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Element   /ˈɛləmənt/   Listen
Element

noun
1.
An abstract part of something.  Synonyms: component, constituent, factor, ingredient.  "Two constituents of a musical composition are melody and harmony" , "The grammatical elements of a sentence" , "A key factor in her success" , "Humor: an effective ingredient of a speech"
2.
An artifact that is one of the individual parts of which a composite entity is made up; especially a part that can be separated from or attached to a system.  Synonyms: component, constituent.  "A component or constituent element of a system"
3.
Any of the more than 100 known substances (of which 92 occur naturally) that cannot be separated into simpler substances and that singly or in combination constitute all matter.  Synonym: chemical element.
4.
The most favorable environment for a plant or animal.
5.
One of four substances thought in ancient and medieval cosmology to constitute the physical universe.
6.
The situation in which you are happiest and most effective.
7.
A straight line that generates a cylinder or cone.



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"Element" Quotes from Famous Books



... development. The time consumed by this journey cannot be measured accurately; it may be as short as a few hours or as long as several days, but in all probability it is never longer than a week. Although the element of time is uncertain the method of transmission is well understood. Of its own accord the ovum can move after fertilization no better than before; it is never capable of moving itself. The active agent of transportation is the oviduct, which has been fitted for this purpose ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... us very nearly. Not merely because they lie at our very doors. That of course makes us more vividly and more constantly conscious of them, and every instinct of neighborly interest and sympathy is aroused and quickened by them; but that is only one element in the determination of our duty. We are glad to call ourselves the friends of Mexico, and we shall, I hope, have many an occasion, in happier times as well as in these days of trouble and confusion, to show that our friendship is genuine and disinterested, ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... may be mentioned Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas H. Benton (1887), and James Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson (3 vols., 1860). Edward Eggleston, The Circuit Rider (1888), and the Autobiography of Peter Cartwright (1856), touch upon important aspects of frontier life. The importance of the German element in American history is admirably set forth in Faust, The German Element in the United States (2 vols., 1909). The spread of New Englanders in the West is described by L. K. Mathews, The Expansion of New England (1909). The diplomatic negotiations which resulted in the ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... on the sea-shore is perhaps as ancient and as primitive a symbol of wonder as the mind can conceive. Beneath his feet are the stones and grasses of an element that is his own, natural to him, in some degree belonging to him, at any rate accepted by him. He has place and condition there. Above him arches a world of immense void, fleecy sailing clouds, infinite clear blueness, shapes that change and dissolve; his day comes out of it, his source ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... named the borders of the lake amiss. Along their whole length, the smaller trees overhung the water, with their branches often dipping in the transparent element The banks were steep, even from the narrow strand; and, as vegetation invariably struggles towards the light, the effect was precisely that at which the lover of the picturesque would have aimed, had the ordering ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... England; the Bears at Berne and the Wolf in the Roman Capitol are the most venerable local insignia; the carvings of Gibbons, in old English manor-houses, outrival all the luxurious charms of modern upholstery; Phidias is a more familiar element in Grecian history than Pericles; the moral energy of the old Italian republics is more impressively shadowed forth and conserved in the bold and vigorous creations of Michel Angelo than in the political annals of Macchiavelli; and it is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... midst of strength? The fettered helplessness in spite of which they soar to such heights? The most perfect sentence ever written bears to the thing it meant to say the relation which the chemist's formula does to the thing he handles, names, analyzes, can destroy, perhaps, but cannot make. Every element in the crystal, the liquid, can be weighed, assigned, and rightly called; nothing in all science is more wonderful than an exact chemical formula; but, after all is done, will remain for ever unknown the one subtle secret, the vital ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... skirted with fire, while opposite, on the west, the heat was almost intolerable; on the east were the cold waves of the lake, and on the north a burning pier that they could not cross. Their only hope was to cling to that narrow line where fire and water mingled, and with one element to fight the other. Here again was seen the mingling of all classes which the streets and every place of refuge witnessed. Judges, physicians, statesmen, clergymen, bankers, were jostled by roughs and thieves. The laborer sat on the sand with his family, side by side with the millionaire and his ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... be easily imagined, and fell into such a passion that he could not forbear railing at the Fool, and calling him knave, slanderer, backbiter, and son of perdition, and then cited some dreadful threatenings out of the Scriptures against him. Now the Jester thought he was in his element, and laid about him freely. 'Good Friar,' said he, 'be not angry, for it is written, "In patience possess your soul."' The Friar answered (for I shall give you his own words), 'I am not angry, you hangman; at least, I do not ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... guests who listened soon forgot all about the Scholarship and all about the three young candidates. They were interested in the words themselves; the words rang out; they were not remarkable so much for the heart element as for the strong, proud, ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade

