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Alpha   /ˈælfə/   Listen
Alpha

adjective
1.
First in order of importance.  "The alpha star in a constellation is the brightest or main star"
2.
Early testing stage of a software or hardware product.



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"Alpha" Quotes from Famous Books



... cousteau resplendissant, qui tant as dure et qui as este si large, si ferme et si forte, en manche de clere yvoire: duquel la croix est faicte d'or et la supface doree decoree et embellye du pommeau faiet de pierres de beril; escript et engrave du grand no de Dieu singulier, Alpha et OO. Si bien tranchant en la pointe et environne de la vertu de Dieu. Qui est celluy qui plus et oultre moy usera de ta saincte force, mais qui sera desormais ton possesseur? Certes celluy qui te possedera ne sera vaincu ny ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... family lived when it did not rain or when it was not too cold. In one corner of the yard the cook (who was a slave) prepared the meal and in another corner, the teacher (who was also a slave) taught the children the alpha beta gamma and the tables of multiplication and in still another corner the lady of the house, who rarely left her domain (since it was not considered good form for a married woman to be seen on the street too often) was repairing ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... cauterizer[obs3]; caustic, lunar caustic, alkali, apozem[obs3], moxa[obs3]; acid, aqua fortis[Lat], aqua regia; catheretic[obs3], nitric acid, nitrochloro-hydric acid[ISA:CHEMSUB], nitromuriatic acid[ISA:CHEMSUBPREFIX]; radioactivity, gamma rays, alpha particles, beta rays, X-rays, radiation, cosmic radiation, background radiation, radioactive isotopes, tritium, uranium, plutonium, radon, radium. sunstroke, coup de soleil[Fr]; insolation. [artifacts requiring heat in their manufacture] pottery, ceramics, crockery, porcelain, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... crept slowly eastward along the coast of Cuba, now and then landing to examine the country and its products; and it seemed to him that besides pearls and mastic and aloes he found in the rivers indications of gold. When he reached the cape at the end of the island he named it Alpha and Omega, as being the extremity of Asia,—Omega from the Portuguese point of view, Alpha from his own. On the 6th of December he landed upon the northwestern coast of the island of Hayti, which he called Espanola, Hispaniola, or "Spanish ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... personal blessings, health is better, and so is common-sense better, and in the long run there are dozens of things infinitely better worth having and better worth aiming for. It's a good enough thing to have in addition, but as to its being the sum and substance, the Alpha and Omega, of any sensible woman's life, that's all foolishness. Let's have done with it and order in the lights. I want to get at Euclid again. It will never do for that conceited Yale brother of mine to get ahead of me. Shall I ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... having done their long work, they cease, He still is. Over the glory of His being and character passes no "shadow of turning." Never to the endless ages shall He need to be other than He is, or to be succeeded by a greater. "JESUS, MESSIAH"; He is Alpha; He is also Omega. The whole alphabet of revelation between the first letter and the last does but spell out the golden legend of ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule

... and usefulness is the Sumner and Alpha Literary Societies, whose anniversary is always an occasion of great interest. The able and eloquent address this year was given by Rev. L. H. Reynolds, D.D., the successful pastor of the leading African Methodist ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various

... are placed in front of the entrance used by each tribe, and are inscribed with the letters of the alphabet from alpha to kappa. The jurors cast in their tickets, each into the chest on which is inscribed the letter which is on his ticket; then the servant shakes them all up, and the Archon draws one ticket from each chest. The individual ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle

... his wife were living at this time in the Alpha Road, Regent's Park. It was said she was Washington's grand-niece, but I am not sure what the relationship was, if any. She ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... genius of Greece began its f|tal throb. Here it individualized itself in contra-distinction from the Hebrew archology, on the one side, and from the Ph|nician, on the other. The Ph|nician confounded the indistinguishable with the absolute, the 'Alpha' and 'Omega', the ineffable 'causa sui'. It confounded, I say, the multeity below intellect, that is, unintelligible from defect of the subject, with the absolute identity above all intellect, that ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... sixty years ago. The collegian danced and drove and flirted and dined and sang the night away. Robert Tomes echoed the strain in his tale of college life a little later, under stricter social and ecclesiastical conditions. There was a more serious vein also. In 1827 the Kappa Alpha Society was the first of the younger brood of the Greek alphabet—descendants of the Phi Beta Kappa of 1781—and in 1832 Father Eells, as he is affectionately called, founded Alpha Delta Phi, a brotherhood based upon other aims and sympathies than those of Mr. Philip Slingsby, but one ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis

... thoroughly consistent with their origin and their up-bringing. I venture to asset that, although it is possible to read individual volumes of the Rougon-Macquart series while neglecting others, nobody can really understand any one of these books unless he makes himself acquainted with the alpha and the omega of the edifice, that is, "The Fortune of the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... think I was ever what could be called a funny man, but only just as ye would say a thought ajee in that way. Howsever, I soon became, both by habit and repute, a man of popularity in the town, in so much that it was a shrewd saying of old James Alpha, the bookseller, that "mair gude jokes were cracked ilka day in James Pawkie's shop, than in Thomas Curl, the barber's, on ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... or both?"—Penn cor. "This Lord Jesus Christ, the heavenly Man, the Emmanuel, God with us, we own and believe in: him whom the high priests raged against," &c.—Fox cor. "Christ, and He crucified, was the Alpha and Omega of all his addresses, the fountain and foundation of his hope and trust."—Exp. cor. "Christ, and He crucified, is the head, and the only head, of the church."—Denison cor. "But if Christ, and He ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... We were able too, without indiscretion, to accept the hospitalities of our friends in Halifax, during our brief stay there. But duty called us back to the Confederacy, and passage was engaged for the whole party by the first steamer (the Alpha,) to sail for Bermuda. ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... ought to be six keys here—the key of this safe, the key of the safe at Portman Square, the latch-key for this office, the key of this room, the latch-key of the house, and a key of a safe at the Alpha Safe Deposit place. That one—the Safe ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher

... this her favorite boy, who has certainly grown taller and handsomer since his last visit at home, in her eyes at least; and who is now entertaining himself by teaching his pet, Emma, (a little girl of four,) to repeat the Greek alphabet, and whose funny pronunciation of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, &c., is received with peals of ...
— Arthur Hamilton, and His Dog • Anonymous

... is: You could be other than you are. As the result of this immutability of character on the one hand, and, on the other, of the strict necessity which attends all the circumstances in which character is successively placed, every man's course of life is precisely determined from Alpha right through to Omega. But, nevertheless, one man's course of life turns out immeasurably happier, nobler and more worthy than another's, whether it be regarded from a subjective or an objective point of view, and unless we ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... rises over where he but lately stood. That he misstepped innocently does not matter; mire and evil have neither pity nor reason. To spend what is not ours and then to try to recover it, to hide the guilty step: this is futility. From the alpha men have made this step; to the omega they will make it, with the same unchanging futility. After all, it is money. Money is the root of all evil; let him laugh who will, in his heart of hearts ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... for me, and I think, and hope, I rendered his sojourn at "Alpha House" less irksome than otherwise it might have been. The Reverend Charles' method with the backward was on all fours with that adopted for the bringing on of geese; he cooped them up and crammed them. The process is profitable to the trainer, but ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... integrity; totalness &c. adj[obs3].; entirety, ensemble, collectiveness[obs3]; unity &c. 87; completeness &c. 52; indivisibility, indiscerptibility[obs3]; integration, embodiment; integer. all, the whole, total, aggregate, one and all, gross amount, sum, sum total, tout ensemble, length and breadth of, Alpha and Omega, " be all and end all "; complex, complexus [obs3]; lock stock and barrel. bulk, mass, lump, tissue, staple, body, compages[obs3]; trunk, torso, bole, hull, hulk, skeleton greater part, major part, best part, principal part, main part; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Rockhampton, and proceeded to Peak Downs Station, which my brother-in-law, Edmund Casey, was then managing for the Messrs. Fairbairn. I found he had broken in to harness for me two Arab ponies which would trot their 12 miles an hour. I trucked these and a buggy I had purchased in Sydney to Alpha, the then terminus of the Central railway line, where my other horses—brought from Winton—met me. Good rains had fallen in July, thus breaking up the long drought which had commenced three years before. I had plenty of grass ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... Senegal withdrew after only a few months, what formerly made up the Sudanese Republic was renamed Mali. Rule by dictatorship was brought to a close in 1991 with a transitional government and in 1992 when Mali's first democratic presidential election was held. After his reelection in 1997, President Alpha KONARE continued to push through political and economic reforms and to fight corruption. In keeping with Mali's two-term constitutional limit, he stepped down in 2002 and was succeeded by ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... In the original book, the two characters preceding the exclamation mark are the Greek "Alpha" and "nu". They appear to be preceded by the Greek rough-breathing diacritical, making the three characters together rhyme with "Maine", ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... their alpha and omega; their treasury and granary; their store of gold and wand of wealth; their bread-winner and minister; their only friend and comforter. Patrasche dead or gone from them, they must have laid themselves down and died likewise. Patrasche was body, brains, hands, head, and feet to both of ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... understand each other," he continued. "You may at any rate understand this, that I love you with all my heart and all my strength. If things prosper with me, all my prosperity shall be for you. If there be no prosperity for me, you shall be my only consolation in this world. You are my Alpha and my Omega, my first and last, my beginning and end—my everything, my all." Then he turned away and left her, and there had come no negative from her lips. As far as her lips were concerned, no negative was ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... sentiment: I love that book for its looks and behavior. None of your "half-calf" economies in that volume, sir! And see how it lies open anywhere! There is n't a book in my library that has such a generous way of laying its treasures before you. From Alpha to Omega, calm, assured rest at any page that your choice or accident may light on. No lifting of a rebellious leaf like an upstart servant that does not know his place and can never be taught manners, but tranquil, well-bred ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Alpha et Omega, principium et finis. My name is knowyn, God and Kynge; My work to make now wyl I wende; In myselfe resteth my reynenge, It hath no gynnyng, ne no ende, And all that evyr shall have beynge Is closed in my mende;[59] When it is made ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... last day he will judge every one of us for every sinful thought, and dreams are thoughts. Christ has said: Give me your heart, my son! Go to Him! Pray, pray, pray! Whatsoever is chaste, whatsoever is pure, whatsoever is lovely—that is He. The alpha and the omega, life and happiness. Chasten the flesh and be strong in prayer. Go in the name of the ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... made to a man who was "born under the Nakshatra Rohini ".[341] "Nakshatras" are stars in the Rigveda and later, and "lunar mansions" in Brahmanical compositions.[342] "Rohini, 'ruddy', is the name of a conspicuously reddish star, [Greek: alpha] Tauri or Aldebaran, and denotes the group of the Hyades."[343] This reference may be dated before ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... with his whole life and soul to become a mere virtuoso in literature, exhibiting an accomplishment which will not even make money for him, like fiddle playing. Effectiveness of assertion is the Alpha and Omega of style. He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have none: he who has something to assert will go as far in power of style as its momentousness and his conviction will carry him. Disprove his assertion after it is made, yet its style remains. Darwin has no more destroyed ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... What is the origin of the word Alphabet? It is derived from the first two letters of the Greek Alphabet: Alpha ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway

... all things courteously, founding precept and practice upon that old rule, the Golden Rule, which is the Alpha and the Omega of all good manners and the very Essence ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... nearly horizontal. Above the square is Andromeda, to the right of which lies Cassiopeia, the stars [beta] and [epsilon] of this constellation lying directly towards the north-west, while the star [alpha] lies almost exactly midway between the zenith and the horizon. Above Andromeda, a little towards the left, lies Perseus, Algol being almost exactly towards the west and one-third of the way from the zenith towards the horizon (because one-third ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... ebbed and flowed; the chink of dollars echoed in the rattle of china, in the tinkling of glasses, in the laughs and salutations, in the shuffle of feet. It was the one word, the single theme, the alpha and omega of all these men of talent and virility who accorded me recognition as one of themselves and assumed that I, too, was crucified to the two bars on the snaky S; the whole thing was so interesting that I lost ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos. Hello! Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... coincidences for which destiny is sometimes responsible, the two very opposite plain men whom I am going to write about were most happily named Mr. Alpha and Mr. Omega; for, owing to a difference of temperament, they stood far apart, at the extreme ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett

... the tents and made the beds, how they named the tents Alpha and Omega, how eagerly they awaited Gladys's coming, how Sahwah was placed on the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... and last letters of the Greek alphabet. They are used of our Lord to set forth His eternal and divine Nature, as in Revelation I:II, "I am Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last." In their Greek form these letters are used {11} in the symbolism and decoration of the Church, either separately or ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller

... Douglas, had said to Hugh in passing, "We've got our eye on you, Carver," and that was all that had been said. Carl did not have even that much consolation. But he wasn't so much interested in Nu Delta as Hugh was; Kappa Zeta or Alpha Sigma would do as well. Both of these fraternities were making violent efforts to get Hugh, but they were paying only polite ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... propyl and isobutyl alcohols with camphor were active solvents, and the ketones, palmitone, and stearone in alcohol solution, also alpha- and beta-naphthol, with alcohol and anthraquinone (diphenylene diketone) in alcoholic solution, and also iso-valeric aldehyde and its ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... would give him a worse designation, but that is a manifest impossibility; for without the assistance of two good presentable members of your Estate, Alpha and Upsilon, he would be a mere nonentity—he it is that has dared to outdo all injuries that I have ever known, expelling me from the nouns and verbs of my inheritance, and hunting me out of my conjunctions and prepositions, till ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... take ([Greek: alpha]) and reject ([Greek: beta]) and ([Greek: gamma]); nor must we disregard the consequences which are a necessary part of our ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris

... Their gradations are spiritual and divine; they cannot collapse, or lapse into their opposites, for God is their divine Principle. They live, because He lives; and they are eternally perfect, because He is perfect, and governs them in the Truth of divine Science, whereof God is the Alpha and ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy

... Alpha and Omega, sadness and mirth, The springing music, and its wasting breath— The fairest things in life are Death and Birth, And of these two the fairer thing is Death. Mystical twins of Time inseparable, The younger hath the holier array, And hath the awfuller ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... Diodorus came a client in a state of doubt, And to that most learned counsel thus he set the matter out: "Alpha Beta found a slave-girl who had run away from me: To a slave of his he wed her, though she was my property, Well he knew she was my chattel; she has had a child or two; Now I cannot tell for certain whose the children are, can you?" Diodorus thought, consulted ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams

... Sickness comes, and they thirst from fever—water quenches their burning desire. Nature overcomes disease, and they long for food to re-invigorate their frame. What get they?—the potato! The child sinks in weakness towards its grave. What holds it betwixt life and death?—the potato. It is the Alpha and Omega of their existence. A blessing granted by Providence to man, but made by man a curse to his fellow-beings. From what causes come the charges made, and made with truth, against the Irish peasant, of "indolence" and ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers

... that they were masters of every phrase and word in the Gospels, their stock in trade was scarcely more than that of an average candidate for Anglican orders; but to each and all of them Christ was simply everything. If ever men have preached Christ, these men did; Christ, nothing but Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. They had no system, they had no views, they combated no opinions, they took no side. Let the dialecticians dispute about this nice distinction or that. There could be no doubt that ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... us—perhaps the noblest picture that dramatic art can give: that of a man striving onward and upward in his own strength, confronting (as Goethe says in reference to Shakespeare's plays) the inexorable course of the universe with the might of human will. We might take as the Alpha and Omega of Faust these ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... which the tripod or pipe is set up. It would then be useless to adjust it carefully to zero when the pointer cuts the "zenith" as is done with a large equatorial. Instead, the adjustment is made by setting the clock or watch which is part of the outfit. The pointer is directed to Alpha, Cassiopiae, and the hour reading subtracted from 24 hours (the approximate right ascension of the star) gives the time which the clock should be set to indicate. All of these settings should require not ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... July, 1838, Alpha P. Buckley murdered William Yaochum in an affray in Jackson county, Missouri. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... poem. One Tryphiodorus was a great master in this kind of writing. He composed an "Odyssey" or epic poem on the adventures of Ulysses, consisting of four- and-twenty books, having entirely banished the letter A from his first book, which was called Alpha, as lucus a non lucendo, because there was not an Alpha in it. His second book was inscribed Beta for the same reason. In short, the poet excluded the whole four-and-twenty letters in their turns, and showed them, one after another, ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... always those at the violet end, are dark, and the remaining hydrogen lines, always those toward the red end, are bright. The brightest star in the Pleiades group, Alcyone, presents apparently the last of this series, for all of the hydrogen lines are dark except H alpha, in the red. In some of the bright-line stars which we have described, technically known as Oe5, Harvard College Observatory found that the dark helium and hydrogen lines exist, and apparently increase in intensity, on the average, as the bright lines become ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... members, relying upon their numbers and their affiliation with similar organizations in other colleges to avoid any unpleasant consequences. The Faculty thought otherwise; though as events proved their authority was not too well defined. Meanwhile another society, Alpha Delta Phi, had submitted a constitution to the Faculty for approval; but owing to the press of other matters it was not considered and the chapter was organized with no action by the authorities. The greater number of the students in the University thus ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... more than doubles in size during the winter and extends to the encircling land masses; the ocean floor is about 50% continental shelf (highest percentage of any ocean) with the remainder a central basin interrupted by three submarine ridges (Alpha Cordillera, Nansen Cordillera, and Lomonsov Ridge); maximum depth is 4,665 meters ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... of the San Miguel To Mother Huberta Suggested by a Mountain Eagle The Silvery San Juan As the Shifting Sands of the Desert Missed If I Have Lived Before The Darker Side The Miner Life's Undercurrent They Cannot See the Wreaths We Place Mother—Alpha and Omega Empty Are the Mother's Arms In Deo Fides Shall Love, as the Bridal Wreath, Wither and Die Shall Our Memories Live When the Sod Rolls Above Us A Reverie Love's Plea Ashes to Ashes, Dust ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... our fellows to be one of us," said the spokesman. "We want you to become an Alpha Beta Pi. It is a grand fraternity with chapters in the best schools in the ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson

... ARE THE ONEROUS DUTIES which enter into the position of the mistress of a house, and such are, happily, with a slight but continued attention, of by no means difficult performance. She ought always to remember that she is the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega in the government of her establishment; and that it is by her conduct that its whole internal policy is regulated. She is, therefore, a person of far more importance in a community than she usually thinks she is. On her pattern her daughters model themselves; by her ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... Footnote 28: Scale Alpha. For Measuring the Understanding of Sentences, by E.L. Thorndike, published by the Bureau of ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... thus: "Be to mine eyes the remedy or late Or early, at her pleasure; for they were The gates, at which she enter'd, and did light Her never dying fire. My wishes here Are centered; in this palace is the weal, That Alpha and Omega, is to all The lessons love can read me." Yet again The voice which had dispers'd my fear, when daz'd With that excess, to converse urg'd, and spake: "Behooves thee sift more narrowly thy terms, And say, who level'd at this ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... experiment has been tried, no sensible parallax could be detected; from which the same inference was to be made in their case. But a sensible parallax of about one second has been ascertained in the case of the double star, alpha alpha, of the constellation of the Centaur, {3} and one of the third of that amount for the double star, 61 Cygni; which gave reason to presume that the distance of the former might be about twenty thousand ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... works Montesquieu said to a friend: "You will read it in a few hours, but I assure you it has cost me so much labor that it has whitened my hair." He had made it his study by day and his dream by night, the alpha and omega of his aims and objects. "He who does not write as well as he can on every occasion," said George Ripley, "will soon form the habit of not writing well on ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... with waters ever full, When will the bright spark of the visual ray, Darting, spring through each veiling obstacle, That I may see again those holy lights That were the alpha of my darling pain? Ah, woe! I fear me it is quite extinct, So long oppressed and conquered by its opposite. Let the blind man pass on! And turn your eyes upon these founts Which overcome the others one and all. Should any dare dispute it with me, There's ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... blushed, and giggled convulsively. "No offence. Quite natural, I'm sure. You have much better things to do than to read my articles, Miss Virginia. I only thought you might have happened to read Mr. Spence's 'Sonnet to Alpha' in our ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... was stimulated, opened, strengthened. In after days he commemorated among his friends George Selwyn, afterwards bishop of New Zealand and of Lichfield, 'a man whose character is summed up, from alpha to omega, in the single word, noble, and whose high office, in a large measure, it was to reintroduce among the anglican clergy the pure heroic type.' Another was Francis Doyle, 'whose genial character supplied a most pleasant introduction ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... This Alpha and Omega of all the commandments in the editorial creed some editors learn by sorrowful experience. Bok was, again, fortunate in learning it under the most friendly auspices. He continued to work without sparing himself, but his star remained in the ascendency. Just how far a ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... [delta] the doctrinal element, and [Chi] the body of the faithful, the church is [Alpha] [delta] [Chi], we are told. Also, that if [Alpha] become negative, or the Apostolicity become Diabolicity [my words]; or if [delta] become negative, and doctrine become heresy; or if [Chi] become negative, that is, if the faithful become unfaithful; the church becomes negative, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... my alpha and omega in the art of education, I repeat now what I said at the beginning of this book and half way through it. Try to leave the child in peace; interfere directly as seldom as possible; keep away all crude and impure impressions; but give all your care and ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key

... were written—the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin—as the title on the cross had been written in these three tongues, but the Hebrew was early discontinued, "probably," writes Blunt, the historian of Tewkesbury Abbey, "because even bishops might not always be able to manage their Alpha Beta in that character." The best views of the abbey are from the south-east, and the interior is regarded as more remarkable than the exterior. The nave is of singular grandeur, its round Norman columns being ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... reflections of God's patience, for they endure His Human Passion, since together they form the shadow of the Word made Flesh. They are the singing echo in time of God's speechless patience, as we are destined to be if we conquer our wills. But patience is suffering, and Alpha must submit to the yoke of Omega. Since God is the Alpha and Omega he caused the Incarnation and Passion. THE IDEAL OF HUMAN LIFE IS THE PASSIONATE REDEMPTION OF THE WILL. This is life's darkest secret, unless we live in the Eucharist. We are to be the silent ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton

