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Diffuse   /dɪfjˈus/  /dɪfjˈuz/   Listen
Diffuse

adjective
1.
Spread out; not concentrated in one place.
2.
(of light) transmitted from a broad light source or reflected.  Synonyms: diffused, soft.
3.
Lacking conciseness.



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"Diffuse" Quotes from Famous Books



... grammar is the art of speaking and writing the English language with propriety. All the grammatical research that preceded the establishment of his mother-tongue was but the collection of fuel to feed the flame of its glory; all that follows will be to diffuse the light of that flame to the ends of the earth. Greek, Latin, Sanscrit, were but stepping-stones to the English language. Philology per se is a myth. The English language in its completeness is the completion of grammatical science. To that all knowledge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... encountered, and which he relates with so much simplicity and modesty as to enforce belief, are proof that he took his mission to heart. In the two journeys he performed to America—journeys that would have supplied a diffuse book-maker with matter for many volumes, the Abbe was almost every day exposed to dangers of his life—sometimes from the climate, sometimes from the privations to which he was subjected, now from the rough character of the country he constantly compelled to traverse ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... I therefore looked about, and found some Christians who consented to unite in pleading for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We agreed to pray in private, and also met together frequently during the week for united prayer. Finding that many of the petitions offered were vague and diffuse, I endeavoured to set before those assembled a definite object of prayer. I told them that the work was not ours but the Lord's, and that He was willing and ready to accomplish it, but that He must be inquired of concerning the work of His hands. Also, in order that our prayers ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... appeared. See Morley, Diderot, ii. 173, as to the authorship of the System of Nature. It has sometimes been attributed to Diderot, but it seems clear from internal evidence that Diderot could not have written it. The style and the thought are both too compact to proceed from that diffuse thinker and writer. But Diderot, who had great influence on many men, may have suggested ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... one can judge, had no knowledge of Kant. He is, nevertheless, dealing with Kant's own problem, of the theory of knowledge, in his rather diffuse 'Dissertation on Language,' which is prefixed to the volume which bears the title God in Christ, 1849. He was following his living principle, the reference of doctrine to conscience. God must ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... on the immediate discontinuance of all hostile attempts to reduce Amsterdam to the jurisdiction of Orange; required the Prince to abandon his pretensions to Utrecht, and denounced the efforts making by him and his partisans to diffuse their heretical doctrines through the other provinces. They observed, in conclusion, that the general question of religion was not to be handled, because reserved for the consideration of the states-general, according to the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... forehead. The expression of his eyes is concealed by spectacles. His early tendency to obesity having increased, Lord Byron is now enormously fat,—so fat as to give the impression of a person quite overladen with his own flesh, and without sufficient vigor to diffuse his personal life through the great mass of corporeal substance which weighs upon him so cruelly. You gaze at the mortal heap; and, while it fills your eye with what purports to be Byron, you murmur within yourself, "For Heaven's sake, where is he?" Were I disposed to be caustic, I might consider ...
— P.'s Correspondence (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of the sensuous world dwells in us, is an emanation from ourselves; it is we who diffuse it, each person for himself according to his power, and we have it back again in the measure of our out-giving. But I did not comprehend early enough the deep meaning of this well-known truth. . . . During my ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... that land is good." But they must first understand, that education, in its deepest sense, is not the equaliser, but the discerner, of men;[1] and that, so far from being instruments for the collection of riches, the first lesson of wisdom is to disdain them, and of gentleness, to diffuse. ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... is that we can, by doing good to others, do so much good to ourselves! The wealthy classes, who "rise above society like clouds above the earth, to diffuse an abundant dew," should not forget this fact. The season has now about arrived, when the good people of all classes will be most busily engaged in these delightful duties. The experiment is certainly ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous

... seal and ribbon attached. The size of the receipt and seal was proportioned according to the amount paid—if you had a son or a daughter in Purgatory, it was wise to pay a large amount. The certificates were in Latin and certified in diffuse and mystical language many things, and they gave great ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... Dumas has probably had his day, though "Monte Cristo" and "The Three Musketeers" are still read. The newer romance writers are less diffuse, and, not writing feuilletons, are not forced to be diffuse. The constant reader of French memoirs of the seventeenth century can hardly help wondering why anybody should read Dumas who could go directly to the sources of ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... a multitude of other persons, who might, perhaps, otherwise be unfortunately deprived of the amusing contents of your diary. Should copies and extracts not be sufficient, we will have it printed, as one cannot too much diffuse such things. Some will weep—others will laugh—what appears superb to one set of people, will seem ridiculous to another, such is life—but your journal will surely make a great sensation. As you are capable of wishing to avoid your triumph, and as you were only covered with rags when ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... comes so suddenly with darkness as the sun sets. So rare is the atmosphere of Mars that it absorbs very little heat from the sun. During the daylight hours it is always extremely hot; at night it is intensely cold. Nor does the thin atmosphere refract the sun's rays or diffuse its light as upon Earth. There is no twilight on Mars. When the great orb of day disappears beneath the horizon the effect is precisely as that of the extinguishing of a single lamp within a chamber. From brilliant light you are plunged without warning into utter darkness. Then the moons come; ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... dedicates its power; And finishing its act, exists no more. Thus, in obedience to what Heaven decrees, Knowledge shall fail, and prophecy shall cease; But lasting Charity's more ample sway, Nor bound by time, nor subject to decay, In happy triumph shall for ever live, And endless good diffuse, and ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... says we must paggle Monday up to here." Miss Arkwright indicates the exact high-water mark sanctioned, candidly. "Wiv no sooze, and no stottins!" She then becomes diffuse. "And my bid sister Totey's doll came out in my bed, and Dane dusted her out wiv a duster. And I can do thums. And they make free...." At this point Miss Arkwright's copy runs short, and she seizes the opportunity ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... Tait, Post, and others, and in some cases with perfect impunity. However, the peritoneum should be displaced as little as possible from its cellular connections, as such displacement increases the risk of diffuse inflammation of that membrane; and the vessel itself should be raised and disturbed as little as possible, lest destruction of the vasa vasorum cause ulceration of the ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... views. And the reader, who takes any interest in the subject, will not need to fear that the explanation should prove tedious; for the mere want of space, will put me under a coercion to move rapidly over the ground; I cannot be diffuse; and, as regards quality, he will find in this paper little of what is scattered over the surface ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... disease is diffuse and resists conservative treatment, excision should be performed, the articular surfaces of the constituent bones being removed, and if necessary the whole of ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... junior in a licensing club case, had to cross-examine the certifying Justice of the Peace who was very diffuse and rather evasive in his answers. "Speak a little more simply and to the point, please," said counsel mildly. "You are a little ambiguous, you know."—"I am not, sir," replied the witness indignantly; "I have been ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... times taken into this hall, where the same questions were put to us, though in a different form, that they might entrap us. They compared the answers we now gave, with those formerly given, and on the slightest difference appearing, made the most diffuse inquiries about it. Finally, on the twenty-seventh of September, they took us from Khakodale to Matsmai, the capital of the island, which is situated on the southern coast, where we were immediately immured in a strongly fortified building, ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... at the truth of their art, like him who qualifies himself for making a figure in the serious, and half-serious stiles, which also contribute to diffuse a grace over every other kind of dancing, however ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... should watch against envy and ambition, contempt of our brethren and contention. We ought to be satisfied in our places, doing 'nothing through strife or vain glory, or with murmurings and disputings'; but endeavour, in the meekness of wisdom, to diffuse a heavenly fragrance around us, and to adorn the doctrine of God ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... different class, although he enjoys a very wide reputation in his own country and wherever Spanish is read. His Episodes Nacionales, some fifty-six in number, attract by their close attention to detail, which gives an air of actuality to the most diffuse of his stories. They are careful and very accurate studies of different episodes of national life, in which the author introduces, among the fictitious characters round whom the story moves, the real actors on the stage of history of the time. Thus Mendizabal, Espartero, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... and peace, Polly came along, but, finding the stairs rather stiff work, was carried up by Barbox Brothers. The dinner was a most transcendent success, and the Barbox sheepishness, under Polly's directions how to mince her meat for her, and how to diffuse gravy over the plate with a liberal and equal hand, was ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... allegorical manner, offer a sharp contrast to the intense realism, so plastic and so picturesque," of earlier writings. First he mastered inner motivation and minute description of external detail, and from that mastery he passed to "the art, rather vague and diffuse, though lofty and noble, of allegories, of personifications of ideas, of symbols." This tendency appeared even as early as Miau (1888), then in Electra, and more strongly in Alma y vida, in Brbara, and in most of the later plays. "Tired of imitating the concrete ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos

... old Roman coins, by some supposed to have been as old as the time of the kings, and certainly prior to the first Punic war, on the reverses of which different parts of ships are visible. Now, as the Roman historians are diffuse in the accounts they give of the wars of the Romans, but take no notice of their commercial transactions, we may safely conclude, from their not mentioning any maritime wars, or expeditions of a date so early as these coins, that ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... to say all your excellency has done to diffuse, through this province, so happy under your command, a spirit of loyalty and attachment to our excellent Sovereign, of chearful obedience to the laws, and of that union which makes the strength of government, I should hazard your esteem ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... lovely feature in the Constitution but this one, it would diffuse a beauty over its whole countenance. Yet the lapse of a few years! and Congress will have power to exterminate slavery from within ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... difference, but when I took a dig at the interior I found to my amazement that this building had been built deliberately in a dead zone. The dead area stood up in the clarity like a little blob of black ink at the bottom of a crystal clear swimming pool, seen just before the ink began to diffuse. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... days Febrer went fishing with Tio Ventolera. The old sailor was thoroughly familiar with his sea. On the mornings when Jaime remained in his couch watching the livid and diffuse light of a stormy day filter through the crevices, he had to arise hastily on hearing the voice of his companion who "sang the mass," accompanying the Latin jargon by pelting the tower with stones. Get up! It was a fine day for fishing. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... were at a considerable elevation from the ground. They were in, or over, the center of the street, and of such diffuse brilliancy as to render the city almost as light as day. They were in the form of immense globes of soft, white fire, and during the six months that answered to the Mizora night, were kept constantly burning. It was during this period that the Aurora Borealis shone with ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... hear, that he, who caused fear to all the world, found her at the sound of his voice secure with Amyclas;[11] nor had it availed to have been constant and bold, so that where Mary remained below, she wept with Christ upon the cross. But that I may not proceed too obscurely, take henceforth in my diffuse speech Francis and Poverty for these lovers. Their concord and their glad semblances made love, and wonder, and sweet regard to be the cause of holy thoughts;[12] so that the venerable Bernard first bared his feet,[13] and ran following such ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear heart's content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... however trivial in appearance, was sure to be mortal. Indeed, a Spanish writer, not content with this, imputes such malignity to the virus that a drop of it, as he asserts, mingling with the blood oozing from a wound, would ascend the stream into the vein, and diffuse its fatal influence over ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... in the way of improvement. Knowledge is their devil. So far as antagonism to progression goes, there is no sensible difference between the hierarchies of Rome or of England, or of Constantinople. To diffuse the 'truth' that 'will set men free' is no part of their 'wicked political system.' On the contrary, they labour to excite a general disgust of truth, and in defence of bad governments preach fine sermons from some one of the many congenial texts to ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... cured five out of six patients by copious bleedings. I relate here the reasons for an opinion without pretending to a discovery. Something like this doctrine may be found in certain modern publications, but it is delivered in that vague and diffuse style, which I trust your example ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... light, conspicuous; the salt, working concealed; and the dew, visible like the former, but yet unobtrusive and operating silently like the latter. Some of us had rather be light than salt; prefer to be conspicuous rather than to diffuse a wholesome silent influence around us. But these three types must all be blended, both in regard to the manner of working, and in regard to the effects produced. We shall refresh and beautify the world only in proportion ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... disputes between himself and friends, digested into as many books. He argues throughout after the manner of an Academic, even with an affectation of inconsistency; sometimes making use of the Socratic dialogue, sometimes launching out into the diffuse expositions which characterise his other treatises.[221] He first disputes against the fear of death; and in so doing he adopts the opinion of the Platonic school, as regards the nature of God and the soul. The succeeding discussions on enduring pain, on alleviating ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... old friend of his who knew, and told him, of my exact circumstances. This gentleman received me kindly and courteously. He and his like were among the most furiously hurried in the race, but their handling of great masses of diffuse information gave them, in many cases, a wide outlook, and where, as often happened, they were well balanced as well as honest, I think they served their age as truly as any of their contemporaries, and ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... these I muse In this ancestral place, But of a kindred face That never joy or hope shall here diffuse. ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... manufactures, or the outlay of any money amongst them. Who will carry his machinery to a country where—though he may be a good master and a kind friend, though he may give occupation to hundreds and diffuse wealth among thousands—his spindles may be stopped at the beck of a priest, and his machinery left to rust at the dictate of Mr O'Connell. Independent men do not wish to lose all self-control—to sacrifice all right of private judgment; and he who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... distinction possessed by the northern parts of the island. It is beyond our power, as individuals, to convert the entire agricultural population of our islands into a reading body, but we can avail ourselves of the tendency wherever it exists; and by writing, or diffusing, or aiding to diffuse, good books, we can supply ready instruction to such as now wish for it, and can put it in the way of those in whom other men, by other means, are labouring to awaken the dormant desire for knowledge. Reader, do you wish to improve agriculture? —then buy you a good book, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... to listen to it. The term of their tyranny is at length accomplished. The Vice-Chancellor has fled on horseback. The Proctors have resigned their usurped authority. The Scouts have fraternised with the friends of liberty. The University is no more. A Republican Lyceum will henceforth diffuse light and civilisation. The hebdomadal board is abolished. The Legislative Powers will be entrusted to a General Convention of the whole Lyceum. A Provisional Government has been established. The undersigned citizens have nobly devoted themselves to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various