... their stealing gold off his dress, to the great wrath of a second wife, the imperious Constance of Provence, who, coming from the more luxurious and corrupt south, hated and despised the roughness and asceticism of her husband. She was a fierce and passionate woman, and brought an element of cruelty into the court. In this reign the first instance of persecution to the death for heresy took place. The victim had been the queen's confessor; but so far was she from pitying him that she struck out one of his eyes with her staff, as he was led past her to the ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge

... poking his coke fire and reading his travellers' tales, had thought the same as you good people! But now he had to put matters to the test, and he saw with considerable disquietude the want of a fire, that indispensable element which nothing could replace. ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne

... to the growing enthusiasm and excitement. Baudricourt is said by Michelet to have sent off a secret express to the Court to ask what he should do; but of this there seems to be no direct evidence, though likelihood enough. The Court at Chinon contained a strong feminine element, behind the scenes. And it might be found that there were uses for the enthusiast, even if she did not turn out to be inspired. No doubt there were many comings and goings at this period which can only be traced confusedly through the depositions of ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... call them; but because the word "spiritual" is not scientifically defined, and every individual understands and uses this word in a personal and private way. To be impersonal the author has had to indicate this element by adding "so-called." I repeat once again that this book is not a "materialistic" or a "spiritualistic" book—it is a study of "Man" and therefore does and should include materialistic as well as spiritual ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... not until the middle of the following afternoon that Opal Ledoux appeared on deck, when her father, with an air of pride, mingled with a certain curious element of timidity, presented to her in due form both ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... finding was that the Japanese need the addition of meat and bread to their dietary. As far as meat is concerned he did not convince me. Let me quote him on the soy bean: "It is a remarkably good substitute for meat. It is very low in price but its nutritive value is very high. The essential element of miso, tofu and shoyu is soy bean." Bread is another matter. The Japanese Navy, presumably because it may find itself far from Japan, has accustomed its sailors to eat bread, and a case can certainly be made out for the general population not relying on rice as a grain ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... was a pronounced success. The Cardinal enjoyed water like a duck. He bathed, splashed, and romped until his mother was almost crazy for fear he would attract a watersnake or turtle; but the element of fear was not a part of his disposition. He learned to dry, dress, and plume his feathers, and showed such remarkable pride in keeping himself immaculate, that although only a youngster, he was already a bird of ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter

... caught and reflected the light, things of gold and silver, of jade and lapis lazuli, in a sort of tasteless profusion that detracted from the beauty of each, and made Dolores feel that she had been suddenly transported out of her own element into another that was hard to breathe and in which it was bad to live. It oppressed her, and though her courage was undiminished, the air of the place seemed to stifle ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... and that we should be made aware by joke and by stroke of any lie we entertain. Besides, a perception of the comic seems to be a balance-wheel in our metaphysical structure. It appears to be an essential element in a fine character.—A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... at work, I am finishing Cadio. It is warm, I am alive, I am calm and sad, I hardly know why. In this existence so even, so tranquil, and so gentle as I have here, I am in an element that weakens me morally while strengthening me physically; and I fall into melancholies of honey and roses which are none the less melancholy. It seems to me that all those I love forget me, and that it is justice, because I live a selfish life having ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... to the class of accounts of events written by people living at the time will give an atmosphere of reality and human interest to the events. For example, a story of early pioneer days told by a pioneer gives a personal element (see Pioneer Days, Kennedy); a letter by Mary Queen of Scots, to Elizabeth (see p. 143), will make both of these queens real living people, not mere names in history. (See Studies in the Teaching of History, Keatinge, p. 97, also selections from The Sources ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education