... night had a fine view of Alpha Lyrae, whose disk, through our captain's spy-glass, subtends an angle of half a degree, looking very much as our sun does to the naked eye on a misty day. Alpha Lyrae, although so very much larger than our sun, by the by, resembles him closely as regards ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the group of the first magnitude, which include all the brightest stars visible, as Sirius, Canopus, Alpha, Arcturus, ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... pp. 464. 497.).—It may assist your querist "ALPHA," to be informed that among the monuments to the family of Pengelly, in the church of Whitchurch near Tavistock, in the county of Devon, is one to the memory of Ann, wife of Francis Pengelly, and daughter of Sir George Downing of East Hatley in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various

... of my unpublished MSS. of any size or consequence is perhaps my translation of Book Alpha of the Iliad, quite literal and in its original metre of hexameters: hitherto I have failed to find a publisher kind enough to lose by it; for there are already at least twelve English versions of Homer unread, perhaps unreadable. Still, some day I don't despair to gain an enterprising Sosius; ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... answer, raise the hand, and with the index point to heaven. This is to show that there is but one God, the source of all truth. TOKEN: Take in your hands those of your brother, and press them gently. Some Knights, in addition to this, kiss the forehead of the brother, saying "Alpha," to which he answers, "Omega." SACRED WORD: "Adonai." This word is answered by "Albra," or "Abbraak," which is rendered "a king without reproach." Some contend that this word should be written "Abrah." PASS-WORD:—"Stibium" (antimony). By this is intended as among the Hermetic Philosophers, ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... symbols of the four Evangelists, placed over corresponding columns of lessons from their gospels, are portrayed looking up to a palm tree, rising from the earth, on the summit of which is a cross, with the symbolical letters alpha and omega suspended from ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... naturally try with the nearest of all. It is one that we do not know in this part of the world, but those that live in the southern hemisphere are well acquainted with it. The name of this star is Alpha Centauri. Even for this star we should require a drawing three or four miles long if the distance from the earth to the sun is to be taken as one inch. You see what an isolated position our sun and his planets occupy. The members ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... the college staff three years later and remained until 1929, when he took the federal position he held until his death. He was a veteran of World War I, having served as an infantry second lieutenant. He was a member of Alpha Zeta Sigma Xi, and Gamma Sigma Delta honor societies and was a life-long member of the Evangelical church, which has since merged ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... business again, I consented to go. Leaving my temporal interests in the hands of my father, I hastened to make the necessary preparations for my new responsibilities. The outfit was provokingly limited. The horse and saddlebags, the inevitable Alpha, if not the Omega, of an Itinerant's outfit, were wanting, as such conveniences had hardly, as yet, found their way to the northern portions of the Territory. But in their place were put good walking ability and a small satchel. ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... Milly sank back into her pillows, while her hand skilfully extracted the sheet that contained "Madame Alpha's" social column. Ah, ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... ultra-violet rays, which lie beyond the violet of white light. We also have electric waves, the waves of the alternating current, and shorter still we find the Hertzian waves, which are used in wireless. We have only begun to know of X-rays and the alpha, beta, and gamma rays from them, of radium, radioactivity, and finally of this new force which I have discovered and call 'protodyne,' the ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... Pauline was able to make freshman with only three conditions. In the first week she was initiated into Olivia's fraternity, the Kappa Alpha Kappa, joined the woman's literary and debating society, and was fascinated and absorbed by crowding new events, associations, occupations, thoughts. In spite of herself her old-time high spirits came flooding back. She caught herself humming—and checked herself ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... at the laste sayde to the bysshope thus: if your lordeshype knewe the names of these fesantes ye wold be contente to take them. Why, caytese, quod the bisshoppe hastly and angrey, what be theyr names? Y wys, my lorde, quod Skelton, this fesante is called Alpha, which is in primys—the fyrst; and this is called O, that is novissimus, the last; and for the more playne vnderstandynge of my mynde, if it plese your lordeshype to take them, I promyse you this alpha is the fyrste that ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown

... the same night a Comet was seen. This Comet is described by another authority as a "monstrous" one and as being in Sagittarius on Feb. 5. The Chinese date it for Feb. 17, and place it near the stars [Greek: alpha] and [Greek: gamma] Tauri. ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... fight the battle together. That was the Alpha and Omega of her thoughts. He had not yet measured the height and depth of her love. Let her only make this clear to him, and he must give in; if not to-night, at least before his leave was up. Years of living with Michael ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... in conclusion the sustained metaphor of a hostile proclamation. It is curious, by the way, to note how favourite an image the trumpet was with the Reformer. He returns to it again and again; it is the Alpha and Omega of his rhetoric; it is to him what a ship is to the stage sailor; and one would almost fancy he had begun the world as a trumpeter's apprentice. The partiality is surely characteristic. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in 1960 as the Mali Federation. When Senegal withdrew after only a few months, what formerly made up the Sudanese Republic was renamed Mali. Rule by dictatorship was brought to a close in 1991 by a coup that ushered in democratic government. President Alpha KONARE won Mali's first democratic presidential election in 1992 and was reelected in 1997. In keeping with Mali's two-term constitutional limit, KONARE stepped down in 2002 and was succeeded ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... made shortly after taking office I used the phrase "killing Home Rule with kindness." This phrase has been repeatedly quoted since, as if it had been a formal declaration on the part of the incoming Irish Government that to "kill Home Rule" was the Alpha and the Omega of their policy. What I really said was that we intended to promote measures having for their object an increase in the material prosperity of the country; that if we could thereby kill ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... or eastern point of Cuba he gave it the name Alpha and Omega, which means beginning and end, for he believed that this cape was the end of the mainland in the ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... the sixteenth of December, that it had suddenly become a star of the first magnitude, and almost equal to Rigel. It continued to increase. Rigel is now not to be compared with it. It exceeds Arcturus, and is very near equal to Alpha Centauri, being, at the moment I write, the fourth star in the heavens, in the order of brightness."[275] It has since passed through several variations of luster. Humboldt gives a catalogue of twenty-four of such stars whose variations ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... convinced of the intellectual rightness of the stand she had taken? Was hers a steady, enlightened opposition to superstition? or—and a subtler thought—was she mastered by some vaster, profounder superstition, a fetish-worship of which the Alpha and the Omega was ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London