... fundamentalism and establishing rights for women unmatched by any other Arab nation. In recent years, Tunisia has taken a moderate, non-aligned stance in its foreign relations. Domestically, it has sought to diffuse rising pressure for a more ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... effectually roused; nothing, therefore, can kindle the flame but such oppressions of some classes or order in society as give able men the opportunity of seconding the general mass; discontent will diffuse itself around; and if the Government take not warning in time, it is alone answerable for all the burnings and all the plunderings and all the devastation and all ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... registration a bet was safe, and Lord Monmouth had the satisfaction of drawing the Whig Minister at Naples into a cool thousand on the event. Soon after this he returned to England, and determined to pay a visit to Coningsby Castle, feast the county, patronise the borough, diffuse that confidence in the party which his presence never failed to do; so great and so just was the reliance in his unerring powers of calculation and his intrepid pluck. Notwithstanding Schedule A, the ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... accumulated, must be principally from commerce and manufactures. The system of abandoning the country and congregating in cities, tends directly to concentrate wealth into the hands of a few, and to diffuse poverty and crime among the masses of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... however, the lightning grew paler and more diffuse, and the thunderclaps lost some of their terror amid the monotonous rattling of the downpour. Then the rain also abated, and the clouds began to disperse. In the region of the sun, a lightness appeared, and between the white-grey clouds could ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy

... training covered every contingency: he could always be as concise or as diffuse as the occasion required. Even he himself, however, was surprised at the quick felicity of the terms in which he was conscious of conveying that, were it compatible with higher conveniences, he should extremely like to be transferred to duties in a more distant quarter of the ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... other figures. So it is in the right-hand division, and Peter especially shows it, for the side away from the angel is scarcely to be made out in the gloom. In the left-hand division, the torch, the moon struggling through the clouds, and the breaking of the dawn diffuse a light ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... opposition. He was especially energetic in protesting against the lending to Austria and Russia of money that was in effect borrowed to repay the cost of the oppressive war against Hungary. It is impossible not to admire the courage, the sound sense, and the elevation with which Cobden thus strove to diffuse the doctrine of moral responsibility in connection with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... subject with the higher ornaments of style, and diffused around the severer sciences the graces and elegancies of taste. For force of expression he might be compared to Chatham, and in splendid imagery he sometimes rivaled Burke. He would, at pleasure, spread a sudden blaze around his subject or diffuse about it a ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... an active part in the stirring events of his time, I shall be much obliged to any of your correspondents who will refer me to any incidental notices of him in cotemporary or other writers: to diffuse which kind of information your paper seems to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various

