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Simplification   Listen
noun
Simplification  n.  The act of simplifying.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Simplification" Quotes from Famous Books



... having the feeling that perhaps through his lack of experience his identification was not aright, he usually preferred to remain in ignorance. It is in the belief that all Nature Lovers, afield for entertainment or instruction, will be thankful for a simplification of any method now existing for becoming acquainted with moths, that this book ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... simplification. All simplification depends upon a perception of relative importances. All perception of relative importances depends upon a just appreciation of which letters in association's bond association will most readily dispense with. This depends upon the ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... among the English, that queer mental twist that moves men to call an otherwise undistinguished preface a "Foreword," and find a pleasurable advantage over their fellow-creatures in a familiarity with "eftsoons." This tendency in German has done much to arrest the simplification of idiom, and checked the development of new words of classical origin. In particular it has stood in the way of the international use of scientific terms. The Englishman, the Frenchman, and the Italian have a certain community of technical, scientific, and philosophical phraseology, and it is ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... process, especially upon the field of battle, when operations have to be conducted under extreme difficulties and at high pressure, were speedily recognised. While other nations concentrated their energies upon the simplification of hydrogen-manufacturing apparatus for use upon the battle-field, Great Britain abandoned all such processes in toto. Our military organisation preferred to carry out the production of the necessary gas at a convenient manufacturing ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... required a fresh treatment—one for the headache, one for the memory, one for the bad habit and so on—then the time needful to practise autosuggestion would form a considerable part of our waking life. Happily the researches of the Nancy School have revealed a further simplification. This is obtained by the use of a general formula which sets before the mind the idea of a daily improvement in every respect, ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks

... RELATIONS BETWEEN RECORDS AND PROGRAMMES ON THE WORK.—The most noteworthy result of the closer relations between records and programmes which appear during the evolution of Scientific Management is the fact that they cause constant simplification. The more carefully records are standardized, the simpler becomes the drafting of the programme. As more and more records become standard, the drafting of programmes becomes constantly an easier ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth

... contradictory actions? Nothing less remote than the true cause will serve, nothing else is firmly rooted in reality. Is that man expressing what he feels or is he paying out what he thinks he is expected to feel? Have I pushed simplification as far as it will go? Are there no trappings, no overtones, nothing but what is essential to express my vision of reality? And, above all, is my vision absolutely sharp and sure? These were the questions ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... third; and the classification of nuns after the same plan. Further, he remarked on the more recent decrees, establishing the sense of the Vatican decision on infallibility, the new version of Canon Law, the immense simplification that had taken place in ecclesiastical government, the hierarchy, rubrics and the affairs of missionary countries, with the new and extraordinary privileges granted to mission priests. At this point he became ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... be paid, but the number of judges was to be largely decreased, perhaps by two-thirds. This would be possible, because the simplification of procedure and the curtailment of their powers would enormously lessen the amount of work to be done. Dru called the Board's attention to the fact that England had about two hundred judges of all kinds, while there were some thirty-six ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... "After this summary simplification, it would have been possible to indulge the chimera of the beau ideal of civilization. In this state of things there would have been some chance of establishing in every country a unity of codes, of principles, of opinions, of sentiments, views and interests. Then perhaps, by the help ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... prefect of the Dyle, the Belgians were "neither English, nor Austrian, nor anti-French—they were Belgian." In the way of administration and judicial organization, they learnt their lesson, but it was a distasteful lesson. They were too wise to disregard the benefit which they might derive from the simplification of procedure brought about by the reforms, and they remembered them at the right time, but they remained stubbornly hostile to a foreign domination which could not be supported by any dynastic loyalism, and most of them greeted with enthusiasm the arrival of the allied armies which penetrated ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... when considered in reference to the general history of art. While it is characteristic of the Greek feeling—from which was derived the Italian—to idealise,—and to idealise, be it observed, not only the conceptions of the ideal world but even such material objects as portraits,—by the simplification of forms and the prominence given to the more important parts of a work of art, the early Netherlanders, on the other hand, conferred a portrait-like character upon the most ideal personifications of the Virgin, the Apostles, Prophets, and Martyrs, and in actual portraiture aimed ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... years, the unification of the spoken language has made great progress. Yet, alphabetic script is used only in cases in which illiterate adults have to be enabled in a short time to read very simple informations. More attention is given to a simplification of the script as it is; Japanese had started this some forty years earlier. Unfortunately, the new Chinese abbreviated forms of characters are not always identical with long-established Japanese forms, and are not developed in such a systematic form ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... always sought order and simplification of the external world; in chemistry the fruitful classifications were Dobereiner's Triads (1829), Newland's law of octaves (1865), and Mendeleev's periodic law (1869). The chart expressing this periodic law seemed to indicate the maximum extent of the elements ...
— A Brief History of Element Discovery, Synthesis, and Analysis • Glen W. Watson