... prevent the advent of a confirmed foreign control. He created a constitutional ministry, upon whom the responsibility rested for the different branches of the administration. He likewise fomented an outburst of feeling among the Moslems against the foreign element in the constitutional ministry. This was intended to strengthen the pro-Egyptian element in the government, and Ismail thus hoped to demonstrate to the European Powers the uselessness of attempting to subordinate the Egyptians ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... given him a statue? On this I told him of the young lady of Harrow who would go to church in a barrow, and plied him with whatever rhyming nonsense I could call to mind, but it was no use; all of these things had an element of reality that robbed them of half their charm, whereas "Hey diddle diddle" had nothing in it that could conceivably ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... the four nobles were quickly landed upon Osnome and once more the Skylark traveled out into her element, the total vacuum and absolute zero of the outer void, with Crane at ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... impulse is to condemn her malicious falsehood, much more severely than if she had merely told a few lies about some one else. Yet it is quite evident that if we were to estimate the doings of men with perfect justice, we should fix solely on the moral element in their doings; and the accidental circumstance of the offence or injury to ourselves would be neither here nor there. The primary vulgar error, then, in this case is, undue and excessive disapprobation of misconduct from which ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... trials that have made speed an element of competitive economy, are the Port Byron, ...
— History of Steam on the Erie Canal • Anonymous

... 1. 'And have you foreigners surnames as well?' This question has often been put to me by Chinese. It marks the ignorance which belongs to the people of all that is external to [Sidebar] His ancestry. themselves, and the pride of antiquity which enters largely as an element into their character. If such a pride could in any case be justified, we might allow it to the family of the K'ung, the descendants of Confucius. In the reign of K'ang-hsi, twenty-one centuries and a half after ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge

... religious women have been Christian mystics too. Like Saint Catherine of Sienna, Saint Teresa, and other holy women, she was specially attracted to the spiritual and devotional aspect of the Catholic Faith. Neither did her devotion to the spiritual element unfit her for the practical side of things: quite the contrary. Like Saint Teresa, side by side with her religious life, she was a remarkably shrewd woman of business. It need scarcely be added that between so- called "spiritualism" as practised in England and the ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... speak of with certainty—Huron not much better—but Erie, and particularly Ontario, have been well investigated. The waters of these are pure, and impregnated chiefly with aluminous and calcareous matter, giving to the St. Lawrence river a fresh and admirable element and aliment. ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... the doing of the element With which you fought, my Lord! and not my merit. The Baltic Neptune did assert his freedom, The sea and land, it seemed, were not to serve One and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... is that the author is undoubtedly a barrister himself; if I am wrong on this point I finally withdraw my threat to join the Service. The second point is that he knows his Scotland even as well as he loves it. In the result you have two merits, which together amply discount the element of cheap sensationalism: one merit is the logical development of the story, and the other is its beautiful setting. I don't know whether it is due to the Scottish climate or to the legal atmosphere that the author ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various