... before her a form of abjuration, whereby, disavowing her revelations and visions from heaven, she confessed her errors in matters of faith, and renounced them humbly. At the bottom of the document she made the mark of a cross. Doubts have arisen as to the genuineness of this long and diffuse deed in the form in which it has been published in the trial-papers. Twenty-four years later, in 1455, during the trial undertaken for the rehabilitation of Joan, several of those who had been present ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... there was something almost ethereal about her now, and her sombre eyes looked nearly double their size in her small face of which the contour was so painfully distinct. Yet she was as vivid and alive as ever; she seemed to diffuse, as it were, ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... time: and here the Irish clergyman threw into the same scale the entire weight of his character. For instance; if a youth had a natural aptitude for mathematics, and he asked, ought he to give himself to the study, in hope that he might diffuse a serviceable knowledge of it, or possibly even enlarge the boundaries of the science? my friend would have replied, that such a purpose was very proper, if entertained by a worldly man. Let the dead bury their dead; and let the world study the things of the ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... music and comparatively uninteresting in its easy-going choral music), and the last period (1733-1750) in which, while the choral works became at once more numerous and more terse (e.g. Jesu, der du meine Seele) the instrumental music, though never diffuse, shows an increasing preference for designs on a large scale. (Compare, for example, the second book of the Wohltemperirtes Klavier, 1744, with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... finance, civil law, commerce, trade, and the consolidation of the new government; he promised to employ his influence to restore order and discipline in the army, to put the kingdom in a state of defence, and to diffuse ideas respecting the French revolution, calculated to re-establish a good understanding in Europe. He added the following words, which were received with much applause: "Gentlemen, in order that your important labours, as well as your zeal, may produce ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... learned man. Now most persons in this category supply themselves with information, as peddlers do with goods, for the benefit of others, and lay up stores in order to diffuse them abroad for the benefit of society in general. Not so my excellent uncle, Professor Hardwigg; he studied, he consumed the midnight oil, he pored over heavy tomes, and digested huge quartos and folios in order to keep the knowledge ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... other friends, were met in secrecy at Port Royal des Champs. Their conversation turned to the pending case, and the misapprehensions and prejudices which prevailed in the public mind regarding it. It was felt that some effort should be made to clear away these prejudices, and to diffuse right information in a popular form. Arnauld, ever ready with his pen, was prepared himself to undertake this task; and in a few days afterwards he read to his friends a long and serious paper ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... antecedent, and catching the sound, and not the sense, they perverted the sense of the speaker, and made him appear as ignorant as themselves."] it would be unfair to judge of it even from these specimens. A Report, verbatim, of any effective speech must always appear diffuse and ungraceful in the perusal. The very repetitions, the redundancy, the accumulation of epithets which gave force and momentum in the career of delivery, but weaken and encumber the march of the style, when read. There is, indeed, the same sort of difference between a faithful short-hand Report, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... tufts, making of each a flake of fire, all raining at the same slight slope from hair-fine stems. Against the turf they looked for all the world like Chinese lanterns swung for some miniature revel of the fairies—they seemed literally to diffuse light upon the air. Ishmael stood staring, stung to excitement by that suddenly-glimpsed beauty; but Phoebe darted forward, and the next moment had withdrawn a foot whose stout country shoe and white ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... give to folly the attributes of wisdom. I had seen, with extreme concern, men, whom the lenity, mistaken lenity, I must call it, of our government had rescued from punishment, if not from ruin, busily engaged in this scandalous traffic, and, availing themselves of their extensive connections to diffuse, by an infinite variety of channels, the poison of democracy over their native land. In short, I had seen the British press, the grand palladium of British liberty, devoted to the cause of Gallic licentiousness, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... sordidness, oppression, and shame? Why can not we rise to noble conceptions of our destiny? Why do we not feel that our work as a nation is to carry freedom, religion, science, and a nobler form of human nature over this continent? And why do we not remember that to diffuse these blessings we must first cherish them in our own borders, and that whatever deeply and permanently corrupts us will make our spreading influence a curse, not a blessing, to this New World? It is a common idea in Europe that we ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... his forte and omniscience his foible,' has left no enduring monument behind him; and so it must always be with mortals who have only fifty years of thought allotted to them at the very most, and who diffuse it. Everyone admits the value of application, but very few are aware how its force is wasted by diffusion: it is like a volatile essence in a bottle without a cork. When, on the other hand, it is ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... influences, and sinking into the hunter or savage state; to render the citizen, how far soever from the seat of his government, worthy, by proper knowledge and intelligence, of his important privileges as a sovereign constituent of the government; to diffuse, throughout all parts of the land, enlightenment, social improvement, and national affinities, elevating our people in the scale of civilization, and binding them together ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt

... beneath mine eye: Yet there are things whose strong reality Outshines our fairy-land; in shape and hues More beautiful than our fantastic sky, And the strange constellations which the Muse O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse: ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... large, smiling, diffuse, reached out parenthetically from the incoming throng on her threshold to waylay Bernald with the question as he was about to move past her in the wake of ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... before all things anxious to express, may think of those laws, the limitations of vocabulary, structure, and the like, as a restriction, but if a [13] real artist will find in them an opportunity. His punctilious observance of the proprieties of his medium will diffuse through all he writes a general air of sensibility, of refined usage. Exclusiones debitae—the exclusions, or rejections, which nature demands—we know how large a part these play, according to Bacon, in the science of nature. ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... Na'ul ("The Locked Garden", Berlin, 1765); the other parts never appeared in print. They bear witness to their author's solid scientific attainments, and it is regrettable that their value is obscured by his style, diffuse to the point of prolixity. Besides, Wessely contributed to the German translation of the Bible, and to the commentary on the Bible, both, as mentioned before, works presided over by Mendelssohn, to whom he was attached by the ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... of this universal benevolence to a young gentleman, as he grows up, will be, as I humbly conceive, so to diffuse itself over his mind, as to influence all his actions, and give a grace to every thing he does or says, and make him admired and respected from the best and most durable motives; and will be of greater advantage to him for his attaining a handsome address and behaviour ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... convey some direction about the Circus at Rome, he begins with a pleasant sketch of the history of chariot racing. One marvels at the man who, in such a period, preserved this mood of liberal leisure. His style is perfectly suited to the matter; diffuse, ornate, amusingly affected; altogether a precious mode of writing, characteristic of literary decadence. When the moment demands it, he is pompously grandiloquent; in dealing with a delicate situation, he becomes involved and obscure. We perceive in ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... contains two quite noble ones, "Redgauntlet" and "Nigel"; two of very high value, "Durward" and "Woodstock"; the slovenly and diffuse "Peveril," written for the trade;[56] the sickly "Tales of the Crusaders," and the entirely broken and diseased "St. Ronan's Well." This last I throw out of count altogether, and of the rest, accept only the four first named as sound work; so that the list of the novels in which ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... work of a dramatic kind, comes last. Just put the terms of the problem the other way round. Give descriptions, to which our language lends itself so admirably, instead of diffuse dialogue, magnificent in Scott's work, but colorless in your own. Lead naturally up to your dialogue. Plunge straight into the action. Treat your subject from different points of view, sometimes in a side-light, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... years thro time descend, What wide creations on thy voice depend; And, like the Sun, whose all-delighting ray To those mild regions gives his purest day, Diffuse thy bounties, let me instant fly; In three short moons the generous task I'll try; Then swift returning, I'll conduct my fair Where realms submissive wait ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... conquest of Britain by the English our authorities are scant and imperfect. The only extant British account is the "Epistola" of Gildas, a work written probably about A.D. 560. The style of Gildas is diffuse and inflated, but his book is of great value in the light it throws on the state of the island at that time, and above all as the one record of the conquest which we have from the side of the conquered. The English conquerors, on ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... of miracles" who wander through Russia can always find, not only free lodging, but also opportunity for making their fortunes. Their gains mount, often, to incredible figures, and the faith and piety that they diffuse have both good and bad aspects. There are places, for instance, like Cronstadt, which, at one time inhabited mainly by drunkards, became before the war a "holy town." Apart from Father Ivan and his peculiar reputation, there were hundreds of other pilgrims who, though quite unknown ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... Second of December had its refinements of cruelty; it required in addition petty victims. Its appetite for extermination extended to the poor and to the obscure, its anger and animosity penetrated as far as the lowest class; it created fissures in the social subsoil in order to diffuse the proscription there; the local triumvirates, nicknamed "mixed mixtures," served it for that. Not one head escaped, however humble and puny. They found means to impoverish the indigent, to ruin those dying of hunger, to spoil the disinherited; ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... now well known, but he still held to the Mesmeric theory of the existence of a universal fluid which saturated all bodies, especially the human body. It was electric in nature, and man could display and diffuse this electric ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... nitrogenous bodies have their type in the albumen of an egg; and muscle substance and the less modified living "protoplasm" of plants, a considerable proportion of the substance of seeds, bulbs, and so on, are albuminous bodies, or proteids. These also are insoluble bodies, or when soluble, will not diffuse easily through animal membranes. ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... upon the higher classes the obligation which they owe to the lower orders of society, and in urging them to assume the guardianship of the latter, the writer is not referring to vague and diffuse measures of ordinary philanthropy, but to definite and practical ones, of vast importance to the welfare of the wealthiest as well as to that of the poorest member of society. The individuals who have been most actively ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... expressed his true faith when he wrote, deliberately, the fervent estimate in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy. Johnson saw that Pope had expanded it, and his own experience made him say that the editors and admirers of Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, had not done much more than diffuse and paraphrase this "epitome of excellence." But concurrently on to Johnson's time we can trace the influence of Thomas Rymer, who, in his Short View of Tragedy, had championed the classical drama, and had gone as far in abuse as his greater contemporary had gone in ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... comforted her heart somewhere with a little self-satisfaction, stability, yet filled her with a certain sharp contempt and hate of him. She wanted him to herself, she hated the Salvator Mundi touch. It was something diffuse and generalised about him, which she could not stand. He would behave in the same way, say the same things, give himself as completely to anybody who came along, anybody and everybody who liked to appeal to him. It was ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... which were instinctive with the king, and which were daily manifested in multiplied ways, soon won to him nearly all hearts. All France had writhed in anguish through years of war and misery. Peace, the greatest of all earthly blessings, was now beginning to diffuse its joys. The happiness of the Parisians amounted almost to transport. It was difficult for the king to pass through the streets, the crowd so thronged him with their acclamations. Many other important towns ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... already made some extracts from this collection of "Various Epistles" and the reader, from the specimens thus submitted to him, will have formed some conception of the character of the author's style. That style is diffuse and turgid, marked in an eminent degree with the prevailing faults of the sixth century, an age of literary decay, when the language of Cicero and Virgil was falling into its dotage. There is much ill-timed display of irrelevant learning, and a grievous absence of simplicity and directness, ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... together with the yelk of two new-laid eggs boiled hard, and pour it over your sallet, stirring it well together. The super-curious insist that the knife with which sallet herb is cut must be of silver. Some who are husbands of their oyl, pour at first the oyl alone, as more apt to communicate and diffuse its slipperiness, than when it is mingled and beaten with the acids, which they pour on last of all; and it is incredible how small a quantity of oyl thus applied is sufficient to imbue a very plentiful assembly of ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... for I never took to volcanoes much—I never loved to git intimate with 'em. But it wuz a sight to behold, so Miss Plank said—she went in to see it. She said, "It took her breath away the sight on't, but she's got it back agin (the breath); she talked real diffuse about it. But to resoom. The Chinese Village wuz jest like goin' through China or bein' dropped down onbeknown to you ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... language as French is not its only peculiarity. There is in the style, apart from grammar or vocabulary, a rude angularity, a rough dramatism like that of oral narrative; there is a want of proportion in the style of different parts, now over curt, now diffuse and wordy, with at times even a hammering reiteration; a constant recurrence of pet colloquial phrases (in which, however, other literary works of the age partake); a frequent change in the spelling of the same proper names, even when recurring within a few lines, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... structure for the performance of a special work or function. The protozoa developed the cell for all time to come, the coelenterata developed the tissues which still compose our bodies. But they had them mainly in a diffuse form. A sort of digestive and reproductive system they did possess. But the work of arranging these tissues and condensing them into compact organs was to be done by the next higher group, ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... honor. Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace and to serve it; and would condemn to obscurity everything formed to diffuse lustre and glory around a state! Woe to that country, too, that, passing into the opposite extreme, considers a low education, a mean, contracted view of things, a sordid, mercenary occupation, as a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... who can even admire a thing like Varney, because, through the tawdry man, you recognize art and skill, even though wasted in spoiling canvas; you, who have only to live as you feel, in order to diffuse blessings all around you,—fie, foolish boy! you will own your error when I tell you why I come from my rooms at Gray's Inn to see the walls in which Hampden, a plain country squire like you, shook with plain words the tyranny of ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... best for himself, best for the empire, and best for the contending parties, Christian and pagan, to promote their union or amalgamation as much as possible. Even sincere Christians do not seem to have been averse to this; perhaps they believed that the new doctrines would diffuse most thoroughly by incorporating in themselves ideas borrowed from the old, that Truth would assert her self in the end, and the impurity be cast off. In accomplishing this amalgamation, Helena, the empress-mother, aided by the court ladies, led the way. For her gratification there ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... Sometimes, indeed, he is quite beyond the comprehension of his students—but when they do not understand, they admire, and feel they are in the presence of greatness. His writings contain many of the faults of his lectures. They are often laboured and obscure, diffuse and verbose. ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones

... be owned that such a little book as this has long been wanted; for of all writing, that relating to the stage is the most diffuse. It is scattered about in biography, criticism and anecdote, not unfrequently of great interest, but occupying so much "valuable" time, that to condense it, or to pick the wheat from the chaff, is no trifling task. So much for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various