... noise in a house than the same number of young fellows. I know that they do in boarding- houses and rooming-houses, and I believe it's so as between sororities and fraternities. Put a noise-gauge in the main hall of the Alpha-Alpha house and another in the main hall of the Beta-Beta house, and the girls would run the score above the boys every time. If ever I build a sorority house, it will be for the Delta-Iota-Nus, and a statue of the great goddess DIN ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... Republic was renamed Mali. Rule by dictatorship was brought to a close in 1991 by a military coup - led by the current president Amadou TOURE - enabling Mali's emergence as one of the strongest democracies on the continent. President Alpha KONARE won Mali's first democratic presidential election in 1992 and was reelected in 1997. In keeping with Mali's two-term constitutional limit, KONARE stepped down in 2002 and was succeeded by Amadou TOURE, who was subsequently elected to a second term in 2007. The elections were ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... who begins. These two terms express the eternity of divinity; they convey the same idea of mastery over time and the things of time, as do those words heard by the Evangelist in his vision in the isle called Patmos, "I am Alpha and Omega; I am the Beginning and ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... contemptuous tolerance, allowed to fall from the humanistic table. Bossuet once defined a heretic as "celui qui a une opinion" ([Greek: airesis]). A somewhat similar attitude was at one time adopted to those who were inclined to doubt whether a knowledge of Latin and Greek could be considered the Alpha and Omega of a sound education. The calm judgment of that great humanist, Professor Jebb, led him to the conclusion that the claims of the humanities have been at times defended by pleas which were exaggerated ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... [Greek: Alpha symbol] Paraphrase. Many of the quotations from the Old Testament in the New are highly paraphrastic. We may take the following as somewhat marked examples: Matt. ii. 6, xii. 18-21, xiii. 35, xxvii. ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... their hoods for the benefit of Christianity. The cardinal, who was a cunning Italian, long bearded, a great sophist, and the life and soul of the Council, guessed, by the feeblest exercise of the faculties of his understanding, the alpha and omega of the adventure. He only had to weigh in his mind one little thought before he knew how to proceed in order to be able to hypothecate his manly vigour. He arrived with the appetite of a hungry monk, and ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... photographic plates. The third are very penetrating rays, which are not deflected by electricity and which are seemingly identical with Roentgen rays. Professor E. Rutherford has named these rays beta (B), alpha (a), and gamma (v) rays respectively. Of these the beta rays are deviated strongly by the magnetic field, the alpha much less so—very slightly, in fact—while the gamma rays are not affected at all. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... excites hunger,—if a pedestrian on a portage, after voyaging from sunrise, needs any appetizer when his shadow marks noon. We halted, fired up, and lunched vigorously on toasted pork and trimmings. As pork must be the Omega in forest-fare, it is well to make it the Alpha. Fate thus becomes choice. Citizens uneducated to forest-life with much pains transport into the woods sealed cans of what they deem will dainties be, and scoff at woodsmen frizzling slices of pork on a pointed stick. But Experience ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... Geoffroy St. Hilaire has taken one course. I take the other. If, in the investigation of this question, it be legitimate to employ analogy in one part, it must be legitimate to employ it in like respects in another.... Analogy was Paley's alpha, it must be made also his omega."[279] In pursuing this course, he makes large concessions, such as might seem at first sight to involve the very principles on which the Theistic proof depends. "That design implies a designer, I am disposed to allow; ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... a little suspicious, maybe they thought there was something fishy about the thing, and then they thought of the unhappy results of what was commonly referred to as an "interplanetary incident." Ever since the people of the second planet of Alpha Centauri, in the early days of extraterrestrial exploration, had massacred an entire expedition because the captain had mortally insulted a tribal leader by refusing a sacred fruit, such incidents had been avoided at ...
— Grove of the Unborn • Lyn Venable