... pages I have tried to disengage the various elements of the craft, one from another, and to look at them separately; and this has involved much rude simplification of matters that are by no means simple. I have chosen a novel for the sake of some particular aspect, and I have disregarded all else in it; I could but seek for the book which seemed to display that aspect most plainly, and keep it in view from that one angle for illustration of my theme. And the ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... was a privilege with a penalty attached. But the tables made such things easy; half the Baden world lived by the tables. Roderick tried them and found that at first they smoothed his path delightfully. This simplification of matters, however, was only momentary, for he soon perceived that to seem to have money, and to have it in fact, exposed a good-looking young man to peculiar liabilities. At this point of his friend's narrative, Rowland was reminded of Madame de Cruchecassee ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... realistic details. To a certain extent these reforms also operate to simplify stage settings and hence to make a little more possible the quick transitions and the play of viewpoint which I regard as one of the glories of the Elizabethan drama. This simplification, however, is very far from a return to the absolute simplicity of the Elizabethan setting. Moreover, it is doubtful whether the temper of the modern audience is favorable to a great change in this direction. We live in an age of realistic detail and we must yield to the current, ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... argument on the one side and the other, he thought it ought to be solemnly settled. An unsettled state of the law was a very bad thing in his lordship's opinion; especially in these modern times, when it appeared to him that the public were clamouring for further reform, and a still further simplification of ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... the mystical sense begins in self-simplification. The feeling, willing, seeing self is to move from the various and the analytic to the simple and the synthetic: a sentence which may cause hard breathing and mopping of the brows on the part of the practical man. Yet it is to you, practical man, reading these ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... complex indeed is the graduation presented that at first sight it appears scarcely possible to make it the basis of practical study. But on further examination it will be seen that by applying the usual analytical method the whole subject is susceptible of much simplification. We must in short attempt to reach some system of classification; that is, we must see if it is not possible to group the variations into some well-founded categories. With a subject so complex and intangible ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... to the animal kingdom, we should chiefly devote our attention to the invertebrate animals, because their enormous multiplicity in nature, the singular diversity of their systems of organization and of their means of multiplication, their increasing simplification, and the extreme fugacity of those which compose the lowest orders of these animals, show us, much better than the higher animals, the true course of nature, and the means which she has used and which she still unceasingly employs to give existence ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... lies in the over-simplification of the problem of Americanization by propagandist organizations. We are in constant danger from too simple analysis of problems and too simple as the epigrams that grow up about it. Panaceas usually ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... embodiment of what was known as "Red Tape," a true colloquialism descriptive of the attitude of official conservatism. These departments being governed according to the latest bibliographical methods are of merely supplemental value as reference. The Simplification and National Unification of Federal and State statutes has, of course, added greatly to the facility of this branch ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells

... any other to make the reader at home in the ideal world of the great philosophers, which it reconstructs from its central point, and to prepare him for the study (which, of course, even the best exposition cannot replace) of the works of the thinkers themselves. Its excessive simplification of problems is not of great moment in the first introduction to a system [English translation of vol. iii. book 2 (1st ed.), A Commentary on Kant's Critick of the Pure Reason, by J.P. Mahaffy, London, 1866; vol. i. part ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... among teachers that we need a closer articulation of studies with one another. The expansion of the school course over new fields of knowledge and the multiplication of studies already discussed compels us to seek for a simplification of the course. A hundred years ago, yes, even fifty years ago, it was thought that the extension of our territory and government to the present limits would be impossible. It was plainly stated that one ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... with the Boss in conference, open the ground-glass door and say, "I think it is going to rain shortly." Carry your love of the beautiful into your office life. This will inevitably pave the way to simplification. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... concerts. His knowledge of acoustics and his consequent skill in combining the stops enabled him to bring much power and variety from organs with fewer pipes than were generally considered necessary. The remodeling and simplification of organs was one of his most eagerly pursued activities. He not only rearranged the pipes, but he introduced free reeds. Through some skillful Swedish organ-builders he was at last enabled to have an organ small enough to be portable and constructed according ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... Western world. Opportunities diminish, classes segregate. There arises a caste of wage-earners never to be anything but wage-earners; a caste of property-owners, handing on their property to their descendants; and substantially, after all deductions have been made for exaggeration and simplification, a division of society into capitalists and proletarians. American society is beginning to crystallise out into the forms of European society. For, once more, America is nothing new; she is a repetition of the old on a larger scale. And, curiously, she ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... that accordingly as China is opened up by railways, by steam navigation on the inland waters, and by simplification of inland duties, foreigners will reap such advantages as may again enable them to quickly amass fortunes. Let there be no ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... should be rather an examination of facts than an examination of conscience. And historically Richelieu's policies had had quite something to say in the creation of Prussia; the conscript armies of the French Revolution had first made Europe into an armed camp. It was an undue simplification to insist exclusively on ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... Simplification is the prophetic watchword in state government today. For cities, the City Manager and the Commission have offered salvation. A few officers only are elected and these are held strictly responsible, sometimes under the ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... needless to say, very few cottages were built. With the advent of the Local Government Act and the extension of the franchise, the labourer was now able to insist on a speeding-up of building operations. But the Labourers' Act needed many amendments, a simplification and cheapening of procedure, an extension of taxing powers, an enlargement of the allotment up to an acre and, where the existing abode of the labourers was insanitary, an undeniable claim to a new home. Moderate and just and necessary to the national welfare as these claims were, ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... diverse economy, with important agricultural, mining, tourism, and manufacturing sectors. Governmental control of economic affairs while still heavy has gradually lessened over the past decade with increasing privatization, simplification of the tax structure, and a prudent approach to debt. Progressive social policies also have helped raise living conditions in Tunisia relative to the region. Real growth, which averaged almost 5% over the past decade, reached 6.3% in 2007 because of development in non-textile ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... reconcile himself to the state of affairs existing around him; and so, instead of progressing, he turned back and sought peace of mind and a firm doctrine in the distant past of primitive Christianity. Sincere as he undoubtedly is in his propaganda of self-simplification and self-perfection—one might almost call it "self-annihilation"—his new attitude has wrought great and most regrettable havoc with his later literary work, with ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... achieved, was quick and happy: she should acquit herself by asking her father for the sum required and by just passing it on to Mr. Flack. The grandeur of his enterprise and the force of his reasoning appeared to overshadow her as they stood there. This was a delightful simplification and it didn't for the moment strike her as positively unnatural that her companion should have a delicacy about appealing to Mr. Dosson directly for financial aid, though indeed she would have been capable of thinking that odd had she ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... external accidents as large type or lurid headlines. It is quite true that these editors print everything they possibly can in large capital letters. But they do this, not because it is startling, but because it is soothing. To people wholly weary or partly drunk in a dimly lighted train, it is a simplification and a comfort to have things presented in this vast and obvious manner. The editors use this gigantic alphabet in dealing with their readers, for exactly the same reason that parents and governesses use a similar gigantic alphabet in teaching children to spell. ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... the simplification of its forms, and reduction of its expenses," (This, no doubt, has reference ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... thinking," answered his dragoman, "instead of endeavouring to increase money when we found ourselves so very bankrupt, we should have endeavoured to decrease our wants. The path of real progress, sir, is the simplification of life and desire till we have dispensed even with trousers and wear a single clean garment reaching to the knees; till we are content with exercising our own limbs on the solid earth; the eating of simple food we have grown ourselves; the hearing of our own voices, and tunes ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... angular, presumptuous, and obvious drawing, harsh in its exterior limits and hollow within—the head a sort of convulsive abridgment, the hand void, and the fingers too, if we seek their articulations. An omission must not be mistaken for a simplification, and for all his omissions Manet strives to make amend by the tone. It would be difficult to imagine a more beautiful syntheses than that pale yellow, a beautiful golden sensation, and the black woman, the attendant of this light of love, who comes to the couch with ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... time, the closing days of February, the Judiciary Committee was fairly swamped with important measures. The Railroad Regulation bills, the Initiative Amendment, the measures providing for the simplification of methods of criminal procedure and other bills of scarcely less importance were pending before that committee. Prompt action on the Local Option bill was out of the question. And, although a majority of the committee favored the passage of the bill, the minority which was ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn

... supplied with pure carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal in his bath of smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded by all the constituents of protoplasm. Nor, indeed, need the process of simplification of vegetable food be carried so far as this, in order to arrive at the limit of the plant's thaumaturgy. Let water, carbonic acid, and all the other needful constituents be supplied with ammonia, and an ordinary plant will still ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... motives, and have been defended on that ground. He shows that Bentham's survey of the springs of human action was incomplete, that he overstrained his formula to make it universally applicable, and that he nevertheless gave a far-reaching impulse to clearer notions and an effective advance in the simplification of legal procedure and the codification of laws. As a moral philosophy, Bentham's system appeared so arid and materialistic that its unpopularity has obscured his real services. For he was the engineer who first led a scientific attack up to the ramparts of ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... fact, is not always, or even generally, the same thing as degeneration. Simplification of parts is one of the most usual means of advance for the organism as a whole. A large proportion of the higher plants are microphyllous in comparison with the highly megaphyllous fern-like forms from which they appear to have ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... important in the history of mathematics, only interests us here by leading us to trace his philosophical development. He was deeply engrossed in mathematics; he saw that mathematics were capable of a still further simplification and a far more extended application. Struck as he was with the certitude of mathematical reasoning, he began applying the principles of mathematical reasoning to the subject of metaphysics. His great object was, amid the scepticism and anarchy of his contemporaries, to found a system ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... is overloaded with human constitutions and opinions and scholastic dogmas, and overburdened with the tyrannical authority of orders, and because of all this the strength of gospel doctrine is flagging. Faith requires simplification, he argued. What would the Turks say of our scholasticism? Colet wrote to him one day: 'There is no end to books and science. Let us, therefore, leave all roundabout roads and go by a short cut to ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... are at once a simplification and expansion of Josephus and the Talmud, stories simply told, faithful presentation of the virtues, and not infrequently the vices, of characters sometimes legendary, generally real.—New ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... the vigor and effectiveness of law enforcement we must critically consider the entire Federal machinery of justice, the redistribution of its functions, the simplification of its procedure, the provision of additional special tribunals, the better selection of juries, and the more effective organization of our agencies of investigation and prosecution that justice may ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... had improved remarkably, but this was a highly technical discussion. It was two days before Soames had the information he needed firmly in his mind. He made a working drawing of what had to be built. He realized that the drawing itself was a simplification of a much more sophisticated original device. It was adapted to be made out of locally available materials. It was what Fran had made and ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster

... made. I propose that men should be contracted with only in their proper trade; and that no member of Parliament should be capable of such contract. By this plan, almost all the infinite offices under the lord steward may be spared,—to the extreme simplification, and to the far better execution, of every one of his functions. The king of Prussia is so served. He is a great and eminent (though, indeed, a very rare) instance of the possibility of uniting, in a mind of vigor and compass, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... headed "Degradation and Simplification of the Animal Chain as we proceed downwards from the most complex ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... course, if accompanied by a simplification of the machinery of collection, which would then be easy of accomplishment, might reasonably be expected to result in diminishing the cost of such collection by at least $2,500,000 and in the retirement from office of from ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson

... Peel applied the powers of his clear and dispassionate mind to the simplification and improvement of our criminal code. On the 9th of March he introduced a bill to consolidate the various acts which related to offences against property. He explained the nature of these acts at great length; but the bill was not carried through the commons during this session, Mr. Peel stating, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... which the curve is generated) to the equation of the tangent giving its instantaneous direction. Such a science would be a mechanics of transformation, of which our mechanics of translation would become a particular case, a simplification, a projection on the plane of pure quantity. And just as an infinity of functions have the same differential, these functions differing from each other by a constant, so perhaps the integration of the physico-chemical elements of properly vital action might determine that ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... thousand words, though one may develop a theory adequately, one cannot pretend to develop it exhaustively. My book is a simplification. I have tried to make a generalisation about the nature of art that shall be at once true, coherent, and comprehensible. I have sought a theory which should explain the whole of my aesthetic experience and suggest a solution of every problem, but I ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... I have above noted the two ways in which it is done: the one, being merely rough cutting, may be passed over; the other, which is scientific alteration of design, falls, itself, into two great branches, Simplification and Emphasis. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... questions the quality of the home product. Any careful reader of the various "Hints to Housewives" which have appeared, will note that the "simplifying of meals" recommended would require nearly double the time to prepare. The simplification takes into consideration only the question of food substitutions, price and waste. Mother is supposed to be wholly or largely unemployed and longing for unpaid toil. Should any housewife conscientiously follow the advice given her by ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch

... this unnecessary landscape. The whole Italian school of the Renaissance weakened the force of its portraits and figure pictures by these elaborate settings which they seemed helpless to govern. In Velasquez we frequently find the simplification of background which saves the entire interest for the subject; but even he in his "Spinners" and to a lesser degree in some other compositions, makes the same error. In the greatest of Rembrandt's portrait groups, "The Syndics," his problem ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... extent he followed the older Utopists in assuming that the philosophical and constructive problem could be done once for all, and he worked the results out simply under an organised kinetic government. But what seems to be merely an addition to the difficulty may in the end turn out to be a simplification, just as the introduction of a fresh term to an intricate irreducible mathematical expression will at times bring ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... Jewish law ought to take precedence of the rest? It was a fine academic question for church lawyers to discuss. Jesus passed by all ceremonial and ecclesiastical requirements, and put his hand on love as the central law of life, both in religion and ethics. It was a great simplification and spiritualization of religion. But love is the social instinct which binds man and man together and makes them indispensable to one another. Whoever demands love, demands solidarity. Whoever sets love first, ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... partisans of theology would perhaps have been wiser to keep clear of pretensions to prove their master thesis. They might have been content to keep it as an emotional creation, an imaginative hypothesis, a noble simplification of the chimeras of the primitive consciousness of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... thus it turns out that an element of value (which Mr. Horner and thousands of others have supposed to be of a distinct nature, and to resist all further analysis) gives way before Mr. Ricardo's law, and is eliminated; an admirable simplification, which is equal in merit and use to any of the rules which have been devised, from time to time, for the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... by the simple device of making Hilary Jesson a candidate for Parliament, and bringing on a reporter to interview his private secretary. The incident is perfectly natural and probable; all one can say of it is that it is perhaps an over-simplification of the dramatist's task.[3] The Second Mrs. Tanqueray requires an unusual amount of preliminary retrospect. We have to learn the history of Aubrey Tanqueray's first marriage, with the mother of Ellean, as well as ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... summary of the Homeric poem, because he wished to show how simple its construction really was, apart from the episodes. It is impossible, by any process of reduction and simplification, to get rid of the duality in Beowulf. It has many episodes, quite consistent with a general unity of action, but there is something more than episodes, there is a sequel. It is as if to the Odyssey there had been added some later books telling in full of the old age of Odysseus, far ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... and ask you, Gentlemen, to bear in mind, that the philosophy of an imperial intellect, for such I am considering a University to be, is based, not so much on simplification as on discrimination. Its true representative defines, rather than analyzes. He aims at no complete catalogue, or interpretation of the subjects of knowledge, but a following out, as far as man can, what in its fulness ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... for McCormick, and John F. Appleby, whose invention was purchased by William Deering, one of McCormick's chief competitors, invented binders which used twine. By 1880 the self-binding harvester was complete. No distinctive improvement has been made since, except to add strength and simplification. The machine now needed the services of only two men, one to drive and the other to shock the bundles, and could reap twenty acres or more a day, tie the grain into bundles of uniform size, and dump them in piles of five ready ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