... nothing. In settling among them he ran the risk of being ignored. But when it came to ignoring, Jimmy considered that success lay with the party who got in first. So before he settled he took care to diffuse a sort of impression that the Tasker Jevonses were never at home to anybody, that it was not to be expected that a great novelist and playwright would have time for calling and being called on, even if he had the absurd inclination. ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... without combining, in a confined space, it might be supposed that O would settle to the bottom and H rise to the top. This would, in fact, take place at first, but only for an instant, for all gases tend to diffuse or become intimately mixed. The lighter the gas the ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams

... They did not diffuse a light of celestial joy over his countenance. On the contrary, the Poor Relation's remark turned him pale, as I have said; and when the terrible wrinkled and jaundiced looking-glass turned him green in addition, and he saw ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the power of a class is therefore proportioned to its knowledge—pray, do you suppose that while your order, the operatives, are instructing themselves, all the rest of the community are to be at a stand-still? Diffuse knowledge as you may, you will never produce equality of knowledge. Those who have most leisure, application, and aptitude for learning, will still know the most. Nay, by a very natural law, the more general the appetite for knowledge, the more the increased competition would ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... school. I will not dwell upon this, but I will say that I gained a great interest in the science of education, and acquired profound misgivings as to the nature of the intellectual process known by the name of secondary education. More and more I began to perceive that it is conducted on diffuse, detailed, unbusiness-like lines. I tried my best, as far as it was consistent with loyalty to an established system, to correct the faulty bias. But it was with a profound relief that I found myself suddenly provided with a literary ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... parts and proceed to make one as like it as possible: here again is the maximum of consciousness, the essence of thinking. Or the imitation may consist in following verbal directions: this is far from easy if the teacher is at all vague, and promotes valuable effort if she is clear but not diffuse: the putting of words into action necessitates a considerable amount of imagining, and the establishment of very important associations in brain centres. Such cases might occur in connection with weaving, cardboard and paper work, ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... gathered himself together promptly, got himself under full control, had all his wits about him and made a perfectly conceived, finely delivered, coherent, logical, telling speech in his own defence. It was long, but nowhere diffuse, and it held the attention manifestly, not only of the mutineers, but of the Emperor himself, and of all his retinue, even the most vacuous of the mere courtiers. As he ended it, it was plain that Perennis believed he ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... nations of primitive antiquity, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul was not a mere probable hypothesis, needing laborious researches and diffuse argumentation to produce conviction of its truth. Nor can we hardly give it the name of Faith; for it was a lively certainty, like the feeling of one's own existence and identity, and of what is actually present; exerting its influence on all ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... sympathy with the feudal system which annexed indissolubly the idea of public function with the possession of property. The great landlord who is wisely governing large districts and using all his influence to diffuse order, comfort, education, and civilisation among his tenantry; the captain of industry who is faithfully and honestly organising the labour of thousands, and regarding his task as a moral duty; the rich man who, with all ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... pervaded the audience and, as it were, seemed to diffuse itself from the Imperial Pavilion, crowded, not, as usual, with jaunty figures in gaudy apparel, all crimson, blue, and green, picked out and set off by edgings of silver and gold, but with a solemn retinue, all hidden under dingy umbrella hats and swathed in ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... herbal, others coquetting, others quiet. Some one mentioned music. Directly afterward, Mr. Raleigh rose and approached the piano. Every one turned. Taking his seat, he threw out a handful of rich chords; the instrument seemed to diffuse a purple cloud; then, buoyed over perfect accompaniment, the voice rose in that one love-song of the world. What depth of tenderness is there from which the "Adelaide" does not sound? What secret of tragedy, too? Singing, he throbbed through it a vitality as ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... humanized knowledge; because they broadened the basis of life and intelligence; because they worked powerfully to diffuse the sweetness and light, to make reason and the will of God prevail. With Saint Augustine they said: "Let us not leave thee alone to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as thou didst before the creation of the firmament, the division of light from darkness; let ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... happening in the hood of the tower. From a black opaque object it began to turn a dull red and to diffuse a subdued glow, while the hum turned into ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... way they seem to have. Your trouble is that you're too diffuse; you spread yourself out too much. You want to fix your mind on one thing; and that will have to be business as ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... How, though the Sphere shewed me other mysteries of Spaceland, I still desired more; and what came of it 20. How the Sphere encouraged me in a Vision 21. How I tried to teach the Theory of Three Dimensions to my Grandson, and with what success 22. How I then tried to diffuse the Theory of Three Dimensions by other means, ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott

... different styles; the concise, the diffuse, the lofty, and the humble. In the proper choice of style consists the resemblance which Dryden principally exacts from the translator. He is to exhibit his author's thoughts in such a dress of ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... themselves with freedom on the established religion, and the dark and fearful superstitions of paganism, falling into neglect, mouldered away. If, then, before the art of multiplying the productions of the human mind existed, the doctrines of a philosopher in manuscript or by lecture could diffuse themselves throughout a literary nation, it will baffle the algebraist of metaphysics to calculate the unknown quantities of the propagation of human thought. There are problems in metaphysics, as well as in mathematics, which ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... bear to those of Rembrandt. The peculiarity of Wilhelm Meister as a novel is more difficult of apprehension, if one does not seek the novel where in truth it lies—in the story of Mignon and the Harper, and only sees in the remainder the certainly somewhat diffuse but deeply-thought and classically-delineated picture of the earnest striving after culture of a German in the end of the eighteenth century. It would argue, however, as it appears to me, much prejudice, and an utterly unreasonable temper, not to ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... Fame glories to diffuse, And to Iarba next her flight pursues, To fan the flame that in his bosom glows. To Jove himself, his birth the monarch owes; A nymph his mother, by a forc'd embrace; 250 And to the God, the author of his race, ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire

... come back again, and that this was a troop of devotees thronging to this holy shrine. The day of pilgrimages is, indeed come back again; but they are the pilgrimages of knowledge and an enlightened curiosity. The day of that science which the saints of Iona were said to diffuse first in Britain has now risen to a splendid noon; and not the least of its evidences is that, every few days through every summer, a company like this descends on this barren strand to behold what Johnson calls "that illustrious island which was once the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... killed by a wild boar. Venus mourns over his dead body, and causes a flower (the anemone or wind flower) to spring from his blood. Shakespeare's handling of the story shows both the virtues and the defects of a young writer. It is more diffuse, more wordy, than his later work, and written for the taste of another time than ours; but, on the other hand, it is full of vivid, picturesque language of melodious rhythm, and of charming little ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... his law. If a single phenomenon could be pointed out which the aether is proved incompetent to explain, we should have to give it up; but no such phenomenon has ever been pointed out. It is, therefore, at least as certain that space is filled with a medium, by means of which suns and stars diffuse their radiant power, as that it is traversed by that force which holds in its grasp, not only our planetary system, but the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... "But I grow diffuse; I must return to facts. Honora Dudleigh, who saw my devotion, encouraged it. I wondered at it sometimes, for she knew the smallness of my fortune, and must have known the nature of the woman I expected to share it. But as time passed ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... at their levees. Miss Pelham, the daughter of the prime minister, was one of the most notorious gamblers of her time, and Lady Cowper speaks in her Diary of sittings at Court, of which the lowest stake was 200 guineas. The public lotteries contributed very powerfully to diffuse the taste for gambling ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... these adorn your mind, Religion, Virtue, Truth; And thus diffuse their odor sweet, O'er the ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... mile of this Long Bridge. We seemed to occupy the whole length of it, with our files opened to diffuse the weight of our column. We were not now the tired and sleepy squad which just a moon ago had trudged along the railroad to the Annapolis Junction, looking up a Capital ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... mouths, there stands now a burning-bush all alive with poisonous, bristling stings. The atmosphere of the city is changed; in lieu of the friendly perfume of honey, the acrid odour of poison prevails; thousands of tiny drops glisten at the end of the stings, and diffuse rancour and hatred. Before the bewildered parasites are able to realise that the happy laws of the city have crumbled, dragging down in most inconceivable fashion their own plentiful destiny, each one is assailed by three or four envoys of justice; and these vigorously proceed to ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... sick a medical man requires as much courage and tact as if he were dealing with lunatics! These dark shadows, so harmful to the good name of China, are certain to be dissipated by the numerous agencies now employed to diffuse intelligence. But what of the feeling ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... or two to find out what are the passages in a great writer which are to become commonplaces in literature and conversation. It is to be remembered that Emerson is one of those authors whose popularity must diffuse itself from above downwards. And after all, few will dare assert that "The Vanity of Human Wishes" is greater as a poem than Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," or Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale," because no line in either of these poems is half so ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... and work till 4-5 a.m. As he had prodigious facility and spontaneity he finished his part of the task in two winters. Some of the tales in the suite, especially that of "Maugraby," are attributed wholly to his invention; and, as a rule, his aim and object were to diffuse his spiritual ideas and to write treatises on moral perfection under the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... yet so unswervingly sure in its action, so distinct in its surety, that she was attracted to him. She watched his cool, hard, separate fire, fascinated by it. Would she rather have it than her husband's diffuse heat, than his ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... what is like ourselves, and the greater and clearer our sense of its likeness with ourselves, the greater our pity. And if we may say that this likeness provokes our pity, it may also be maintained that it is our reservoir of pity, eager to diffuse itself over everything, that makes us discover the likeness of things with ourselves, the common bond that unites us with them ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... as are entitled to freedom by the laws and constitutions of any of the United States, and who, notwithstanding, are detained in bondage by fraud or violence. From a full conviction of the truth and obligation of these principles; from a desire to diffuse them wherever the miseries and vices of slavery exist, and in humble confidence of the favor and support of the Father of mankind, the subscribers have associated themselves, under the title of 'The Pennsylvania ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole

... his patriotic views will extend with his power to carry wishes into action; that his attachment to his warm-hearted countrymen will still increase upon further acquaintance; and that he will long diffuse happiness through the wide circle, which is peculiarly subject to the influence and example of a great ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... Dante's poems were born of the collision between the despots who sought to enslave Florence, and the patriots who dreamed of democracy. Milton's songs were written during the English Revolution, when the Puritan, seeking to diffuse the good things of life, and the Cavalier, who wished to monopolize the earth's treasure, ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... been balmy and beautiful, with a bright array of stars, and a golden harvest moon, which seemed to diffuse even warmth with its radiance; but now Turpin was approaching the region of fog and fen, and he began to feel the influence of that dank atmosphere. The intersecting dykes, yawners, gullies, or whatever they are ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the best history in English on its problem. Dr. Smith's book is really a history of education written around the origin and tendencies of the high school as central. It is a scholarly work, based on access to original Latin and other sources, though diffuse. ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... heard one day With endless schemes If I allowed A gentleman say Both good and new My family pride That criminals who For Titipu; To be my guide, Are cut in two But if I flit, I'd volunteer Can hardly feel The benefit To quit this sphere The fatal steel, That I'd diffuse Instead of you And so are slain The town would lose! In a minute or two, Without much pain. Now every man But family pride If this is true, To aid his clan Must be denied, It's jolly for you; Should ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... custom of poets and historians. Their emotions are factitious; they are diffuse in their descriptions; they pile up words for mere effect. Moses husbands his words, but is emphatic by repetition that he may arouse the reader's attention to the importance of the message and compel him to feel his own emotions instead of reading ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... is left on open circuit the liquids diffuse, and metallic copper precipitates upon the zincs. This impairs its efficiency and creates local action. As long as the battery is kept at work on closed circuit work but ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... grandeur; its stains are never foul nor dim; its undecomposing surface preserves a soft, fruit-like polish forever, slowly flushed by the maturing suns of centuries. Hence, while in the Northern Gothic the effort of the architect was always so to diffuse his ornament as to prevent the eye from permanently resting on the blank material, the Italian fearlessly left fallow large fields of uncarved surface, and concentrated the labor of the chisel on detached portions, in which the eye, being rather directed to them by their isolation than ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... a few words to one or two of your notes. i should be glad to mention more instances of Queen Elizabeth's fondness for praise,(903) but fear I have already been too diffuse on her head. Bufo(904) is certainly Lord Halifax: the person at whom you hint is more nearly described by the name of Bubo, and I think in one place is even called Bubb.(905) The number of volumes of Parthenissa I took ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... maritime supremacy and a World-Empire were either mere bluff or a portentous challenge. Only the good-natured, easy-going British race could so long have clung to the former explanation, thereby leaving the most diffuse, vulnerable, and ill-armed Empire that has ever existed face to face with an Empire that is compact, well-fortified, and armed to the teeth. In this contrast lies one of the main ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... are not born to soar—and ah! how few In tracks where Wisdom leads their paths pursue! Contagious when to wit or wealth allied, Folly and Vice diffuse their venom wide. On Folly every fool his talent tries; 5 It asks some toil to imitate the wise; Tho' few like Fox can speak—like Pitt can think— Yet all like Fox can game—like ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... oil upon my lips, and there was a greasy scum upon the woodwork of the machine. Some infinitely fine organic matter appeared to be suspended in the atmosphere. There was no life there. It was inchoate and diffuse, extending for many square acres and then fringing off into the void. No, it was not life. But might it not be the remains of life? Above all, might it not be the food of life, of monstrous life, even as the humble grease of the ocean is ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... aching brow, and the pearls press a saddened bosom; and when the holiest of earthly institutions is thus violated, each relation of life is profaned; and polluted streams descend from the highest sources and diffuse their poison through all the ranks of life—through ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... of the room depends very materially on the difference of temperature between these upper and lower strata and the movements of air in the room. The heavy poisonous vapors and gases fall into and diffuse themselves among the fresh air of the lower strata—very readily if they are nearly the same temperature as the upper, but scarcely at all if the air at the ceiling line is much hotter. Hence it occurs that, in warmed rooms of such size as I have mentioned, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various

