Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Absolute   /ˈæbsəlˌut/   Listen
Absolute

adjective
1.
Perfect or complete or pure.  "Absolute silence" , "Absolute truth" , "Absolute alcohol"
2.
Complete and without restriction or qualification; sometimes used informally as intensifiers.  Synonyms: downright, out-and-out, rank, right-down, sheer.  "An absolute dimwit" , "A downright lie" , "Out-and-out mayhem" , "An out-and-out lie" , "A rank outsider" , "Many right-down vices" , "Got the job through sheer persistence" , "Sheer stupidity"
3.
Not limited by law.
4.
Expressing finality with no implication of possible change.
5.
Not capable of being violated or infringed.  Synonyms: infrangible, inviolable.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Absolute" Quotes from Famous Books



... Grace was always present, and to gaze at her angelic face was, in itself, almost a religious exercise. Abbott never felt so unworthy as when in her presence; an unerring instinct seemed to have provided her with an absolute standard of right and wrong, and she was so invariably right that no human affection was worthy of her unless refined seven times. Within himself, ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... her hands tightly together, and said, "I can't, Stephen." No possible form of words could have been so absolute. "I can't!" "I do not," would have been merciful, would have held a hope, by the side of this helpless, despairing, ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... indeed with most, men similarly placed this might not have greatly mattered. There were plenty of officers of wide experience in Whitehall who could have posted him up fully in regard to points not within his knowledge. But Lord Kitchener had for many years previously always been absolute master in his own house, with neither the need nor the desire to lean upon others. Like many men of strong will and commanding ability, he was a centralizer by instinct and in practice. He took ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... be remembered, however, that the charges against these men were proven. They were not dismissed because of idle hearsay, but because of absolute and convincing proof. The breath of scandal has assailed more than one ball player without any good and convincing reason, and will doubtless do so again, just as it has assailed private reputations of men in other walks ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... these qualities which go to make up our ideal should exist in absolute perfection in any single man of mortal birth is not to be expected. But there are names in the history of Science which recall so imposing a combination of these several gifts, that, comparing the men who bore them with the civilization of their time, we can hardly conceive that uninspired ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... particle of aqueous fluid, trickling from the visual organ over the lineaments of the countenance, betokening grief." Of another, who spoke of "the deep intuitive glance of the soul, penetrating beyond the surface of the superficial phenomenal to the remote recesses of absolute entity or being; thus adumbrating its immortality on its precognitive perceptions." Of another, an eminent man, head of a college for ministers, when repeating a well-known passage of Scripture, "'He that believeth ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... time to protect the people in the Southern States by the ordinary exercise of civil authority. It hands over all authority in those States to officers of the army of the United States, and clothes them as officers of the army with complete, absolute, unrestricted power to administer the affairs of those States according to their sovereign will and pleasure. In my opinion there has not occurred an emergency which justifies a resort to this extreme remedy. The military ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... I cabled my absolute declination of the nomination, and was reproved by my friends for not availing myself of this opportunity to take part in political affairs, but have nevertheless always felt that ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... came, amid absolute silence. He was at the wall of the fort when suddenly Donald rose to his full height, flung up both arms, and yelled at the top of his voice—the familiar manner of stopping a pursuing wild animal. The Indian, instinctively taken aback, halted, and Donald reached over and drew ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... by selecting among the contingent the pre-ordained results most suited to his purposes. In regard to absolute or divine morality, meaning the final cause or purpose of those comprehensive laws which often seem harsh to the individual, because inflexibly just and impartial to the universal, speculation must take refuge in faith; the immediate ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... in that enchanted week of mine. Nothing would happen except what I wanted to happen. It would be a week of the most absolute peace and quiet the world has ever known. There wouldn't be any winds, they would be zephyrs. The skies would all be made out of the softest and finest of blue satin and any little clouds that floated before 'em would be made of white satin of the ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler

... master, Mr. Cruickshanks assured him that Cairnvreckan, a village which they were about to enter, was happy in an excellent blacksmith; 'but as he was a professor, he would drive a nail for no man on the Sabbath or kirk-fast, unless it were in a case of absolute necessity, for which he always charged sixpence each shoe.' The most important part of this communication, in the opinion of the speaker, made a very slight impression on the hearer, who only internally wondered what college this ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... side of his brothers, in his own rank, in his own place, with open eyes, without hope of glory or of gain, and because such is the law: this is the commandment of the god to the warrior Arjuna, who had doubted whether he were right in turning away from the Absolute to take part in the evil dream of war. 'The law for each is that he should fulfil the functions determined by his own state and being. Let every man accept action, since he shares in that nature the methods of which make action necessary.' Plainly, it is for Arjuna to bend ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... "In absolute earnest," the Prince assured him. "Not only that, but I require you to keep your whereabouts, until after the period of time I have mentioned, an entire secret from every one. I gather that you are not married, and that there is no one living in ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... opinion of the world he could not doubt. He felt very much alone. It was not, however, in any resolve to make a confidante of Celia, but in an absolute need of companionship, that he went to see if she had returned. That he had any personal interest in this ball he did not intend to let Celia know, but talk with somebody he must. Of his deep affection for this friend of his boyhood, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... in general had taken Neil's deflection philosophically after the first day or so of wonderment and dismay. The trust in Mills was absolute, and if Mills said Fletcher wasn't as good as Gale for left half-back, why, he wasn't; that was all there was about it. There was one person in college, however, who was not deceived. Sydney Burr, recollecting Neil's "supposititious case," never ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour

... into losing seven months out of his memory, and still could drive him into absolute terror at the first sign ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey

