterfield. She hadn't encouraged me, when I spoke to her as we were leaving Boston, to go on with the history of my acquaintance with this gentleman; and yet now, unexpectedly, she appeared to ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James

... imposed by the Pope. Innocent invested him by a ring with the allodial or freehold lands of the Countess in return for an annual tribute and on the understanding that at Lothair's death they should revert to the Papacy. Lothair took no oath of fealty for them, but such oath was exacted from his son-in-law, Henry the Proud of Bavaria, to whom the inheritance was made over on the same conditions. Lothair had perhaps ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... so far as our Judiciary is concerned, I do not hesitate to say I would adhere to older, and, as I think, better principles, or revert to them where they have been experimentally abandoned. It took the Anglo-Saxon race two centuries of incessant conflict to wrest from a despotic executive, practically an autocracy, judicial independence. That was effected through what is known as a tenure during good behavior, as opposed ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams

... Peace, the temptation to the Nation to take off its armour, to come down from the pedestal, to revert to pre-war conditions, to re-act in self-indulgence from the strain of war, or to let materialism defeat idealism, will be well-nigh overwhelming. To give way to that temptation will be to rob victory of any permanent values. It will be a poor thing to have ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various

... Spread wide their ears and hiccough "That's divine!" The genius of his purse no longer draws The pleasing thunders of a paid applause. All silent now, nor sound nor sense remains, Though riddances of worms improve his brains. All his no talents to the earth revert, And Fame concludes ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... To revert to Mr. Trubner's, I may say that one evening after dinner, when, genial though quiet, Bret Harte was one of the guests, he was asked to repeat the "Heathen Chinee," which he could not do, as he had never learned it—which is not ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... wherever you see a flower in a cottage garden, or a bird-cage at the window, you may feel sure that the cottagers are better and wiser than their neighbours; and such humble tokens of attention to something beyond the sterile labour of life, were (we must now revert to the past,) to be remarked in almost every one of the lowly abodes at Grassdale. The jasmine here, there the vine clustered over the threshold, not so wildly as to testify negligence; but rather to ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... returned the Father of the Marshalsea, 'do you think you are sufficiently careful of yourself? Do you think your habits are as precise and methodical as—shall I say as mine are? Not to revert again to that little eccentricity which I mentioned just now, I doubt if you take air and exercise enough, Frederick. Here is the parade, always at your service. Why not use it more regularly ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... Breton marshes, in the woods of Toulven, or at sea in the night-watches, we talk of all those things to which thoughts naturally revert in darkness; of ghosts, of spirits, of eternity, of the great hereafter, of chaos—and ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... have a due degree of firmness, but also that they should be sufficiently elastic and flexible to conform to changes in interests and life conditions. A herding or an agricultural people, if it moves into a new country, rich in game, may revert to a hunting life. The Tunguses and Yakuts did so as they moved northwards.[105] In the early days of the settlement of North America many whites "Indianized"; they took to the mode of life of Indians. The Iranians separated from the Indians of Hindostan and became ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... major and minor scales, with their deep-rooted and ineradicable harmonic tendencies, their perpetual suggestion of traditional cadences and resolutions. To forget the principles underlying three centuries of harmonic practice and revert to the methods of the mediaeval church composers, required an extraordinary degree of imaginative intuition; purposely and consistently to employ those methods as a foundation upon which to erect an harmonic structure most richly and elastically contrived—to ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman

... man and such a death! I would that he had not been so minute in his horrid details. Oh, my dear Byron, do write to me; I am very, very sick at heart indeed, and, after various efforts to write upon my own concerns, I still revert to the same melancholy subject. I wrote to Cawthorn to-day, but knew not what I said to him; half my incitement to finish that task is for ever gone. I can neither have his assistance during my labour, his comfort if I should fail, nor his congratulation if I should ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... made by his own outlay; I would not give him the profits arising from the tenant's labor and means." Now I thought this fair, but the gentleman did not. He thought that all profit arising from improvements made by the tenant, should revert to the landlord after a certain time. I could not ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... mine. It is true," he added pensively, "that when I am in the North I claim that a somewhat shadowy Scottish ancestry makes of me a Scot to the finger tips, but no sooner do I cross the Border upon my return to London than I revert violently to my English self. A kindly Providence has ordained that the central Scottish Office should be in London, and my urgent duties compel me to reside there permanently. Which is indeed fortunate. ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... replaced the man's method of brute force along the whole line of legitimate human activity. If we realize this we can understand why it is that a group of women who, even in the effort to support a good cause, revert to the crude method of violence are committing a double wrong. They are wronging their own sex by proving false to its best traditions, and they are wronging civilization by attempting to revive methods of savagery which it is civilization's mission to repress. Therefore it may fairly ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... of the following reasons: To render it more easily eaten; to make it more digestible; to economize in amount; to give it some new property; and to preserve it. We have already spoken of the preparation of drying, and need not revert to this again, as it only serves to preserve the different feeds. Drying does, however, change some of the properties of feed, i. e., removes the laxative tendency of most ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... there was something to revert to. "My fear of you isn't superficial. I mean it isn't immediate—not of you just as you stand," she explained. "It's of ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... a cigar, sank into the very chair he had left, and let his mind revert to his discontented mood of the afternoon, laughing softly as he admitted that it had needed only the trace of trouble on that charming face to convince him that he was ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... to observe that the fief, unlike the beneficium, was not granted for a certain number of years, or for the life of the grantee, to revert at his death to the owner. On the contrary, it became hereditary in the family of the vassal and passed down to the eldest son from one generation to another. So long as the vassal remained faithful to his lord and performed the stipulated services, and his successors did ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... And as two friends, after a long separation, will revert to the most agitated period of their lives, they began to talk of the Sulaco Revolution. It seemed strange to Mrs. Gould that people who had taken part in it seemed to forget its memory and ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... press me too hard; it is difficult to translate eye-language, but if you'll only let memory have free play and revert to that time, nigh quarter of a century ago, when you first met with a ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... lady very weak, very nervous, and very low in spirits. It had not been a very cheerful visit all round, because the old maidservant, Betty Harrison, had also been far from well. There had been a good deal of talk between the old women of dying, a subject to which their minds had been very prone to revert. Besides Mrs Love there were two other visitors, but they too failed to cheer the old couple up. One of the visitors, a laundress of the Temple called Mrs Oliphant, had done her best, poohpoohing such melancholy talk, ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... some trivial point of etiquette, in the breach of which, he conceived himself aggrieved. A very miserable woman was his wife amid all the cold magnificence of her stately home. Often, very often, in her hours of loneliness and depression, her thoughts would revert to the brief, bright days of her early love, and her spirit would be rapt away by the recollection of that scene on the balcony, when Philip Hayforth and she had stood with locked hands and full hearts gazing at the sinking star and the sweetly breaking day, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... little in his former occupation, but never succeeded in finding the elixir he had laboured so long to discover. On the departure of the Flemish steward, Hal Carter was appointed to the post, with the understanding that if his lord should ever ride to battle, he was to revert to the command of the men-at-arms. Hal was ignorant of figures, but he had a young assistant given him to manage this part of the work, and his honesty, his acquaintance with farming, and his devotion ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... circumstance into consideration and selects again and again, and so on and on, till the peculiarity that he wants to establish has become a well-marked feature. Remove his controlling intelligence, leave the birds to themselves, and they revert to ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant

... efforts to establish a true marriage within the legal bonds have proved unavailing; and only where adultery, desertion, habitual drunkenness, or gross brutality and cruelty demonstrate the utter impossibility of a true marriage, is husband or wife justified in seeking to escape the bond, and to revert to the lower, ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... so faithful to nature, and so essentially living in its expression, that it is not probable that it will ever die. It may become disused, but will revert. Its elements are ever natural and universal, by recurring to which the less natural signs adopted dialectically or for expedition can always, with, some circumlocution, be explained. This power of interpreting itself is a peculiar advantage, for spoken languages, ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... offered. The latter was declined but, in lieu of the sum, Marti asked for and obtained a monopoly of the right to sell fish in Havana. He offered to build, at his own expense, a public market of stone, that should, after a specified term of years, revert to the government, "with all right and the title to the fishery." This struck Tacon as a good business proposition; he saved to his treasury the important sum of the reward and, after a time, the city would own a valuable ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson

... exercise, a question is asked from an announcement, there is first a call upon the attention, and an exercise of mind upon the question asked, the words of which must be translated by the pupil into their proper ideas, which accordingly he must both perceive and understand. He has then to revert to the ideas (not the words) contained in the original announcement, the words of which are perhaps still ringing in his ears; and these he must also perceive and reiterate in his mind, before he can either understand them or prepare to give an answer. ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... We shall now revert for the moment to the environmental factor. The first most pressing and immediate practical duty of the Government and the community is to spare no pains to improve the status and environment of the family so as to promote the highest attainable standard of physical, ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews

... several years to the allowance (or its equivalent) which had been prescribed to me. Under this regimen, however, I became, after a time, subject to occasional slight attacks of gout, and to some disturbance of digestion and of sleep. In spite of medical advice, I determined to revert to the abstinence in which I had never lost faith. For a time of, I suppose, from twelve to fifteen years, I have persisted in this rule; not, indeed, being under any vow, but practically not taking more than half-a-dozen ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade

... revert to the other evening, after you took your leave. When we were alone he tried to make a jealous scene, ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... in rock-tombs. Near these objects of bronze, ornaments of gold are often seen and, now and then, the remains of a woollen garment. It cannot be due to chance that all implements of bronze are similar and all are made according to the same alloy. Doubtless they revert to the same period of time and are anterior to the coming of the Romans into Gaul, for they are never discovered in the midst of debris of the Roman period. But what men used them? What people invented ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... revert to my old theatrical friend, John Spencer, who had returned from America. He was greatly changed in appearance, so that I scarcely knew him by sight; he put me in mind of a Spanish brigand. Spencer, while in the States, had gone through the Civil War, ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... "Well, to revert to lesser points," said Lothair, "I do not say I want to return to England, for I dread returning to England, and do not know whether I shall ever go back there; and at any rate I doubt not my health at present is unequal to the effort; but I should like some change in my mode of life. I will ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... in outline, seems to have been a combination of very different forces. There were antiquarians who observed that the Mikado had had real power in the tenth century, and who wished to revert to the ancient customs. There were patriots who were annoyed with the Shogun for yielding to the pressure of the white men and concluding commercial treaties with them. And there were the western clans, which had never willingly submitted to the authority of the Shogun. To quote ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell

... us revert to the Good of which we are in search: what can it be? for manifestly it is different in different actions and arts: for it is different in the healing art and in the art military, and similarly in the rest. What then is the Chief Good in each? Is it not ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... or neglect on the part of said Directors to strictly comply with any of the conditions herein contained shall constitute a breach thereof, and the title hereby conveyed shall revert to the grantor Mary Baker G. Eddy, her heirs and assigns forever, upon her entry upon said land and taking possession thereof for ...
— Manual of the Mother Church - The First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts • Mary Baker Eddy

... we have called you is not new to us nor to you," said the Secretary in expressionless tones. "We revert to the question of a spy—a woman. It is now known that it was a woman who stole the important papers from the office of the President. The secret service of General Winder has learned that she has been in this city all the while—that is, until the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... Not so with "a most beautiful little machine" for making card wire-cloth, copied from America. Recognition of the supreme merits of the pianos of Chickering, Steinway and the rest was still wanting, Erard's Parisian instruments bearing the bell. Borden's meat-biscuit—to revert to the practical—caused quite a sensation, the Admiralty being overloaded with spoiled and condemned preserved meat. The American daguerreotypes on exhibition were pronounced decidedly superior to those of France, and still more to those of England. Whipple displayed the first photograph ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... To revert to Mr Bloom who, after his first entry, had been conscious of some impudent mocks which he however had borne with as being the fruits of that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not pity. The young sparks, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... no harm,' he said; 'I like to see it. Yes, it is quite true that I do. What was personal and selfish in my fancies seems to have been worn out in the great lull of my senses under the shadow of death; and now I can revert with real joy and thankfulness to the old delight of looking on our dear Ellen as our sister, and watch those two children as we used when they talked of dolls' fenders instead of the surplice war. I have ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... I revert to the proceedings which had taken place at the settlement during my absence. The increased confidence of the natives, and even violent proceedings, subsequently to our purchase of land and establishment of a market, have already been noticed: the numbers, indeed, which crowded within ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... the statement that "The TSAR has left for the theatre of war" has caused the keenest satisfaction in histrionic circles, where it is hoped that this illustrious example will cause the fashionable world to revert to its habit of patronising ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various

... billiard-room. Garcia died in 1830, leaving a large property to his children, and consigning the guardianship of the younger, a girl, to his friend Don Carlos Alvarez. The will provided that in case she should marry any person, but an American, without her guardian's consent, her fortune should revert to her guardian; and in the choice of an American husband her brother's wishes were not to be contravened. The reservation in favor of Americans was made at the entreaty of the brother, who urged the memory of his mother as an inducement. Now it so turned out that Don Carlos, though forty ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... thoughts firmly and harmoniously fixed on the real objective spectacle of life and on the real subjective "soul," or personality, contemplating this spectacle, it is advisable to revert to the magical and mysterious associations called up by the classical word Nature. The mere utterance of the word "Nature" serves to bring us back to the things which are essential and organic, and ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... The easiest way of describing it will be to commence with its history, and to do that we must once more look back to the great Atlantean race. In thinking of the Adepts and schools of occultism of that remarkable people our minds instinctively revert to the evil practices of which we hear so much in connection with their latter days; but we must not forget that before that age of selfishness and degradation the mighty civilization of Atlantis had brought forth much that was noble and worthy of admiration, and that among ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... points. But, remember, nigger law is wonderfully elastic; it requires superhuman wisdom to unravel its social and political intricacies, and when I view it through the horoscope of an indefinite future it makes my very head ache. You may, however, let your claim revert to another, and traverse the case until such time as you can procure reliable proof to convict." Mr. Scranton asserts this as the force of his legal and constitutional acumen. He addresses himself to a mercantile-looking gentleman who sits at the opposite ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... of the great number of estates which, in default of heirs to claim them, annually revert to the government. The treasury derives large sums from this source every year. And this is easily explained, for nowadays family ties are becoming less and less binding. Brothers cease to meet; their children no longer know ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... naked races, such as the Kalmucks or Americans. It is more probable that the hairiness of the former is due to partial reversion; for characters which have been at some former period long inherited are always apt to return. We have seen that idiots are often very hairy, and they are apt to revert in other characters to a lower animal type. It does not appear that a cold climate has been influential in leading to this kind of reversion; excepting perhaps with the negroes, who have been reared during several generations in the United States (23. 'Investigations into Military and ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin



Words linked to "Revert" :   regress, resile, fall back, turn back, mutate, turn, reversive, retrogress, relapse, lapse, reversion, change by reversal, go back, recuperate, reverting, return



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