... had to go to London and brought back for me a pair of 12-inch globes. They were invaluable to me. The first stars which I learnt from the celestial globe were alpha Lyrae, alpha Aquilae, alpha Cygni: and to this time I involuntarily regard these stars as the birth-stars of my astronomical knowledge. Having somewhere seen a description of a Gunter's quadrant, I perceived that I could construct one by means of the globe: my father procured for me ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... my friend finishes his brief explanation of the conditions with the application of the whole. "Hold on"; that is the ABC, the Alpha and Omega of it. So mote it be. Still, saying it is one thing, doing it another. My steel-centred Hardy I know pretty well, and have no fear, though it is small by comparison with the full-sized greenhearts to which my attendant is accustomed, and I can see that he distrusts ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... the principal of all, the creator, Brama; the second, u, the conservator, Vichenou; and the last, m, the destroyer, who puts an end to all, Chiven. It is pronounced like the monosyllable om, and expresses the unity of those three Gods. The idea is precisely that of the Alpha and Omega mentioned in ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... varied resources at its command, and aiming to meet all the public and domestic requirements of a complex and artificial state of civilization. To Americans, Queen Anne or early Georgian is the starting-point of architectural history. Let us, then, take it as our standard, the Alpha of our profession, and aim to emulate the old masters in their endeavors to do their best with the small means at their command. Let us so design our modern buildings as to obtain the best results from diversified industries, almost human machinery, and the refined ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... because its function in society is not understood, and very difficult to explain. I cry out against it, because it jumbles all ideas, causes the means to be taken for the end, the obstacle for the cause, the alpha for the omega; because its presence in the world, though in itself beneficial, has, nevertheless, introduced a fatal notion, a perversion of principles, a contradictory theory, which, in a multitude of forms, has ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... she was careful of the prize, keeping it in silk and cotton- wool. Yet, woe be to that man or woman who relied on her one inch beyond the point where it was her interest to be trustworthy: interest was the master-key of Madame's nature—the mainspring of her motives— the alpha and omega of her life. I have seen her feelings appealed to, and I have smiled in half-pity, half-scorn at the appellants. None ever gained her ear through that channel, or swayed her purpose by that means. On the contrary, to attempt to touch her heart was the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... she was careful of the prize, keeping it in silk and cotton-wool. Yet woe be to the man or woman who relied on her one inch beyond the point where it was her interest to be trustworthy; interest was the master-key of madame's nature—the mainspring of her motives—the alpha and omega of her life. I have seen her feelings appealed to, and I have smiled in half-pity, half-scorn at the appellants. None ever gained her ear through that channel, or swayed her purpose by that means. On the contrary, to attempt to touch her heart was the surest way to rouse her ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... said: "Before Abraham was, I am"; and again, "I am with you always, unto the end of the world"; using the eternal present for past and future alike. With the same purpose, the Master speaks of himself as "the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the first ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston

... Alpha of the Plough says in the London Star: "I was walking with a friend along the Spaniards-road the other evening talking on the inexhaustible theme of these days, when he asked, 'What is the biggest thing that has happened ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... them to us. Now it takes light only one second to traverse 186,300 miles, and yet it requires four and a third years for the light from the nearest star to reach us. This is a star of the first magnitude, Alpha in the constellation of the Centaur. The next nearest star is a faint one of between the seventh and eighth magnitudes, and its light takes seven years to come. From a sixth magnitude star in the constellation of the Swan, the light ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... could be analyzed at leisure, it would show its anatomical knitting and structure. Do you remember how Burke's speech on Conciliation was parsed and sub-headed in the preface to the school-texts? Just so, in I and II and III, A. B. and C, ([alpha]), ([beta]), and ([gamma]), i, ii, and iii, we could articulate the strict and bony logic that vertebrates B——'s talk. Reservations, exceptions, qualifications, parentheses, sub-clauses, and humorous paraphrases swim upon him as he goes, and he ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... July, 1853. A rival, called the "XYZ Time Table," on a system that was to make all the puzzles of Bradshaw as plain as pikestaves, was brought out in August, 1877, but it required such extra wise heads to understand its simplicity that before one could be found the whole thing was lost, the old Alpha being preferred ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... yours and mine. Now inasmuch as we have plenty of wit, we thought it would be a good thing to parade our dear little honor, or dishonor, to catch an old boy; but that old boy, my dear heart, knows the Alpha and Omega of female tricks,—which means that you could easier put salt on a sparrow's tail than to make me believe I have anything to do with your little affair. Go to Paris, my dear; go at the cost of an old celibate, I won't prevent ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... not think of him—in spite of what he himself and his apostles declared of him—as The Living, Working Lord, to whom all power is given in heaven and earth, and not merely over the souls of a few regenerate; as the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, of whom St. Paul says, 'that the mystery of Christ has been hid from the beginning of the world in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ.' * * * 'That, in the dispensation of the fulness of times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley

... ultimately find), that it cannot be bought, nor sold. Everything else is bought and sold for Labour, but labour itself cannot be bought nor sold for anything, being priceless.[25] The idea that it is a commodity to be bought or sold, is the alpha and omega of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... basic survey first, of course," Neel told him. "Chances are that that will be enough to straighten things out. Since the completion last year of the refining equations of Debir's Postulate, all sigma-110 and alpha-142 graph points ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)