... for this immorality and the suggested remedies. After considering the evidence, after reading much literature on the subject, and weighing up all the suggested factors, the view of the Committee is that the matter is not capable of simplification by regarding any, or even all, the causes suggested and discussed below as being the main cause. In seeking to remedy the evil it must steadily be borne in mind that we have not only to deal with the immediately ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.

... made by his contemporaries) is a subject far too big for a parenthesis. But he, too, is at bottom a classic artist. The modern problem—it has not yet been sufficiently solved for us to speak of a modern method—arises from a sense that the classical method produces over-simplification. It does not permit of a sufficient sense of multiplicity. One can think of a dozen semi-treatments of the problem from Balzac to Dostoevsky, but they were all on the old lines. They might be called Shakespearean modifications ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... like that of Greek philosophy or of Spinoza, consists always in substituting for reality, by simplification, ideas or concepts which they think statically in their logical relations, regarding them at the same time as adequate representations and as ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... Mudge. However that might be, she was a little ashamed of having to admit to herself that Mr. Mudge's removal to a higher sphere—to a more commanding position, that is, though to a much lower neighbourhood—would have been described still better as a luxury than as the mere simplification, the corrected awkwardness, that she contented herself with calling it. He had at any rate ceased to be all day long in her eyes, and this left something a little fresh for them to rest on of a Sunday. During the three months of his happy survival at Cocker's after her ...
— In the Cage • Henry James

... The image being a simplification of sensory data, and its nature dependent on that of previous perceptions, it is inevitable that the work of dissociation should go on in it. But this is far too mild a statement. Observation and experiment show us ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... rather the sad vision of an entire social epoch—the eighteenth century; and the eighteenth century in Venice, who was then at the final stage of her moral death. And despite the denial of soul in these Venetians, there is no contempt, no facile "simplification" of a question whose roots lie deep in human nature, since even the animals and plants we cultivate into classes! The sadness is for the mutability of things; and among them, that lighthearted, brilliant way of life, which had so much of charm ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... sustain and protect natural existence, they would have concluded therefrom, first, an increase of independence, and in the second place, a great decrease in the competition for worldly possessions, They would have thought that the simplification of life would have been the result of such perfected means of action, that there would follow the realization of a higher standard of morality. Nothing of this sort has come to pass—not happiness, nor social peace, nor energy for ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... personal agencies. As phenomena are good or evil, produce pleasure or pain, cause weal or woe, a distinction in the character of these agencies is gradually recognized; the agents of good become gods, those of evil, demons. A tendency towards the simplification and organization of the evil as of the good forces, leads towards belief in outstanding leaders among the forces of evil. When the divine is most completely conceived as unity, the demonic is also so conceived; and over against God stands ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... Providence doth he manifest,—taking no more thought than lilies! What contempt for money,—accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better than dross! What a liberal confounding of those pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum! or rather what a noble simplification of language (beyond Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites into one clear, intelligible pronoun adjective!—What near approaches doth he make to the primitive community,—to the extent of one half ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... him and stepped from the lighted house into the vast tropical night. The little rays of our lantern showed us the inequalities of the ground, and where to step across the bubbling, little irrigation streams. But thousands of stars insisted on a simplification. The broad, rolling meadows of the clearing lay half guessed in the dim light; and about its edge was the velvet band of the forest, dark and mysterious, stretching away for leagues into the jungle. From it near at hand, far away, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... redemption have to be found by taxation, and so the borrowing process merely postpones taxation from the war period to the peace period. During the war period taxation can be raised comparatively easily owing to the patriotic stimulus and the simplification of the industrial problem which is provided by the Government's insatiable demand for commodities. When the days of peace return, however, there will be very grave disturbance and dislocation in industry, ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers

... a moment, frowning under the effort of simplification. The hidden need of the dying man seemed to be mysteriously conveyed to him—the pang of lonely anguish that death brings with it; the craving for comfort beneath the apparent scorn of faith; the human cry expressed in this ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... with hard labour, or periods of solitary confinement, is the sole threat of any moment which the law holds out against offenders; and it becomes, therefore, of infinite importance to establish an effective prison discipline. We look upon this simplification of our penal operations as an advantage; and we are by no means disposed to favour those inventive gentlemen who would devise new punishments, or revive old ones, for the purpose, it would seem, of having a variety of inflictions corresponding to the variety of offences. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... become discouraged. Indeed, the getting out of the keel was in itself a work of such difficulty that Chips more than once threw down his tools and pronounced the task impossible, demanding the revision and simplification of ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... The particular experience that we started with has now been widened so as to embrace all possible impressions or images that sentient beings have formed or may form of the house in question. This first simplification of experience is at the bottom of a large number of elements of speech, the so-called proper nouns or names of single individuals or objects. It is, essentially, the type of simplification which underlies, or forms the crude subject of, history and art. But we cannot ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... suecessfully by the employment of signs; because in these cases the signs themselves accurately represent the abstractness of the relations. Such sciences deal only with relations, and not with objects; hence greater simplification ensures greater accuracy. But no sooner do we quit this sphere of abstractions to enter that of concrete things, than the use of symbols becomes a source of weakness. Vigorous and effective minds habitually deal with concrete images. This is notably ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... in which we have no interests but in God Himself—the heart and mind and will of the creature becoming wholly God's, and God filling them. How can we say, then, that it is poverty to be filled with God! Rather is it rightly expressed as being a heart fixed in singleness upon God, through drastic simplification of interests: the which is no poverty, but the wealth of ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley

... and water-jars, and a couple of wooden spoons, and some mats to sleep on? And yet people are happy and quite civilized who live so. An Arab cook, with his fingers and one cooking-pot, will serve you an excellent dinner quite miraculously. The simplification of life possible in such a climate is not conceivable unless one has seen it. The Turkish ladies whom I visit at Karnac have very little more. They are very fond of me, and always want me to stay and sleep, but how could I sleep in my clothes on a mat-divan, poor spoiled European ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... everyone consumed in proportion to his production, whether the fees were levied upon the consumers as such, or upon the same persons in their character as producers in the form of a minimal tax. What was saved by the simplification of the accounts remained as a pure gain. Further, an elaborate system of warranty was connected with these warehouses. Since the warehouse officials were at the same time the channel through which purchases ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... little sympathy with Utopian speculations, was attracted by the idea of the simplification of society, and met Rousseau so far as to declare that the happiest state was a mean between ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... it was arranged that my Treasury accounts were to be transferred to the Admiralty, making the simplification which I had so long desired.—From the Report to the Visitors it appears that a relic of the Geodetic operations commenced in 1787 for connecting the Observatories of Greenwich and Paris, in the shape of an observing ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... motives appears to carry us in the direction of the systematization and simplification of the embarrassing wealth of objects which are actually the goal of human desires and volitions. Man may desire a boundless variety of objects. His motives in desiring them may, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... wedge-writing is a direct derivative of the Babylonian, introduced in the times of the Achaemenians, and it is nothing but a simplification in form and principle of the more cumbersome and complicated Babylonian. Instead of a combination of as many as ten and fifteen wedges to make one sign, we have in the Persian never more than five, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... are in love with repose, here is your occasion: change with me. I am too blind to read, hence no reading; I am too weak to walk, hence no walking; I am not allowed to speak, hence no talking; but the great simplification has yet to be named; for, if this goes on, I shall soon have nothing to eat - and hence, O Hallelujah! hence no eating. The offer is a fair one: I have not sold myself to the devil, for I could never find him. I am married, but so are you. I sometimes write verses, but so ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... look at it repeatedly and habitually before we see it. It is only when we have seen it for the hundredth time that we see it for the first time. The more consistently things are contemplated, the more they tend to unify themselves and therefore to simplify themselves. The simplification of anything is always sensational. Thus monotheism is the most sensational of things: it is as if we gazed long at a design full of disconnected objects, and, suddenly, with a stunning thrill, they came together into a huge ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... was the original founder of industrial schools for poor children, where they not only received a good education, but learned some useful trade, by which they might earn an honest living when they grew up to manhood. He advocated the revision and simplification of the whole code of laws—an idea afterwards carried out by the First Napoleon. He wrote against duelling, against luxury, against gambling, against monasticism, quoting the remark of Segrais, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... defending our material life, they would have predicted for us an increase of independence, and therefore of happiness, and a decrease in competition for worldly goods: they might even have thought that through the simplification of life thus made possible, a higher degree of morality would be attained. None of these things has come to pass. Neither happiness, nor brotherly love, nor power for good has been increased. In the first place, do you think your fellow-citizens, taken as ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... of the so-called direct-current receiver has brought about a great simplification in the common-battery telephone circuits of several of the manufacturing companies. By this use the transmitter and the receiver are placed in series across the line, this path being normally opened by the hook-switch ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller

... one of those ingenuous men whose lot would have been insignificant in any period of security, but who have been caught up to an immortal role in history by the sudden simplification of human affairs through some tragical crisis, to the measure of their simplicity. Such a man was Abraham Lincoln, and such was Garibaldi. And Leblanc, with his transparent childish innocence, his entire self-forgetfulness, came into this confusion of distrust ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... All simplification depends upon a perception of relative importances. All perception of relative importances depends upon a just appreciation of which letters in association's bond association will most readily dispense with. This depends upon the sympathy of the painter both with ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... spent together became to Howard not only a source of joy, but an extraordinary simplification of everything. Maud seemed to have lived an absolutely uncalculating life, without any idea of making any position for herself at all; and it sickened Howard to think how so much of his own existence had been devoted to getting on the right ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... a word, conceived of stage personages on the basis of a ruling trait or passion (a notable simplification of actual life be it observed in passing); and, placing these typified traits in juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the spark of comedy. Downright, as his name indicates, is "a plain squire"; Bobadill's humour is that of the braggart who is incidentally, and ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... obvious that it is sometimes the beauty of form in natural objects which attracts the eye, and sometimes the beauty or strangeness of colours, either in their combination or from the unusual tint. And while the former quality fits the object for translation into ornament, by means of simplification and repetition, the latter is more likely to be the suggestive starting point for the production of something quite different than a factor in a directly-derived composition. Certain forms of flowers and leaves are also suitable for ornament expressed in a certain way, and when this harmony occurs ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson

... qualities of leadership give men enormous power. There was in the nineteenth century a historical fashion, brilliantly exemplified by Carlyle, to assume that history was made by great men. Latterly, there has been wide dissent from this simplification of the processes of history, but it is clear that innovations must be started by individuals, and that a powerful leader is a matchless instrument for initiating, and getting wide and enthusiastic support for changes, whether good or bad. To quote ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... science must make its improvement along the same practical lines which develop system, simplification, classification of kindred activities, and better administrative direction in the evolution of business. A private or corporate enterprise is compelled to promote in the highest degree both efficiency and economy because its income is subject to the hazards of business. Government without ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris

... of two classes. One was a moderate but influential "low-church" group within the "high" State Church, possessed of no desire to separate Church and State, but earnestly insistent on a simplification of the Church ceremonial, the elimination of a number of the vestiges of the old Romish-Church ritual, and particularly the introduction of more preaching into the service. The other class constituted a much more radical group, and had become deeply imbued ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... The practical expression of his life was that it was enough to provide well for his family; to have cultivated tastes, and to gratify them to the extent of his means; to be rather distinguished, even in the simplification of his desires. He believed, and his wife believed, that if the time ever came when he really wished to make a sacrifice to the fulfilment of the aspirations so long postponed, she would be ready to join with heart ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... employed jointly, in connection with his favorite doctrine of Unisubstancisme. They constituted the opposite poles of his theory, but were both essential to its completeness. But most of his followers, influenced by an excessive desire for simplification, have attempted to blend the two into one; and have either merged the spiritual in the corporeal, or virtually annihilated the material by resolving it into the mental. Hence two distinct, and even opposite forms of Pantheism,—the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... for the arms and legs of animals, or, if notched in peculiar ways, may be referred to other originals, such as the mouths of fishes or the spines of crabs. Examples could be given showing all stages of the progress of simplification. ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... That was known and said long ago." It really seems to him that this has been said long ago and in just this way. Only those to whom moral truths are dear and important know how important and precious they are, and with what prolonged labor the elucidation, the simplification, of moral truths, their transit from the state of a misty, indefinitely recognized supposition, and desire, from indistinct, incoherent expressions, to a firm and definite expression, unavoidably demanding corresponding ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... their landlord. But even these landlords were not landlords in the modern sense; every one was practically as well as theoretically a tenant of the King; and even he often fell into a feudal inferiority to a Pope or an Emperor. To call it mere tenure by soldiering may seem a simplification; but indeed it is precisely here that it was not so simple as it seems. It is precisely a certain knot or enigma in the nature of Feudalism which makes half the struggle of European ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... groups of wedge-like lines, every curve becoming an angle formed by the junction of two lines. As time went on, the characters were more and more simplified, the number of wedges of which they consisted being reduced and only so many left as served to distinguish one sign from another. The simplification reached its extreme point in the ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... so much a magnification of the object as a simplification of it. Confusing details are stripped away. Contradictory facts are eliminated, until heart answers to heart across ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... by trainers are exercise with dumbbells, the bar bell and the chest weight. The rings and horizontal and parallel bars are also used, but not nearly to the extent that they formerly were. The movement has been all in the direction of the simplification of apparatus; in fact, one well-known teacher of the Boston Gymnasium when asked his opinion said: "Four bare walls and a floor, with a well-posted instructor, is all that is really ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... at the beginning of this lecture, that kind, namely, in which the proximate cause consists not merely of a present event, but of this together with a past event. I do not wish to urge that this form of causation is ultimate, but that, in the present state of our knowledge, it affords a simplification, and enables us to state laws of behaviour in less hypothetical terms than we should ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... mind of my sort cannot help but tend towards simplification, towards making all life turn upon some one dominant idea, complex perhaps in its reality but reducible at last to one consistent simple statement, a dominant idea which is essential as nothing else is essential, which ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... to me. I can't be bound by the pious fancies of men who knew no science, and very little about evidence of any kind. What I want is just a simple and beautiful principle of living, such as I feel thrills through the words of Christ. The Prodigal Son—that's almost enough for me! It is simplification that I want, and independence. Of course I see that if that isn't what a man wants, if he requires that something or someone should be infallible, then he does require a good deal of argument and information and history. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... further political reforms are needed no registration reform worth having, but principle of adult suffrage of all grown men and women carries simplification and single vote. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... important agricultural, mining, energy, tourism, and manufacturing sectors. Detailed governmental control of economic affairs has gradually lessened over the past decade, including increasing privatization of trade and commerce, simplification of the tax structure, and a cautious approach to debt. Real growth has averaged roughly 5% in 1991-94, and inflation has been moderate. Growth in tourism and IMF support have been key elements in this solid record. Further privatization and further improvements in government ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... however, seen a wonderful change. The difficulties had been mostly those of methods of work, and with the ninth decade of the century these methods were simplified by Robert Koch. This simplification of method for the first time placed this line of investigation within the reach of scientists who did not have the genius of Pasteur. It was now possible to get pure cultures easily, and to obtain with such pure cultures results which were uniform and simple. It was now ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn

... report of that commission as to the condition and prospects of the various commercial, manufacturing, agricultural, mining and other interests of the country, and recommended an enlargement of the free list, so as to include within it numerous articles which yielded inconsiderable revenue, a simplification of the complex and inconsistent schedule of duties upon certain manufactures, particularly those of cotton, iron and steel, and a substantial reduction of the duties upon those and various other articles. The subsequent action of Congress did not, in my opinion, conform to this, in ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... only observe. "I look and I think I see," writes Bergson, "I listen and I think I hear, I examine myself and I think I am reading the very depths of my heart.... (But) my senses and my consciousness ... give me no more than a practical simplification of reality ... in short, we do not see the actual things themselves; in most cases we confine ourselves to reading the labels affixed to them." Who has not known this in thinking of politics? We talk of poverty and forget poor people; we make rules for vagrancy—we forget the vagrant. Some ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... determined to reform it. His maternal uncle, the Bishop of Ermland, having provided him with a lay canonry in the Cathedral of Frauenburg, he had leisure to devote himself to Science. Reviewing the suggestions of the ancient Greeks, he was struck by the simplification that would be introduced by reviving the idea that the annual motion should be attributed to the earth itself instead of having a separate annual epicycle for each planet and for the sun. Of the seventy odd circles or epicycles required by the latest ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant

... a mighty simplification, as though the complexities of the world were reverting toward their original philosophic unity. The complex summer had become simple autumn; the autumn, winter; now the very winter itself was apparently losing its differentiations of bushes and trees, hills and ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... constitute the Slavonic group. In its groundwork it presents the nearest approach to the old ecclesiastical Slavonic, the liturgical language common to all the Orthodox Slavs, but it has undergone more important modifications than any of the sister dialects in the simplification of its grammatical forms; and the analytical character of its development may be compared with that of the neo-Latin and Germanic languages. The introduction of the definite article, which appears in the form of a suffix, and the almost total disappearance ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... is now in my possession. In the first five chapters there are numerous emendations, very few of which, however, affect the meaning to any appreciable extent, being mainly concerned with the excision of redundancies and the simplification of style. I imagine that by the time he had reached the end of the fifth chapter Butler realised that the corrections he had made were not of sufficient importance to warrant a new edition, and determined to let the book stand as it ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... know whether I can make you understand how everything has tended to simplification here. They have disused the complicated facilities and conveniences of the capitalistic epoch, which we are so proud of, and have got back as close as possible to nature. People stay at home a great deal more than with us, though if any one likes to make a journey ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells



Words linked to "Simplification" :   account, oversimplification, schematization, schematisation, riddance, change, elimination, simplism, simplify, rationalisation, reduction, explanation, rationalization



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