... detected of an older order of things, which once existed, at all events, in the Semitic element of the Babylonian population. The dowry had to be paid to the husband, to be deposited, as it were, in his "hand." It was with him that the marriage contract was made. This must surely go back to an age when the marriage portion was really given ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... North, there was a strong Democratic element, and, but for the intrusion of the slavery question, the party would have controlled the government for many years to come. But the North was gradually coming to feel that the slavery question was more important than the more abstract ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... was in his element, for he loved to direct. His shouted commands would have made an impression upon an organized fire department. And he let it be known, in true showman's style, that the Twomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie was doing all in its power to ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... righteousness, applying the promises, &c. (p. 262). 34. But to make the Christian duties to consist either wholly or mostly in these, &c., is the way effectually to harden hypocrites (p. 262). 35. Those ministers do nothing less than promote the design of Christianity, that are never in their element, but when they are talking of the irrespectiveness of God's decrees, the absolute [ness of his] promises, the utter disability, and perfect impotence of natural men, to do any thing towards their own conversion (p. 262). 36. He is the only child ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... sold out in a month and left Medicine Lodge. There are parties in that town who are more responsible than O. L. Day. They did every thing in their power to have him do that which was his ruin. In retaliation for this the republican rum element one night made an attack on Sister Cain's and my house, broke windows and threw rocks, and broke my buggy. They also sent a negro to my house, named Haskel, a noted bootlegger. He asked for an interview. He had quite a tale to tell me about hearing some ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... to be enjoyable, and calls that truth which he then perceives in the wisdom of his understanding to be pleasant. The enjoyable and the pleasant both flow out from the life's love as water does from a spring or blood from the heart; together they are like an element or the atmosphere in ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... the music of a rude kind of guitar. The bard chants two lines, then he pauses and gives a few plaintive strokes on his instrument; then he chants again, and so on. While in Slavic poetry generally the musical element is prominent, in the Servian it is completely subordinate. Even the lyric poetry is in a high degree monotonous, and is ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... a certain measure of culture, and the inventor of a recording telegraph must be capable of being inspired by the grandeur of the thought of writing, figuratively speaking, with a pen a thousand miles long—with the thought of a postal system without the element of time. Moreover the person who is to be the inventor must be free from the exactions of well-compensated, everyday, absorbing duties—perhaps he must have had the final ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... in his chair, frowning judicially with the fingers of one hand apposed to the fingers of the other. "He makes me bristle because all his life and ideas challenge my way of living. But if I eliminate the personal element?" ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... Smith a Puritan, but an ameliorated Puritan might easily have become a John Smith. It is worth while to recall his work and that of his fellow colonists, if only to note the wide and immediate departure of thought in the northern and southern colonies, even where the Puritan element entered in, nor can we understand Anne Bradstreet, without a thought of the forces at work in the new country, unconscious but potent causes of all phases of literary life in ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... half-truths, or, rather, truths prepared skillfully for paternal consumption; his flurry had come from a sense that he was himself not doing quite the manly, the courageous thing. Now, however, something in the tone of the last question, or, perhaps, some element that was lacking, roused in him a suspicion of depth in his simple unworldly father; and swift upon this awakening came a realization that he was floundering in that depth—and in grave danger of submersion. He shifted nervously when his father, without looking up and without ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... There was little element of surprise about the "Somme" offensive. Although there must have been some uncertainty in the mind of the German Staff as to just where the blow would be struck, for our papers were filled with rumors of a drive in the north, and troops and ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... one as to Betty Sell. Yet to Martha Turner, once his sweet 'Patty of the Vale,' he knew he was bound by even stronger ties than those of affection and love—he trembled thinking thus, yet held firm to the nobler element in his breast. The secret struggle, short and intense, ended with a firm resolve ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... of the Duke of Normandy; but with Northumbria ready at any moment to break into civil war, and with Mercia doubtful, the claim of Normandy, however shadowy and indefensible, could not but be considered as a grave element of danger. ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... early days presented some curious combinations, most of them growing out of the heterogeneous human mixture that attempted to form a settlement. The famous Green-Russell party, on its way from Georgia to the Pike's Peak country, had passed through Missouri and Kansas in 1858, and there found an element ripe for any daring and adventurous deeds in unknown lands. Many of the border desperadoes, then engaged in that hard-fought prelude to the civil war, found it desirable and expedient to leave a place where their violent deeds became ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... recognition of the necessary presence of a negative factor in the constitution of the world. Everything in the world—be it a religious cult or a logical category, a human passion or a scientific law—is, so Hegel holds, the result of a process which involves the overcoming of a negative element. Without such an element to overcome, the world would indeed be an inert and irrational affair. That any rational and worthy activity entails the encounter of opposition and the removal of obstacles is an observation commonplace enough. A preestablished harmony ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... historian of the administration of Jefferson paints a masterly picture of the life of our own people in 1800. Every aspect of the social and intellectual life of the time is treated with marvelous fullness of detail and in the most graphic and impressive way; and there is an element of hope and buoyancy, of prophecy and promise, pervading the pages, which is at once inspiring and sobering. Yes, surely one would rather live in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... expediency, Olga, I might hesitate. Frankly, I want peace. I am tired of war, tired of bickering, tired of watching and being watched. But it is not one of expediency. Not, at least, only that. You leave out of this discussion the one element that I consider important, Hedwig herself. If the Princess Hedwig were to-morrow to be without a country, I should still hope to ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... is it for a child to look up to those around him for an example of imitation, and how readily does he copy all that he sees done, good or bad. The importance of a good example on which the young may exercise this powerful and active element of their nature, is a matter ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... rector. "But," he added, "I think I can guarantee that there will be no unpleasant feeling either toward you or about you. Your being from New York will give you a certain prestige, and their curiosity and the element of novelty will ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... is eminently republican. In England, the aristocratic element has a powerful influence, because it has a history: well or ill, it has organized society: it has created a power, snatched from royalty, by conquering guarantees for the rights of the subject; it has founded in part the wealth and the influence ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... which provide the answer to this question form an element of vital importance in the volume of evidence upon which posterity will pronounce the destruction of the Dutch Republics in South Africa to have been a just and necessary, or a needless and aggressive, act. But to see them in true perspective, the reader must first be possessed of some more precise ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... fair name of the Hoosier State is menaced. The COURIER, being thoroughly informed of the beginnings of this movement, whose purpose is the seizure of the Democratic Party, and the manipulation of its power for private ends, will antagonize to the utmost the element that has initiated it. Honorable defeats the party in Indiana has known, and it will hardly at this late day surrender tamely to the buccaneers and adventurers that seek to capture its battleflag. This warning will not be repeated. Stop! ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... the new Ministry is entirely composed of Tories and High-fliers are fool-Whigs." The remark was no doubt perfectly true, but yet if Defoe had been thoroughly consistent he ought at least, instead of supporting the Ministry on account of the small moderate element it contained, to have urged its ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... other, and actually believed he amused himself by its display. In natures, tastes, and dispositions, they were miles asunder, and disagreement between them would have been unceasing on every subject, had they not been gentlemen. It was this alone—this gentleman element—made their companionship possible, and, in the long run, not unpleasant. So much more has good-breeding to do in the common working of daily life than the more valuable qualities of mind ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... industrious colonist may settle on the banks of a navigable river, and enjoy all the advantages of sending his produce to market by water, without running the constant hazard of having the fruits of his labour, the golden promise of the year, swept away in an hour by a capricious and domineering element. Secondly, The seasons are more regular and defined, and those great droughts which have been so frequent at Port Jackson, are altogether unknown. In the years 1813, 1814, and 1815, when the whole face of the country there was literally burnt up, and vegetation completely at a stand still from the ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... proximity to each other), they will always go at the same rate, no matter where and when they are again compared with each other at one place.—If this law were not valid for real clocks, the proper frequencies for the separate atoms of the same chemical element would not be in such exact agreement as experience demonstrates. The existence of sharp spectral lines is a convincing experimental proof of the above-mentioned principle of practical geometry. This is the ultimate ...
— Sidelights on Relativity • Albert Einstein