... history of the idea will show you still better what pragmatism means. The term is derived from the same Greek word [pi rho alpha gamma mu alpha], meaning action, from which our words 'practice' and 'practical' come. It was first introduced into philosophy by Mr. Charles Peirce in 1878. In an article entitled 'How to Make Our Ideas ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... "I've no idea of belittling your profession, my dear Jaffery. I think it's a noble one. But should it be the Alpha and Omega of things? Don't you see? The real life is intellectual, spiritual, emotional. What are ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... along the coast of Cuba, the admiral at length reached the eastmost point of that island, to which he gave the name of Cape Alpha; and on Wednesday the fifth December he struck across the channel between Cuba and Hispaniola, which islands are sixteen leagues asunder; but owing to contrary currents, was unable to reach the coast of Hispaniola until the next day, when he entered a harbour which he named Port St Nicholas, in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... lots more than we'll ever need. We haven't drawn a frank from a plant in a month, and we've had to cut our field strength down to a whisper to keep from burning out our accumulators. We can hunt as far as Neptune easy—we can go to Alpha Centauri if we want to. This thing of piffling and monkeying around here's pulling my cork, and for the ten thousand four hundred and sixty seventh time I say let's prowl and prowl now! In fact, I'm getting so sick of sticking ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... instantly in love, and tumult and despondency melted away. The next letter to New Zealand is pitched in quite another key. He still judges Indian life and Indian government with a very critical eye. "The Alpha and Omega of the whole evil in Indian Society" is "the regarding India as a rupee-mine, instead of a Colony, and ourselves as Fortune-hunters and Pension-earners rather than as emigrants and missionaries." And outside his domestic life his prospects ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... is a gorgeous moment I owe you, old chap! I wouldn't sell it for ten years of your life; and yet you know how I love you! What do you think of it, artist? Wasn't it well thought out and well foreseen? Foreseen from alpha to omega? Did I understand the business? Did I penetrate the mystery of the scarf? I'm not saying that there were no holes in my argument, no links missing in the chain.... But what a masterpiece of intelligence! Ganimard, what a reconstruction of events! What an intuition of everything that had ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... Freedom. And more than freedom, there is the ultimate Union with God. For that spark of divine life which is man's soul is not merely, as some have said, an aporroia ton astron, an effluence of the stars: it comes direct from the first and ultimate God, the Alpha and Omega, who is beyond the Planets. Though the Kosmokratores cast us to and fro like their slaves or dead chattels, in soul at least we are of equal birth with them. The Mithraic votary, when their wrathful and tremendous faces break in upon his vision, answers them unterrified: ego eimi ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... de Bats, said at a meeting of criminalists in Brussels, that the present tendency of the science of criminal law demands the observation of the facts of the daily life. In this observation consists the alpha and omega of our work; we can perform it only with the flux of sensory appearances, and the law which determines this flux, and according to which the appearances come, is the law of causation. But we are nowhere so neglectful of causation as in the deeds of ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... go down to Tavistock about the Mary Jane tin mine, and that a smart colleague was required for him. He would fain, for reasons of his own, have been that smart colleague himself; but that he knew was impossible. He and Neverbend were the Alpha and Omega of official virtues and vices. But he took an opportunity of mentioning before Sir Gregory, in a passing unpremeditated way, how excellently adapted Tudor was for the work. It so turned out that his effort was successful, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... Mystery. That's what the explorers had called it back in 2041, nearly a century and a half before, when they'd found the great city on one of the planets of the Alpha Centaurus system. Man's first interstellar trip had taken nearly five years at sublight velocities, and bing!—right off the bat, they'd found something that made interstellar travel worthwhile, even though they'd found no planet in the Alpha Centaurus ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett

... significant, but the order in which they appear is also instructive. The great principle which covers all conduct, and may be broken up into all the minutenesses of practical directions is self-surrender. Give yourselves up to God; that is the Alpha and the Omega of all goodness, and wherever that foundation is really laid, on it will rise the fair building of a life which is a temple, adorned with whatever things are lovely and of good report. So after Paul has laid deep and broad the foundation ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... Men, as a general thing, who fail in the poetry line, yellow-colored novel line, sensation-drama line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poor-house. You try to tell me anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been through it from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands. Heaven knows if I had but been ignorant instead of cultivated, and impudent instead of diffident, ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain

... accompanied us from Regent's lake that they call those ponds of a river which never dry up quawy, a word which proved to be of use to us in descending the Lachlan. At this camp I found, by a careful observation of alpha and beta Centauri, that the magnetic variation was 8 degrees 56 minutes 15 ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... further propose that the Athenian theatre being resuscitated, the admission shall be free to all who can expound the Greek choruses, constructively, mythologically, and metrically, and to none others. So shall all the world learn Greek: Greek, the Alpha and Omega of all knowledge. At him who sits not in the theatre shall be pointed the finger of scorn: he shall be called in the highway of the city, ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... to get an extraordinary atmosphere," he continued, bent on doing himself an exact justice. But I should say, if you pressed me, that it represents to me the deification of beauty to the exclusion of all else. You have made beauty the Alpha ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Linter, and had told her of the hopes which he had dared to indulge. And when at the bottom of the falls he had presumed to take her in his arms, she had forgiven him without difficulty to herself, telling herself that that would be the alpha and the omega of the romance of her life. She had not felt herself bound to tell Mr. Kennedy of what had occurred,—but she had felt that he could hardly have been angry even had he been told. And she had often thought of her lover since, and of his love,—telling herself that she too had ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... square box he should weave a circular web. Now, the cause of all this preparation was that on the seventh of July the Herd-boy star and the Spinning Maiden star cross the Milky Way to meet each other. These are the stars which we call Capricornus and Alpha Lyra. These stars that shine and glitter so far up in the zenith, are the boy with an ox and the girl with a shuttle, about whom the ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... inform me who were the writers in the Lyra Apostolica who assumed the letters [alpha], [beta], [gamma], ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various

... methacrylic acid, CH2.C(CH3).COOH. It is a liquid of somewhat unpleasant smell, boiling at 155.5 deg. C. Its specific gravity is 0.9697 (0 deg.). Heated with chromic acid solution to 140 deg. C., it gives carbon dioxide and acetone. Alkaline potassium permanganate oxidizes it to [alpha]-oxyisobutyric acid, (CH3)2.C(OH).COOH, whilst concentrated nitric acid converts it into dinitroisopropane. Its salts are more soluble in water than those of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... real knowledge of the subject, and I had none of any kind, which made its ungraspable facts all the more thrilling. He was always thrown into a sort of ecstasy by the unthinkable distances of space—the supreme drama of the universe. The fact that Alpha Centauri was twenty-five trillions of miles away—two hundred and fifty thousand times the distance of our own remote sun, and that our solar system was traveling, as a whole, toward the bright star Vega, in the constellation of Lyra, at the rate of forty-four miles ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine



Words linked to "Alpha" :   of import, explorative, exploratory, letter, start, important



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