... calamity; (6) it wardeth off the mischief of enemies; (7) it multiplieth mercy; (8) it forfendeth vengeance and punishment; (9) it bringeth the slave nigh unto his lord; and (10) it restraineth from lewdness and frowardness. Hence it is one of the absolute requisites and obligatory ordinances and the pillar of the Faith." Q "What is the key of prayer?" "Wuzd or the lesser ablution."[FN303] Q "What is the key to the lesser ablution?" "Intention and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... certainly sympathy is necessary. A woman who has no comfortable word for her sister woman had better talk to the wall. But I need not reproach girls for lack of sympathy, nor for lack of interest in the girls they meet. Their confidence in new friends is so absolute; their desire to receive sympathy, as well as to give it, is so great, that they frequently impart their whole lists of secrets to the bosoms of others whom they have not known a month. Now a more careful use of sympathy ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder

... Bridge, from which, following the lines by points of compass and distances, as indicated on the plot and described in the Colonial Records, all the sides of the grant are laid out with accuracy, and its place on the map determined with absolute certainty. A very perfect and scientifically executed plan of a part of the boundary between Salem and Reading in 1666 is in the State House; of which an exact tracing was kindly furnished by Mr. H.J. COOLIDGE, of the Secretary of State's office. It gives two of the sides of the Governor Bellingham ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... immense number of living beings which God has spread over the surface of the earth. They might be classified according to a certain order of the ascending or descending moral scale. We could judge them rightly, conformably with the standard of right or wrong, which is in the absolute possession of the Christian conscience. Brilliant but baneful qualities would no longer impose on the credulity of mankind, and men would not be led astray in their judgments by the rule of expediency or success which generally dictates to historians the estimate they form and inculcate ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... The most absolute want of precaution reigned on board the Searcher, and it looked as if no one knew that hundreds of howling savages were within five minutes' ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood

... not a scene to talk in. It did not call for raptures and exclamations; only for dreaming and absorbing. It seemed as if it might have been the spot where God rested upon the seventh day, so utter and absolute and complete was the sense of detachment from all the exigencies of being ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... flock annually. The mild, nearly tropical climate of this place in winter makes Nice one of the most attractive resorts along the Riviera. Only a few miles distant from Nice is the principality of Monte Carlo, an independent state under a prince who is absolute ruler of his tiny country. Monaco is but two and a quarter miles long, while its width varies from a hundred and sixty-five yards to eleven hundred yards. Yet this "toy country" is large enough to contain ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock

... particularly worthy of note the discrimination exercised by the Holy Spirit. Previously, when the penalty for his sin was inflicted upon Adam, a curse was placed not upon the person of Adam, but only upon the earth; and even this curse was not absolute but qualified. The expression is this: "Cursed is the ground for thy sake"; and in the eighth chapter of the Romans, verse twenty, we read: "The creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly." The fact is, that the earth, inasmuch as it bore guilty man, became involved in the curse ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... permission you gave me of dealing freely with you, will, I hope, excuse what I have done; for, if I had not spared you when I thought severity would do you a kindness, I have not mangled you where I thought there was no absolute need of amputation." Wycherley continued to return thanks for all this hacking and hewing, which was, indeed, of inestimable service to his compositions. But at last his thanks began to sound very like reproaches. In private, he is said to have described ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... off the mantel-piece, and he started out of his chair and picked it up, and fitted it to the same exact spot. As if it were an absolute point of good breeding that it should tumble off ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... and jurisdiction of parliament," says Sir Edward Coke (4 Inst. 36), "is so transcendant and absolute, that it cannot be confined, either for causes or persons, within any bounds. And of this high court," he adds, "may be truly said, 'Si antiquitatem spectes, est vetustissima; si dignitatem, est ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... it; but the wolf shiver is as inseparably linked with the wolf howl as the involuntary gasp is linked with a dash of ice water on the spine. And Collins knew that that quality was lacking in Breed's cry. The personality of the gray wolf was marked by absolute savagery, his bleak outlook on life undiluted by a single ray of that humor which is so evident in every act of the dog and the prairie wolf; and this difference of temperament was reflected in his voice, apparent to the ears of the animal world, apparent to Collins only in the different way in ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... fragrant darkness, to see the unhallowed lump of fire creep out of the lake, to listen for the first clucks and shakes of the sweet little purifying song, and to watch the orb growing steadily more hyaline and lucent under its sway, how delicious! The absolute harmony and concord of nature would be then patent and recurrent before us. My poor sister! However, it is consoling to reflect that she is almost certain not to be able to find ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse

... absolute though his power over us was—he could have ordered us all home at a moment's notice—turned out to be a delightful young officer, who did everything in his power to make our way smooth and pleasant, and who was certainly as good a manager as I ever had or ever expect to have. ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... gazed at her with unwinking eyes, exuded no perspiration, and cast no shadow, while the fifth betrayed all these infallible signs of mortality. She, therefore, selected the real Nala, upon whom the four gods bestowed invaluable gifts, including absolute control over ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... Woolsworthy about Captain Broughton. In many respects—nay, I may say, as to all ordinary matters, no two women could well be more intimate with each other than they were,—and more than that, they had the courage each to talk to the other with absolute truth as to things concerning themselves—a courage in which dear friends often fail. But nevertheless, very little was said between them about Captain John Broughton. All that was said may ...
— The Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne • Anthony Trollope

... twine upon, is it not better and wiser for them to go quietly at work, to show that woman has a self-sustaining power; that she is something in and of herself; that she, too, has a part to bear in life, and, in common with the self-elected "lords of creation," has a direct relation to absolute being? To such the factory presents the opportunity of taking the first and essential step of securing, within a reasonable space ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... this masterful lady placed upon her patient brother constituted a state of absolute tyranny. Lest her immaculate door-step should be soiled, she would rarely allow him to enter the house by the front-door. She placed a thick mat inside his workshop, at the doorway leading into the front-room; and she exercised a lynx-eyed supervision to ensure that he always wiped his ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth

... the other representatives of German science and art accuse France, Great Britain, Belgium, and Russia of falsehood. Would you have submitted, on the part of one of your pupils, to so grave an imputation, so lightly bandied? Admitting you to be in absolute ignorance of the documents published since the war declaration, you have certainly been acquainted with the ultimatum pronounced by Austria to Servia. It must have struck you with surprise; for it stands as a unique diplomatic document ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... emergencies, as in the self-distrust and timidity of her nature; in the helpless inferiority of position to which her husband's want of affection, and her daughter's want of respect, condemned her in her own house; and in the influence of repulsion—at times, even of absolute terror—which my presence had the power of communicating to her. Suspecting what I am assured she suspected—incapable as she was of rendering her suspicions certainties—knowing beforehand, as she must have known, that no words she could speak would gain the smallest respect or ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... saw anything so impudent on the walls of any exhibition, in any country, as last year in London. It was a daub professing to be a "harmony in pink and white" (or some such nonsense;) absolute rubbish, and which had taken about a quarter of an hour to scrawl or daub—it had no pretence to be called painting. The price asked for it was two hundred ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... might glean a garment or two that had slipped loose, died almost before it lived. Happy Jack knew too well the kind of knots he always tied. His favorite boast that nothing ever worked loose on his saddle, came back now to mock him with its absolute truth. ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... exclaimed Miss Egerton, "this is an absolute stingy fit! You are afraid of your purse! You know this private box precludes all awkward meetings, and ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... to compare with what is extant of the youth of the arts in Italy. Overbeck's careful gleanings of its history form indeed [158] a sorry relic as contrasted with Vasari's intimations of the beginnings of the Renaissance. Fired by certain fragments of its earlier days, of a beauty, in truth, absolute, and vainly longing for more, the student of Greek sculpture indulges the thought of an ideal of youthful energy therein, yet withal of youthful self-restraint; and again, as with survivals of old religion, the privileged home, he fancies, of that ideal must have been in those venerable Attic ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... dare breathe, and I dreaded lest the violent pulsation of my heart should attract the attention of the Unknown Presence and precipitate its coming out. Yet despite the perturbation of my mind, I caught myself analysing my feelings. It was not danger I abhorred so much, as its absolute effect—fright. I shuddered at the bare thought of what result the most trivial incident—the creaking of a board, ticking of a beetle, or hooting of an owl—might have on the intolerable ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... Jill, who by involuntarily harking back to the insular belief that the veriest heathen will quake in unison with the British culprit at the mere threat of British law, showed the absolute yarborough she held in this game, the stakes of which she guessed were something more precious than life itself, and in which she held ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... He turned up from nowhere, on the pretext of being a second cousin or something of Evie's, though she didn't seem particularly keen to acknowledge the relationship. The fellow is an absolute outsider, anyone can see that. He's got a great black beard, and wears patent leather boots in all weathers! But the mater cottoned to him at once, took him on as secretary—you know how she's ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie

... horrific complexity of things at the front, as neither the Allies themselves nor watching neutrals have ever seen it challenged before. The American public is, of course, little used to not being able to hear, and hear as an absolute right, about anything that the press may suggest that it ought to hear about; so that nothing may be said ever to happen anywhere that it doesn't count on having reported to it, hot and hot, as the phrase is, several times a day. We were the first American ambulance corps in ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... from.—The sensitive film being upon the surface of a thick glass plate, it is necessary that the cliche or negative employed should be upon patent plate, or not upon glass at all, so as to insure perfect contact. Best of all, is to employ a stripped negative, in which case absolute contact is insured in printing. It is only in these circumstances that the most perfect impression can be secured. If the negative is otherwise satisfactory, and only requires stripping, it must be upon a leveling stand, and fluid gelatine of a tolerable consistence ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various

... darling, who was very ambitious, promised to become in the future as the wife of a rich aristocrat! She would undoubtedly be that. There was absolute guarantee of it in her marvellously beautiful head, with its abundant golden hair, her magnificent figure, which—she could not help knowing it—was unequalled in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... eternity within them, and the heart of each for a chamber to the other, and God filling all—nay, nay—God's heart containing, infolding, cherishing all—saving all, from height to height of intensest being, by the bliss of that love whose absolute devotion could utter ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... men is a moment of invention. On this moment he waits; other moments are but a preparation, or after-taste of it. Few men distinguish between them as jealously as he did. Hence so many flaws even in the choicest work. But for Leonardo the distinction is absolute, and, in the moment of bien-etre, the alchemy complete: the idea is stricken into colour and imagery: a cloudy mysticism is refined to a subdued and graceful mystery, and painting pleases the eye while it ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... left alone for a short time; my young companion is at Norwich. If thou wert at home, pretty well in health, and withal not so much occupied as sometimes, it would be a great pleasure and gratification to me to pay thee a short visit; but, as an absolute condition, I must request thee to say, in perfect freedom, if it would be quite convenient. I want to ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... artist who disengages Beauty from the wide background of rudeness, darkness, and strength,—and disengages her from absolute nature! The mild and beneficent aspects of nature,— what gulfs and abysses of power underlie them! The great shaggy, barbaric earth,— yet the summing-up, the plenum, of all we know or can know of beauty! So the orbic poems of the world have a foundation ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... pain of losing their heads, the Cardinal commanded absolute secrecy on the part of the domestics and guards who had looked upon that gruesome corpse. At the same time he ordered the game of "Saracino" to be played in the Piazza close by, to remove the fears of a fast gathering crowd of citizens. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... Everybody was beginning to give Elmendorf the cold shoulder there, and by this time, reasoned Cranston, he must have had sense enough to discontinue his visits. Here, however, he underrated Elmendorf's devotion to his principles, for such was the tutor's conviction of their absolute wisdom and such his sense of duty to humanity that he was ready to encounter any snub rather than be balked in his determination to right the existing wrongs. Cranston did not want to go to the Allisons' and ask for Elmendorf. He had that ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... nerve-racked children of the wild. The Game Sanctuary has come! Its area of safety, and its magic boundary, are quickly recognized by the harried deer, elk, sheep, goat and antelope, and right quickly do these and all other wild animals set up housekeeping on a basis of absolute safety. Talk about wild animals not "reasoning!" For shame. What else than REASON convinced the wild mountain sheep in the rocky fastnesses they once inhabited in terror that now they are SAFE, even in the streets of Ouray, and that "Ouray" rhymes ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... that after that pick-me-up of yours I feel better, but don't try me too high. Don't stand by my sick bed talking absolute rot. We shot Gussie into a cab and he started forth, headed for wherever this fancy-dress ball ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... him in effecting his purposes. Good natured as he was, his determination was fully aroused, and he was now resolved to compel the queen to submit. He wrote a letter to Lord Clarendon, in which he declared his absolute and unalterable determination to make Lady Castlemaine "of the queen's bed chamber," and hoped he might be miserable in this world and in the world to come if he failed in the least degree in what he had undertaken; and if ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott

... tolerate a hundred other absurd liberties that we allow today because we are too lazy to find out the proper way to interfere. But the interference must be regulated by some theory of the individual's rights. Though the right to live is absolute, it is not unconditional. If a man is unbearably mischievous, he must be killed. This is a mere matter of necessity, like the killing of a man-eating tiger in a nursery, a venomous snake in the garden, or a fox in the poultry yard. No society could be constructed on the assumption ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... in that hard even voice of hers. "I lied to her of course. I told her the doctor said her condition was very serious, and that the only way to keep from being a hopeless invalid would be to do what he said—go out to California—take an absolute rest for two or three years—no lectures, no ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... no absolute standard of what the best roasting results are. Some dealers want the coffee beans swelled up to the bursting point, while others would object to so showy a development. Some care nothing at all about appearance as compared with cup value, while others insist on a bright ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... centre of these halls, they read to Biron the testament of the deceased Empress Anna: that testament designated Ivan, the son of the Duchess Anna Leopoldowna and Prince Ulrich of Brunswick, as emperor, and him, Duke Biron of Courland, as absolute regent of the empire during the minority of the emperor, who had now just reached the age of seven months. The joy of the magnates was indescribable; they sank into each other's arms with tears of ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... Moslems observe that the Koranic prohibition is not absolute, with threat of Hell for infraction. Yet Mohammed doubtless forbade all inebriatives and the occasion of his so doing is well known. (Pilgrimage ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... squeaky fiddle, tom-tom and cocoanut-shell orchestras, intensified by a fire-cracker display on the part of the more aristocratic Chinese in honour of John Royce Pederstone's victory. The remainder of the town, apart from the neighbourhood of the dance-hall, was in absolute quietness. ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... expedition in the spring of 445 B.C. Like all those who ministered personally to the Persian kings, he was probably a eunuch and still a young man. The true piety which is revealed in his prayer, the courage shown by his daring to appear with sad face in the presence of the absolute tyrant who ruled the Eastern world, and his tact in winning the king's consent to his departure indicate that he was a man of rare energy and ability. Artaxerxes I was famous for his susceptibility to the influence of court favorites. The queen referred to in 1:6 was probably the queen-mother ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... She is famed for her letter-writing; and, I believe, practises every morning on a slate. It is the only thing that redeems her from absolute stupidity." ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... Aztecs, or Mexicans, was an elective monarchy, the sovereign being, however, always chosen from the same family. His power was almost absolute, the legislative power residing wholly with him, though justice was administered through an administrative system which differentiated the government from the despotisms of the East. Human life was protected, except in the sense that human sacrifices were common, the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... lecture. I wish to give you some notion of the history of Italy for nearly one hundred years; say from 400 to 500. But it is very difficult. How can a man draw a picture of that which has no shape; or tell the order of absolute disorder? It is all a horrible 'fourmillement des nations,' like the working of an ant- heap; like the insects devouring each other in a drop of water. Teuton tribes, Sclavonic tribes, Tartar tribes, Roman generals, empresses, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... met them in my first Swiss tour, travelled a little with them, and lost them for two years; met them again, my Swiss tour before last, and have lost them ever since.) Obenreizer. Niece of Obenreizer. To be sure! Possible sort of name, after all! 'M. Obenreizer is in possession of our absolute confidence, and we do not doubt you will esteem his merits.' Duly signed by the House, 'Defresnier et Cie.' Very well. I undertake to see M. Obenreizer presently, and clear him out of the way. That clears the Swiss postmark out of the way. So now, my dear Wilding, ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

... to Sarangia towards the west, and bordered Parthia along almost the whole of its southern frontier. Excepting in the vicinity of Tebbes and Toun (lat. 34 deg., long. 56 deg. to 58 deg.), this district is an absolute desert, the haunt of the gazelle and the wild ass, dry, saline, and totally devoid of vegetation. The wild nomads, who wandered over its wastes, obtaining a scanty subsistence by means of the lasso, were few in number, scattered, and probably divided ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... communicated to Nelson, who, in return, requested Sir William Hamilton would fully and plainly state, that the act ought not to be considered as any intended disrespect to his Sicilian Majesty, but as of the most absolute and imperious necessity; the alternative being either of abandoning Malta to the French, or of anticipating the king's orders for carrying the corn in those vessels to Malta. "I trust," he added, "that ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... murderous discharge of grape had just swept along his decks, he issued the order to board. But Ludlow, with his weakened crew, had not decided on so hazardous an evolution as that which brought him in absolute contact with his enemy, without foreseeing the means of avoiding all the consequences. The vessels touched each other only at one point, and this spot was protected by a row of muskets. No sooner, therefore, did the impetuous young Frenchman ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in charging the enemy. All that they possessed, including some wondrous brandy, was placed at the absolute disposition of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed himself hugely—even more ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... rebels, and was continually being beaten up by one side or the other. Wood, though but a boy at the time, has left on record in his narrative some vivid impressions of the conflicts which he personally witnessed, and which bring the disjointed times before us in a vision of strange and absolute reality. ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... Epicurean, wants neither learning nor diligence,—why are we to be told, with peculiar emphasis, that Lord Bacon never married, when Lord Bacon not only married, but his marriage was so advantageous as to be an absolute epoch in his career? Really, really, one begins to believe that there is not such a thing as a ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... his side, as a signal to his wife; he settled himself in his chair; and in a minute his head was dropping over against his shoulder. In another second the minds of the four experimenters were out of their bodies; out, and in the twinkling of an eye, traversing space at absolute speed. ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... told, then I should not have been tempted to doubt you, and I should have gone on, it might have been forever, with that lie and that theft between us—and I should not have been forced to see, as I now see, my absolute unworthiness ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... in the last analysis there was no logical, honest argument for the discounting of payments unless it were a case of absolute insolvency with individual companies. It was maintained by the opponents to the "six-bit" policy that the insuring public had paid for what it assumed to be valid contracts and was entitled to just indemnity and payment in full. Finally, ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks

... and as it goes the tail dies down and finally disappears. The comet itself dwindles to a hairy star once more and goes—whither? Into space so remote that we cannot even dream of it—far away into cold more appalling than anything we could measure, the cold of absolute space. More and more slowly it travels, always away and away, until the sun, a short time back a huge furnace covering all the sky, is now but a faint star. Thus on its lonely journey unseen and ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton

... [Sidenote: The absolute and lordly dominion of the Tartarian Emperour ouer his subiects] Moreouer, the Emperour of the Tartars hath a wonderful dominion ouer all his subiects. For no man dare abide in any place, vnles he hath assigned him ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... founded on that consideration. I have before observed to you that though the thermometer shows us the comparative warmth of bodies, and enables us to determine the same point at different times and places, it gives us no idea of the absolute quantity of heat in any body. We cannot tell how low it ought to fall by the privation of all heat, but an attempt has been made to infer it in the following manner. It has been found by experiment, that the capacity of water for heat, when compared with that of ice, is as 10 to 9, ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... his theory of resignation. Surely it was not for her, that theory. She was of different blood. She did not issue from the loins of the immutable East. And yet how much better it was to be resigned, to sit enthroned above the chances of life, to have conquered fate by absolute submission to its decrees! ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... with respect to this paper, I took care to dispose of it in such a manner as that it should be found by Mr. Falkland; at the same time that, in obedience to the principle which at present governed me with absolute dominion, I was willing that the way in which it offered itself to his attention should suggest to him the idea that it had possibly passed through my hands. The next morning I saw him, and I exerted myself to ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... In the first place, they had no provisions; in the next place, there was the wife and children, who would not know what was become of them; in the third place, it was coming on to blow hard right upon the coast. So that he proved there was, in fact, not only danger and difficulty, but absolute impossibility, opposed to the plan which the gentleman ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... Moore has failed to call our attention to this fact. Did you meet Mr. Moore during the course of your visit to a neighborhood over which he seems to hold absolute sway?" ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... brought back and buried in the old graveyard of the plantation where he was born and where he grew up to manhood. And when he comes back to the well-known localities for a brief stay, he feels as if he were at home again in the house of his fathers, where he has an absolute and inalienable right ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... noon. The first sight of him made me tremble with the fear of death; but when he came near, so that I could discover his countenance, tears of joy flowed down my cheeks, and I felt such a kind of instant relief as no one can possibly experience, unless when under the absolute sentence of death he receives an unlimited pardon. We were both rejoiced at the event of the old King's project; and after staying at the spring through the night, set out together for home early in the morning. When we got to a cornfield near the town, my brother secreted me till he could go ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver

... of absolute silence, broken only by the hot shrilling of a locust in a tree hard by; then Zerubbabel Chirk, calmly unconscious of any thrill in the air, any tension of the nerves, any crisis impending, paused in his whittling, and ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards

... dissolute, but at the same time brave, prudent, cautious, generous, and capable of enthusiasm, clemency, and repentance; at once so lovable and so gentle that he was able to inspire those about him with the firmest friendship and the most absolute devotion. The latter was a religious though sensual monarch, fond of display—the type of sovereign who usually succeeds to the head of the family and enjoys the wealth which his predecessor had acquired, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... housewrights, wheelwrights, brickmakers and masons, blacksmiths, coopers, painters, tailors, cordwainers, glovers, tanners, millers, maltsters, skinners, sawyers, tray-makers, and dish-turners. Every absolute want was provided for. These trades and callings were carried on in connection with agricultural employments, and their continuance kept carefully in view by the heads of the principal families. John Putnam not only gave large farms to each of his sons, but he trained them severally ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... almost unexpectedly, in fact just as if done, so to speak, by machinery, the lights all over the theater, except on the stage, are extinguished. Absolute silence falls. Here and there is heard the crackle of a shirt front. But ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock

... Gilbert was an absolute apology. Gilbert in Turkey was a very different person from Gilbert at Bayford, and had assumed in his father's mind the natural rights of son and heir; he seemed happy and valued, and the heat of the climate, pestiferous to so many, seemed but to give his Indian constitution the vigour it needed. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... always disinclined to the war, had now begun to view it with absolute aversion; and though moved, by the King's representations of the embarrassed condition he should be reduced to if the supply were refused, to yield a subsidy of seventy thousand pounds a month for eighteen months, they forced him to pay a high price for their complaisance by extorting ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... civil laws was the political equality of the people; the distribution of the public domains among the free citizens which were to remain inalienable and perpetual in the families to which they were given, thus making absolute poverty or overgrown riches impossible; the establishment of a year of jubilee, once every fifty years, when there should be a release of all servitude, and all debts, and all the social inequalities which half a century produced; a magistracy chosen by the people, and its responsibility ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... was a medical man, who sought to build up a family practice!—who, in short, a very little time ago, had thought himself past the hot follies of youth and entered upon that staid phase of life wherein the daily problems of the medical profession hold absolute sway and such seductive follies as dark eyes and red ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... bedclothes, he became aware of the presence of something astonishingly sweet and comforting in his consciousness. It came quite suddenly upon him; the reaction he experienced, he says, was very wonderful, for with it the sense of absolute safety and security returned to him. Like a terrified child in the darkness who suddenly knows that its mother stands by the bed, all-powerful to soothe, he felt certain that some one had moved into the room, was close ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood

... her a minute and gave a sigh of resignation. "Sometimes I really envy you your absolute lack of the finer sensibilities, Marion. I should not have suffered so last night, worrying about you, if I were gifted with your lack of temperament. Yes, I believe we have a jar of vaseline, if that is what worries you most. But for my part, I should think other ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... As I went out of the coffee-room the spuddy, broad-faced military puppy with spectacles was vociferating to the languishing military puppy, and to his old simpleton of a father, who was listening to him with his usual look of undisguised admiration, about the absolute necessity of kicking Lieutenant P—- out of the army for having disgraced "the service." Poor P—-, whose only crime was trying to defend himself with fist and candlestick from the manual attacks of ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... other hydraulic product has yet been found which presents absolute security against ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams

... an act of tyranny so absolute and merciless, M. de Vilmorin proposed to lay the matter before M. de Kercadiou. Mabey was a vassal of Gavrillac, and Vilmorin hoped to move the Lord of Gavrillac to demand at least some measure of reparation for the widow ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... justify the absolute prohibition of the exportation of wool; but they will fully justify the imposition of a considerable tax upon ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... false in a precarious world, it is best to stick as close as possible to the individual. When the individual is sincere he has at least some positive attributes; his record may have a genuine significance for others if it is presented with absolute candor. Indeed, we can partially escape from the general meaninglessness of life at large by being or studying individuals who are sincere, and who are therefore the origins and centers of some ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... minister is himself an uninstructed, unspiritual, unsanctified man; and if the books we buy and borrow and read are all secular, unspiritual, superficial, ephemeral, silly, stupid, impertinent books, then the impossibility of our salvation is absolute, and we are as good as in hell already with all our guilt and all our corruption for ever on our heads. Now, that was the exact case of Mansoul in the allegory of the Holy War at one of the last and acutest stages of that war. Or, rather, that would have been her exact ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... beauty. There was no certain guessing at her age as she lay thus, one hand pressed beneath her cheek, her eyes closed, the long, dark lashes clearly outlined against the white flesh, her bosom rising and falling with the steady breathing of absolute exhaustion. She appeared so extremely tired, discouraged, unhappy, that the young man involuntarily closed his teeth tightly, as though some wrong had been personally done to himself. He marked the dense blackness of her heavy mass of hair; the perfect clearness of her skin; ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... over a score of letters and about a dozen or more papers, so you can guess I have my work before me in answering them. Of course, some have been lost, especially the papers. The earliest date was April 21st, and the latest June 8th. Absolute peace and goodwill toward men reigned in our camp that night. We have all been like so many children at Christmas-time, asking one another "How many did you get?" And then on hearing the reply, probably boastfully saying, "Oh! I got more than you," and so ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross

... was put into a vertical climb, and steadily the great machine rose. Soon, however, the generator began to slow down. The readings of the instruments were dropping rapidly. The temperature of the exceedingly tenuous air outside was so close to absolute zero that it ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... probable that the absolute velocity of the molecules is increased so as to make the mean velocity with which they leave the negative pole greater than that of ordinary gaseous molecules."—Phil. Trans., ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various

... for dinner, four for supper"); [Order, 14th September, 1730 (in Forster, i. 372).] food to be cut for him, no knife allowed. Room is to be opened, morning, noon and evening, "on the average not above four minutes each time;" lights, or single tallow-light, to be extinguished at seven P.M. Absolute solitude; no flute allowed, far from it; no books allowed, except the Bible and a Prayer-Book,—or perhaps Noltenius's MANUAL, if he took a hankering for it. There, shut out from the babble of fools, and conversing only with the ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... but by bringing men towards the greater. He does not try to reveal, personally, but leads, rather, to a field where revelation is a harvest-part, where it is known by the perceptions of the soul towards the absolute law. He leads us towards this law, which is a realization of what experience has suggested and philosophy hoped for. He leads us, conscious that the aspects of truth, as he sees them, may change as often as truth remains constant. Revelation perhaps, is but prophecy intensified—the ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... is in most cases we do, but not all, Past a doubt, there are men who are innately small, Such as Blank, who, without being 'minished a tittle, Might stand for a type of the Absolute Little.] ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... into the outer darkness in the wake of the highwayman returned presently. Mere impulse and swift natural reaction from their former enforced inactivity rather than any hope of success had sent them hot-foot on the pursuit. The noisy, windy night, the absolute dark, obviated all possibility of coming up with him. Grumbling and theorising, they returned to the room and ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... Portugal before he was off again to sea, this time on a longer voyage than any he had yet undertaken. Our knowledge of it depends on his own words as reported by Las Casas, and, like so much other knowledge similarly recorded, is not to be received with absolute certainty; but on the whole the balance of probability is in favour of its truth. The words in which this voyage is recorded are given as a quotation from a letter of Columbus, and, stripped of certain obvious interpolations of the historian, are ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... of safety. The car had, sooner or later, to go up the road, because there was not another road. The Commandant who was with us was a very seasoned officer, and he regarded all military duties as absolute duties. The car must return along that road. Therefore, let it go. The fact that it was a car serving solely for the convenience of civilians did not influence him. It was a military car, driven ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett

... when the lawyer employed by the market-gardener discovered what old Clark must have known all the time, and that is that the Field had a cloud upon its title, or rather an absolute restriction which would render worthless any title that Samuel might give alone. To explain this legal obstacle we must go back before the war and my day into the previous generation. There had been a family quarrel between Samuel and his older brother, which had resulted finally in Edward ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... fourteen-year-old Theo was in charge in the great house on the Hill a mile and a half from New York. Imagine any modern father leaving his little girl behind in a more or less remote country place with a small army of servants under her and full and absolute authority over them and herself! But I take it that there are not many modern little girls like Theodosia Burr. Certainly there are very few who could translate the American Constitution into French, and Theo did that while she was still ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... life would be an end of everything—an end to my life, and I should not like it at all. I should prefer to grow old in Paris, or some other capital, if my husband happened to be engaged in diplomacy. Even supposing I marry—which I do not think an absolute necessity, unless I can not get rid otherwise of an inconvenient chaperon—and to do my stepmother justice, she knows well enough that I will not submit to too much of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... results in a very short time; it would have been less prompt, less complete, had it not been attacked. Every refusal became for it the cause of a new success; it foiled intrigue, resisted authority, triumphed over force; and at the point of time we have reached, the whole edifice of absolute monarchy had fallen to the ground, through the errors of its chiefs. The 17th of June had witnessed the disappearance of the three orders, and the states- general changed into the national assembly; with the 23rd of June terminated the moral influence of royalty; with ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... is with this object that, in my waking moments, I record the impressions of this dream. I do not say Mr. Nimble was an example to follow on all points, for he had that common failing of humanity, a want of absolute perfection. But he was as near to perfection in defending a prisoner as any man I ever saw, and the proceedings in this very case, if carefully analysed, will go a long ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... ach rather than offer her his chair: while the gentle Lyperus tumbles over benches and overthrows tea-tables to take up a fan or a glove; he forces you, as a good parent doth his child, for your own good; he is absolute master of a lady's will, nor will allow her the election of standing or sitting in his company. In short, the impertinent civility of Lyperus is as troublesome, though perhaps not so offensive, as the brutish ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... our preceptor; come, let us return. [To the King. Sakoontala is certainly thy bride; Receive her or reject her, she is thine. Do with her, King, according to thy pleasure— The husband o'er the wife is absolute. Go on before us, Gautami. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... point, sir," he said, "until you recognise that I don't take, the human reason as final test in any absolute sense. I only say it's the highest test we can apply; and that, behind that test all is quite ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... persuaded that it was not only full of abuses, but, as he said, one of the most corrupt and destructive tyrannies that probably ever existed in the world, as to be content with nothing short of the absolute deprivation of its power. He avowed himself no lover of names, and that he only contended for good government, from whatever quarter it might come. But the idea of good government coming from the Company ...
— Burke • John Morley

... 'Parochial and Plain Sermons' might have touched even the Gospels with cogency that yet was not profane. But the combination of qualities required is such as would hardly be found for centuries together. The most fine and sensitive tact of piety would be essential. With it must go absolute sincerity and singleness of purpose. Any dash of mere conventionalism or self-seeking would spoil the whole. There must be that clear illuminated insight that is only given to those who are in a more than ordinary sense 'pure in heart.' ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... know what you mean," Helen replied, "unless it is her aversion to going out, as that I think is the only point where her obedience has not been absolute." ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... might have been heard to mutter words not usually included in his vocabulary when he read this. As he had only taken a ticket to Montreal, the latter part of the announcement, although it happened to be true, was an absolute invention on the part of the light-hearted paragraphist ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke

... it, at the distance, that, for a while, doubt prevailed. Then conviction supervened as each of the watchers recorded his observation and a sigh of certitude made itself heard. The point of light was held by all. It was dwelt upon. It was the verification needed to convey absolute faith in ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... along the best means of accomplishing her purpose. Aware of the cunning and desperate characters of the persons with whom she would have to deal,—aware, also, that she was in a quarter where no laws could be appealed to, nor assistance obtained, she felt the absolute necessity of caution. Accordingly, when she arrived at the Shovels, with which, as an old haunt in her bygone days of wretchedness she was well acquainted, instead of entering the principal apartment, which she saw at a glance was crowded with company of both sexes, she turned into a small room ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... was not only much private and public profusion, many expensive and unnecessary wars, great perversion of the annual produce from maintaining productive to maintain unproductive hands; but sometimes, in the confusion of civil discord, such absolute waste and destruction of stock, as might be supposed, not only to retard, as it certainly did, the natural accumulation of riches, but to have left the country, at the end of the period, poorer than at the beginning. Thus, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... little veneration we have!" said Flemming. "I could not help closing the discussion with a jest. An ill-timed levity often takes me by surprise. On all such occasions I think of a scene at the University, where, in the midst of a grave discussion on the possibility of Absolute Motion, a scholar said he had seen a rock splitopen, from which sprang a toad, who could not be supposed to have any knowledge of the external world, and consequently his motion must have been absolute. The learned Professor, who presided ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... what authors have characterized as savage taste in sculpture. But the same tribes execute carvings of animals, as seals, sea-lions, whales, bears, &c., which, though generally wanting in the careful modeling necessary to constitute fine sculpture, and for absolute specific resemblance, are generally recognizable likenesses. Now and then indeed is to be found a carving which is noteworthy for spirited execution and faithful modeling. The best of them are far superior ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw

... support the extremes of heat and cold, so the noblest minds are those which prosperity does not render insolent and overbearing, nor ill fortune depress: and here Aemilius appears more nearly to approach absolute perfection, as, when in great misfortune and grief for his children, he showed the same dignity and firmness as after the greatest success. Whereas Timoleon, though he acted towards his brother as became a noble nature, yet could not support himself against his sorrow by reason, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... those who do not believe that the Established Church of Ireland—of which I am not a member—would go to absolute ruin, in the manner of which many of its friends are now so fearful. There was a paper sent to me this morning, called 'An Address from the Protestants of Ireland to their Protestant Brethren of Great Britain.' It is dated "5, Dawson ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... of the principal causes of that fatigue from which some of our party suffered so much: during my watches I invariably noticed some poor fellow or another vainly trying to secure the rest of which he stood so much in need: rolling with restless anxiety from side to side, and sometimes in absolute despair, starting up on his feet: neither could I fail to note the wearying effect these broken slumbers produced, symptoms of which showed ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... fantastically weathered, towered aloft into the gloom, doubtless serving to support the roof. There were no colours—every detail of the landscape was black, white, or grey. The scene appeared so still, so solemn and religious, that all his feelings quieted down to absolute tranquillity. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... position gently and won a temporary relief, but presently the sense of strain returned, and yet she would not waken him and let him go. It was the first time she had ever seen him asleep,—one of love's tenderest experiences,—and moreover he was sleeping with a sense of absolute peace and security in her arms. She longed to slip down beside him, to rest her cheek against his, and to go with him into ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... understanding at every point may save considerable future trouble. The question of a uniform may come up during your talk. Some girls absolutely refuse to don anything which looks to them like a badge of servitude; if this happens, let it go, because you know it is not an absolute essential. At the close of the conference ask for references. No mistress is obliged to give a reference to her departing servant, but if she does so it ought, in all conscience, to be an honest one. It is a deplorable fact that many housekeepers, ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... exposed to a simultaneous attack from Italy, Bulgaria and Turkey, and by the same token all personal relations between him and Constantine would be broken for ever. He ended with the words: "I have spoken frankly, and I beg you to let me know your decision without delay and with the same absolute frankness." ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... the strange ravings of a person in delirium," said the doctor, curtly; "they are liable to imagine and say all sorts of nonsense. Pay no attention to what she says, my dear ladies; don't disturb her with questions. That poor little brain needs absolute rest; every nerve seems to have been strained ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey

... the first time unfolded his arms. With some appearance of caution he balanced his unstable footing into absolute immobility. Then he turned ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... Mississippi was commanded by the important seaport of New Orleans, which was accessible to fleets, which could readily be garrisoned by water, and which was the capital of a region that by backwoods standards passed for well settled. New Orleans by its position was absolute master of the foreign, trade of the Mississippi valley; and any power in command of the seas could easily keep it strongly garrisoned. The vast region that was then known as Upper Louisiana—the territory ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... She laughed, pure joy in voice, eyes, and smile. "I bet myself you wouldn't and I won! You're tall, solid gold, Clee darling—the absolute top." ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... slight shudder she walked past the little patches of ground and across what she contemptuously called the miserable common. This common marked the boundaries of Mrs. Haddo's school. There were iron railings at least six feet high guarding it from the adjacent land. The sight of these railings was absolute torture to Betty. She said aloud, "Didn't I know the whole place was a prison? But prison-bars sha'n't keep me ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... towards Ramdam. But so tired were the artillery horses that, when the leader of the patrol sent back a request for guns with which to shell the Boers out of the railway station, Lord Methuen thought it better to give them absolute rest, and ordered the patrol ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... confuse the observer, is that it is in accord with Chinese temperament, tradition and circumstance. Feudalism is past and gone two thousand years ago, and at no period since has China possessed a working centralized government. The absolute empires which have come and gone in the last two millenniums existed by virtue of non-interference and a religious aura. The latter can never be restored; and every episode of the republic demonstrates that China with its vast and diversified territories, its population of between three ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey

... individual is not possible. What should we think of a man who said that he did not know which he preferred-a poem by Tennyson, or a story out of the London Journal? Catholicity of taste does not mean an absolute abandonment of all discrimination; and some thread of intellectual kinship must run through the many various manifestations of artistic temperament which go to form a collection of pictures. Things may be various without ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... permanent garrison was located which assured the submission of the neighboring countries and arrested in its incipiency every attempt at revolt. In every respect these colonies remained under surveillance and in a dependence the most complete and absolute upon the mother city, Rome. Colonies never became the means of providing for the impoverished and degraded until the time of Gaius Gracchus. When new territory was conquered, there went the citizen soldier. Thus these colonies ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson

... there is also a Council of State that is the supreme consultative organ of the government election results: Jose Maria AZNAR Lopez (PP) elected president; percent of National Assembly vote - 44.54%; note - the Popular Party (PP) obtained an absolute majority of seats in both the Congress of Deputies and the Senate as a result of the March 2000 elections elections: the monarch is hereditary; following legislative elections, the leader of the majority ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... throughout Glen Spean, a large valley with which Glen Roy unites. (See Plate 2 and map, Figure 36.) As the shelves, having no slope towards the sea like ordinary river terraces, are always at the same absolute height, they become continually more elevated above the river in proportion as we descend each valley; and they at length terminate very abruptly, without any obvious cause, or any change either in the shape of the ground or in the composition or ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... the creature, 125 A twofold frame of body and of mind. I speak in recollection of a time When the bodily eye, in every stage of life The most despotic of our senses, gained Such strength in me as often held my mind 130 In absolute dominion. Gladly here, Entering upon abstruser argument, Could I endeavour to unfold the means Which Nature studiously employs to thwart This tyranny, summons all the senses each 135 To counteract the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... are merely suggestive, it is impossible to lay down an absolute moral recipe, because circumstances so truly alter cases—in all these no mention is made of corporal punishment. This is because corporal punishment is never necessary, never right, ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne

... "Countess. Remember. Silence—absolute silence. Not a word as to who I am, or what is common knowledge to us both. It is done. That cannot be undone. Be brave, resolute; admit nothing. Stick to it that you know nothing, heard nothing. Deny ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths

... long, soft stride of a panther crouched for the kill. Not till the whole thing was over did he remember that for once the ghost of fear had been driven from his soul. He thought only of the wrongs of Beulah Rutherford, the girl who had fallen asleep in the absolute trust that he would guard her from all danger. This scoundrel had given her two days of living hell. Roy swore to pay ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine



Words linked to "Absolute" :   absolute threshold, complete, living, absolute alcohol, unambiguous, implicit, unequivocal, inalienable, arbitrary, inviolable, univocal, sheer, infinite, relative, direct, unquestioning, unalienable, abstraction, abstract



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com