... retarding their drift to leeward; but it was none the worse for this, since, with their drift scarcely retarded, they rode all the more easily; and presently, when the oil began to exude from the can and diffuse itself over the surface of the water, there was a narrow space just ahead of us where the seas ceased to break, with the result that in the course of ten minutes we were riding quite dry and comfortable, except for the scud-water that came driving along. ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... existence of an open sea, which bounds its northern confines. Europe would therefore become colder* if Africa were to be overflowed by the ocean; of if the mythical Atlantis were to arise and connect Europe with North America; or if the Gulf Stream were no longer to diffuse the warming influence of its waters into the North Sea; or if, finally, another mass of solid land should be upheaved by volcanic action, and interposed between ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... which all these causes had concurred universally to diffuse, the slightest motion in his kingdom threatened the most dangerous consequences. Those things which in quiet times would have only raised a slight controversy, now, when the minds of men were exasperated and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... point of dilution, with water. It is itself, in fact, so greedy for water, it will pick it up from watery textures, and deprive them of it until, by its saturation, its power of reception is exhausted, after which it will diffuse into ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... that it excites me to behold them. I cut one for a cane, for I would fain handle and lean on it. I love to press the berries between my fingers, and see their juice staining my hand. To walk amid these upright, branching casks of purple wine, which retain and diffuse a sunset glow, tasting each one with your eye, instead of counting the pipes on a London dock, what a privilege! For Nature's vintage is not confined to the vine. Our poets have sung of wine, the product of ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... when there is probability that the enemy may escape unless promptly struck. This was not so here. Nor should the "Cornwall," "Grafton," and "Lion" have been permitted to take a course which allowed, almost compelled, the enemy to concentrate rather than diffuse his fire. The details of the affair are not precise enough to warrant more comment than naming these mistakes, without necessarily attributing them to fault on the part of ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... from 7' to 10' in diffuse daylight and at 60 deg.F. it will gild well, and it generally pays to make a few trials in a test tube to arrive at this. If too much reducing solution is present the liquid will get dark more rapidly, and vice versa. The gilding will require several hours—as ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... the most diffuse and the most captious of all, the following curious question was put to the accused: "When you were before Jargeau, what was it you were wearing behind your helmet? ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... to a greatly disordered nervous system. Regarding you as representing Americans at large, I feel that the occasion is one on which arrears of thanks are due. I ought to begin with the time, some two and twenty years ago, when my highly valued friend, Professor Youmans, making efforts to diffuse my books here, interested on their behalf Messrs. Appleton, who have ever treated me so honorably and so handsomely; and I ought to detail from that time onward the various marks and acts of sympathy by which I have been encouraged ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... between Britain, France and Spain in Europe; and orders were sent to all the colonies to desist from acts of hostility. Governor Craven, deeply interested in the prosperity of Carolina, now turned his attention to improve the precious blessings of peace, and to diffuse a spirit of industry and agriculture throughout the settlement. The lands in Granville county were found upon trial rich and fertile, and the planters were encouraged to improve them. Accordingly a number of plantations were settled in the ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... by the fires, 336-338; the effect which the bonfires are supposed to have in fertilizing cattle and women may also be attributed to an increase of solar heat produced by the fires, 338 sq.; the carrying of lighted torches about the country at the festivals may be explained as an attempt to diffuse ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... Nottingham considered that they had aurora-ed quite long enough. They had no right to keep all their happiness to themselves; it was their duty to diffuse it, and let other people warm their hands and hearts at it. She had written what is diplomatically known as a "strong note" to say so, and she had mentioned that she was not alone in considering that they were being rather selfish. Tom Lindfield thought so too. He openly averred that ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... bent, Snuff the rank steam, and chuckle at the scent?— My soul is sick!—I turn with sated ear, And find a cordial in my brethren here. Peers who their conscience to no market bring; Respect themselves, their country, and their king: Nor would round England's smiling hearths diffuse The breath—the very atmosphere of stews. O horrid! yes, I feel the blast impure, Air no blessed spirit may unpained endure: Yet leave I not without a warning voice: Hear, and obey, and ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous

... Parenchymatous Nephritis. Chronic Diffuse Desquamative or Tubal Nephritis. Chronic Diffuse Nephritis with Exudation). Causes.—Young adult life and most common in males. It may come from acute inflammation of the kidneys that was due to exposure, pregnancy, or scarlet fever, or follow excessive use of alcohol, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... Major grimly. "Half a pound of it gives off the radiation of an eighth of a ton of pure radium. One can guess that he had been instructed to get up as high as he could in the Shed and dump the powder into the air. It would diffuse—scatter as it sifted down. It would have contaminated the whole Shed past all use for years—let alone ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster



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