... be hangd then. Dost thou heare, noble Generall? Dicke Bowyer knowes what belongs to service: we did not draw of any malice, by this element of iron & steele, but to measure which of our swords were longest.—Ile save you for once, you Sarazen, because I see youle hang scurvily: but ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... bitterly as Croker. For the practical reforms of his day, even in education, for which he had always spoken up, Wordsworth was not a force. His heart clung to England as he found it. "This concrete attachment to the scenes about him," says Mr. Myers, "had always formed an important element In his character. Ideal politics, whether in Church or State, had never occupied his mind, which sought rather to find its informing principles embodied in the England of his own day." This flowed, we may suppose, from Burke. In a passage ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... the same station for Marie Antoinette. Her motions were regulated like clock-work. So methodical was she in all her operations of mind and body, that, from the beginning of the year to its end, she never deviated a moment. Every hour had its peculiar occupation. Her element was etiquette, but the etiquette of ages before the flood. She had her rules even for the width of petticoats, that the Queens and Princesses might have no temptation to straddle over a rivulet, or crossing, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe

... announced, to the great mortification of the senators, who felt as if the indignity reflected rather upon themselves than on Marcius. He, for his part, could not bear the affront with any patience. He had always indulged his temper, and had regarded the proud and contentious element of human nature as a sort of nobleness and magnanimity; reason and discipline had not imbued him with that solidity and equanimity which enter so largely into the virtues for the statesman. He had never learned how essential ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... to a system which has wind and tide against it, but they leap upon another political craft when the first goes adrift; the second take the measure of the future, sound it, and see in political fidelity what the English see in commercial integrity, an element of success. Where the young man of possessions makes a pun or an epigram upon the restoration of the throne, he who has nothing makes a public calculation or a secret reservation, and obtains everything by giving a handshake to his friends. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... disgust and alarm a good number of snakes, coiled about twigs and boughs on the right and left, or sometimes over their heads. These were probably the deadly water-moccason, which in warm weather is accustomed to crawl out of its favorite element and bask itself in the sun, precisely as described by La Harpe. Their nerves were further discomposed by the splashing and plunging of alligators lately wakened from their wintry torpor. Still, they pushed painfully ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... "kind" to describe a business letter—as "your kind favor"—is obviously misapplied. There is no element of "kindness" on either side of an ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther

... there is liability of freezing, and all hydrants and valves should be well oiled, preferably with mineral oil. The hazard from a hydrant or other portion of the apparatus broken by frost, does not lie so much in the probability that disadvantage may result from the disuse of one element of the plant, as in the liability that such a breakage may interfere with the whole system and render ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various

... was then angry with herself, yet not at all inclined to agree with Sally when she asked her mistress "why she kept 'mithering' the poor lass with asking her for ever what was the matter, as if she did not know well enough." Some element of harmony was wanting—some little angel of peace, in loving whom all hearts and natures should be drawn ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... would, in the short interval, have changed into barytone; Figaro's barytone into a bass, while the buffo-bass of Don Basilio would have reversed the process with age and gone upward into the tenor region. We should meet with some new characters, of which two at least would supply the element of dramatic freshness and vivacity which we should miss from the company of the ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... element, also essential, but in a class so much above the other two essential elements, that it is not too much to say that without it there could be no production adequate to sustain for more than a brief time any great population. And that element is Brains. It is not to Labor but to the human ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams

... from its numbers must ever have been exposed to the agitation of eloquence and the caprices of passion, there was inevitably a crude and imperfect principle,—although two courts containing in themselves the soul and element of contradiction necessarily wanted that concentrated oneness of purpose propitious to the regular and majestic calmness of legislation, we cannot but allow the main theory of the system to have been precisely that most favourable to the prodigal exuberance of energy, of intellect, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... outwardly so quiet, there was the one disturbing element—the weakness to which Pons sacrificed, the insatiable craving to dine out. Whenever Schmucke happened to be at home while Pons was dressing for the evening, the good German would bewail this ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... the background, as Jean grew older and more determined in her ways. But certainly he was Jean's one confidential friend,—her pal. So Lite, perforce, listened while Jean told him the plot of her story. And when she asked him in all earnestness what he thought would be best for the tragic element, ghosts or Indians, Lite meditated gravely upon the subject and then suggested that she put in both. That is why Jean lavishly indulged in mysterious footsteps all through the first chapter, and then opened the second with blood-curdling war-whoops that ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower

... sheets were in violent commotion, approaching, impinging upon each other, swinging back again to complete separation, and so on. But the violence of the motion consisted by no means in speed: it suggested a very much retarded rolling off of a motion picture reel. There was at first an element of disillusion in the impression. I felt tempted to shout and to spur the mist into greater activity. On the surface, to both sides of the tear, waves ran out, and at the edges of the pool they rose in that same leisurely, stately way which struck me as one of the most characteristic ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... eternity man was the son of God, but until he really knew it, he was not so. The reporters in the Synoptic Gospels only occasionally recognise the divine sonship of man with real clearness, for in their view the practical element in Christianity was predominant, but in the end everything practical must be based upon theory or faith. Our duties toward God and man, our love for God and for man, are as nothing, without the firm foundation ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller

... sent off at will in various directions. When thrown on the wall, instead of being simply white light it had seven distinct colors beginning with violet and running down to red. So white light was not a single element: it was made up of various rays which had to be united in order to give ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... intellectual, his patience may pardonably give way on finding in the sixth letter—(what he might, however, have conjectured from the heading of the third period in the chart of the schools)—that the peculiar prerogative of painting—color, is to be considered as a sensual element, and the exponent of sense, in accordance with a new analogy, here for the first time proposed, between spirit, intellect, and sense, and expression, form, and color. Lord Lindsay is peculiarly unfortunate in his adoptions from previous writers. He has taken this ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... under the boiler, applied equally to the thermo-electric battery, in which the heat, conducted from the hot points of juncture to the cold, constituted a formidable loss. The electromotive force of each thermo-electric element did not exceed 0.036 of a volt, and 1,800 elements were therefore necessary to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various

... which they had read during the preceding year, and to express their preferences. The choice of more than ninety per cent proved to be either folklore stories, pure and simple, or such tales as contained the folklore element. To be sure, children like other stories, but they respond at once with sparkling eyes and animated voices when the fairy tale is suggested. How unwise, therefore, it is to neglect this powerful stimulus which lies ready at our hands! Even a pupil who is naturally ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett

... to offer other people a home with you; and equally doubtful whether such an offer is wisely accepted. Being a saint does not, I am sorry to say, necessarily make one an agreeable addition to the family circle as God has formed it; if His hand sends this new element into the house, of course one may expect grace to bear it; but voluntarily to seek it argues either want of experience or an immense power of self-sacrifice. I should prefer Miss ——'s friends agreeing to give her an independent home, as far as a boarding-house ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... The disturbing element was, indeed, not far to seek. Close to one of the bridges was seated a maiden, unknown to all of them, but lovely enough to hold the glance of old and young. Unlike the natives she was tall and fair; masses of golden hair encircled her oval face and clustered over her blue ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous

... after children, whether they are up or in bed; and particularly when they are near the fire, an element with which they are very apt ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... artillery will be better understood when the full story of the battle is accessible. Meanwhile Sir Redvers Buller's withdrawal of the troops when he saw that success was unattainable has preserved his force, and he is now awaiting reinforcement before again attempting an advance. The critical element in the position of affairs in Natal lies in the fact that time runs against the British. Sir Redvers Buller and the Government no doubt know pretty accurately the date up to which Sir George White can hold Ladysmith. If by that date he has ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson

... years at first as some thirty, and then ended by believing that she might approach her fiftieth. But she somehow in this case juggled away the excess and the difference—you only saw them in a rare glimpse, like the rabbit in the conjurer's sleeve. She was extraordinarily white, and her every element and item was pretty; her eyes, her ears, her hair, her voice, her hands, her feet—to which her relaxed attitude in her wicker chair gave a great publicity—and the numerous ribbons and trinkets with which she was bedecked. She looked as if she had put on her best clothes to ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James

... shall speak. Such men as the Grants, Findlays, Lapointes, Bellegardes, and Falcons were equally skilled in managing the swift canoe, or scouring the plains on the Indian ponies. We shall see the part which this new element were to play in the social life and even in the public concerns of ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... bred, and I fynd be gret experience, that the nature of the seis is mair relevant caus of thair procreatioun than ony uthir thyng." According to Boece, then, "the nature of the seis" formed the chief element in the production of the geese, and our author proceeds to relate how "all treis (trees) that ar casein in the seis be proces of tyme apperis first wormeetin (worm-eaten), and in the small boris and hollis (holes) thairof growis small worms." Our author no doubt here alludes ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... drink damnation. These made unleavened bread, and were foes to the death to fermentation. It was in vain urged by the housewife that God made yeast as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he does vegetation; that fermentation develops the saccharine element in the grain, and makes it more palatable and more digestible. No, they wish the pure wheat, and will die but it shall not ferment. Stop, dear nature, these innocent advances of thine; let us scotch these ever-rolling wheels! Others attacked the system of agriculture, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... bring to the college any youths of promise whom he might hear of. Secondly, he determined that the college should become a model place of education instead of being a strict seminary with all the asceticism of a place in which the clerical element was unalloyed. He hoped to let the same course of education serve for the young men studying for the priesthood, and for the sons of the highest families in France. His success in the Rue Saint Florentin (this was where Talleyrand died) had made him ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... true if we think it is so; for we cannot be mistaken, when we feel that the element of the poetical is wanting in our constitutions. But we err both in our mode of accounting for the fact, and in believing the loss we deplore to be irretrievable. The fault committed by reasoners on this subject is, to confound one thing with another—to account for ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various

... element is conspicuous in this kind of love; it cannot persist without a succession ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... Political or professional reputation cannot last for ever; but a conscience void of offence before God and man is an inheritance for eternity. Religion, therefore, is a necessary and indispensable element in any great human character. There is no living without it. Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to his throne. If that tie be all sundered, all broken, he floats away, a worthless atom in the universe; its proper attractions all gone, its destiny ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... filled. A mother foresees danger long before a Mlle. Armande can admit the possibility of it, even if the mischief is done. The one prevents the evil, the other remedies it. And besides, in the maiden's motherhood there is an element of blind adoration, she cannot bring herself to ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... but none here, none for sin! You joy for other things, but none here, you cannot rejoice at the gospel! Prayer is a burden, not a delight. If your spirits were chiefly employed in religious duties, religion would be almost your element, your pleasure and recreation; but now it is wearisome to the flesh, because the spirit taketh not the chief weight upon it. O! "be not deceived, God is not mocked." You do but mock yourselves with external shows, while you are satisfied with them. I beseech you, look inwardly, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... Humanity from its peculiar position in the world, and make it cast in its lot with the grass that withers and the beasts that perish; and thus the rich and varied life of the universe, in all the ages of its wondrous duration, becomes deprived of any such element of purpose as can make it intelligible to us or appeal to our moral sympathies and ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske

... clothing from the cabin, and he climbed down the steep approach to take from the cave the jugged whiskey, and the keg or two which was aging there. His eyes were reddened; but the dark flush which had been on his face had now given place to a curious pallor. There was a new element in his mood, a different note in his bearing, a suggestion ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... should the impossible happen. I have it now on the deck beside me as a reminder never to give way to a weak despair. F promises me it is a matter of days if not hours till we can return to our native element. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... white cross that extends to the edges of the flag; the vertical part of the cross is shifted to the hoist side; the banner is referred to as the Dannebrog (Danish flag) note: the shifted design element was subsequently adopted by the other Nordic countries of ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... to watch the birds sailing in the high winds of Adelie Land. In winds of fifty to seventy miles per hour, when with good crampons one had to stagger warily along the ice-foot, the snow petrels and Antarctic petrels were in their element. Wheeling, swinging, sinking, planing and soaring, they were radiant with life—the wild spirits of the tempest. Even in moderate drift, when through swirling snow the vistas of sea whitened under the flail ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... could, they worked like giants, but the element they wuz workin' aginst wuz more powerful than man. Anon burnin' timbers fell with a crash, clouds of smoke wropped us round and choked us, the firemen sent up streams of water that turned ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley

... are the errors of Act III new? From which element of the plot, mistaken identity, or the domestic difficulties of the native-born ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke

... measure, the West will begin to have some regard for their particular brand of virtue. Until then, the West may be pardoned for believing that cant and hypocrisy often join hands with the lawless element and make a ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton



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