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Existence   /ɛgzˈɪstəns/  /ɪgzˈɪstəns/   Listen
Existence

noun
1.
The state or fact of existing.  Synonyms: being, beingness.  "Laws in existence for centuries"
2.
Everything that exists anywhere.  Synonyms: cosmos, creation, macrocosm, universe, world.  "The biggest tree in existence"



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"Existence" Quotes from Famous Books



... off the first paralyzing grip of this unnameable terror which had seized him with clammy hands, fought it down by sheer resolution. He was able to lie staring into the dusky spaces of his room and review the stirring panorama of his existence for the past four years. There was nothing that did not fill him with infinite regret—and there was nothing which by any conceivable effort he could have changed. He could not have escaped one of those ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... found in other parts of the world. It has generally been supposed that, of all creatures, fish are the most destitute of parental feelings, and that from the moment the eggs have been deposited in the sand or mud, they are allowed to struggle into existence as best they can, to do battle with their foes, and the numerous dangers to which they are exposed. In the acara, however, we have an example of parental care and watchfulness unrivalled ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... if I attach no importance to a mere assertion, madame. The existence of some relations between yourself and the prisoner, which delicacy would prompt him to conceal, and honour would compel you to deny, would alter the whole aspect of this case." He turned to the usher. "Recall ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... the wonder of the seasons, the miracle of life. I, too, had died: I had lain long in darkness, and now I had risen again upon the sweet earth. And I possessed beyond others a knowledge of a former existence, which I knew, even then, ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... he could not eat the flesh of this black man, and thus hereditary instinct, ages old, usurped the functions of his untaught mind and saved him from transgressing a worldwide law of whose very existence ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... said he, angrily. "I wonder, Henri, that you should be the first to create such foolish difficulties, when our very existence depends on perfect unanimity. In proportion as our means of enforcing obedience is slender, should our resolution be firm, implicitly to obey the directions of those who are selected as our leaders. We have made Cathelineau our General, and desired him to select ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... merry bachelor, and to the rosiness of a priest might, for aught I knew, have added the paternity; but I had never heard of it, and still less expected to find a child in his house. More obvious and obstreperous proofs, however, of the existence of a boy with a dirty face, could not have been met with. You heard the child crying and objecting; then the woman remonstrating; then the cries of the child snubbed and swallowed up in the hard towel; and at intervals out came his voice bubbling and deploring, and was again ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... the existence of the Empire was threatened in 1899 by the Boer challenge, I offered my services to it, raised a volunteer ambulance corps and served at several actions that took place for the relief of Ladysmith. ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... assertion. And besides, to come forward and tell everything about himself must include declarations about Bulstrode which would darken the suspicions of others against him. He must tell that he had not known of Raffles's existence when he first mentioned his pressing need of money to Bulstrode, and that he took the money innocently as a result of that communication, not knowing that a new motive for the loan might have arisen on his being called in to this man. And after ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... to Johnny Grantline. But the menace was over now, over as soon as Grantline had realized its existence. As though the wreck of the Planetara were foreordained by an all-wise Providence, the brigands' ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... passenger train, non-stop at Knight's Cross, ran past the signal and crashed into a crowded electric train that was just beginning to move out. It was like sending a garden roller down a row of handlights. Two carriages of the electric train were flattened out of existence; the next two were broken up. For the first time on an English railway there was a good stand-up smash between a heavy steam-engine and a train of light cars, and it was 'bad for ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah

... fires, against leaving one's home, against any productive labor—point to the Hebrew Sabbath as having been at its origin an 'inauspicious day,' on which it was dangerous to show oneself or to call the deity's attention to one's existence. Despite the attempts made to change this day to one of 'joy,' as Isaiah would have it,[617] the Hebrew Sabbath continued to retain for a long time as a trace of its origin, a rather ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... Creatures were of this class, and as there were many persons in impoverished, decaying Venice who had need of the succor they procured, they made out to earn a living when both were well, and to eke out existence by charity when one was ill. They were harmless neighbors, and I believe they regretted our removal, when this took place, for they used to sit down under an arcade opposite our new house, and spend the duller intervals of trade in ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... historical development, Plechanov and his followers believed that Russia must pass through a phase of capitalist development before there could be a social—as distinguished from a merely political—revolution. Certainly they believed, an intensive development of industry, bringing into existence a strong capitalist class, on the one hand, and a strong proletariat, on the other hand, must precede any attempt to create a Social Democratic state. They believed, furthermore, that a political revolution, creating a ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... produce animals of an inferior kind, I see not any so very great a difficulty, but that one may, without much absurdity, admit: For as there may be multitudes of contrivances that go to the making up of one compleat Animate body; so, That some of those coadjutors, in the perfect existence and life of it, may be vitiated, and the life of the whole destroyed, and yet several of the constituting contrivances remain intire, I cannot think it beyond imagination or possibility; no more then ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... I are miserable little earth-worms crawling about the ground. It will take some time before he is even aware of our presence. We will have to make friends with the brother, and trust by degrees to make him conscious of our existence. ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... who cheer for a sporting team, etc. boko: crazy. bushman/bushwoman: someone who lives an isolated existence, far from cities, "in the bush", "outback". (today: "bushy". In New Zealand it is a timber getter. Lawson was sacked from a forestry job in New Zealand, "because he wasn't a bushman":-) bushranger: ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... attempt to force them upon her: if the laws of nature did not exist in our reason, we should not be able to comprehend them." ... "We find an agreement between our reason and works which our reason did not produce." ... "All existence is a dominion of reason." "The laws of nature are laws of reason, and altogether form an endless unity of reason; ... one and the ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... them was by chance or age broken down, and the people refused to set it up again, the baron could still make shift with the nearest oak. But as a system of government, feudalism was doomed from the day of Henry's Assize, and only dragged out a lingering existence till the legislation of Edward I. dealt it a ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green

... very much a modern taste to admire spontaneity more than craft. We must understand that Rembrandt's work was anything but spontaneous in execution. The existence of so many drawings prior to this print certainly suggests that Rembrandt collected his ideas from many sources, on the spot, but did his finished work in the quiet of his studio, with his notes ready at hand. ...
— Rembrandt's Etching Technique: An Example • Peter Morse

... whatever we said as a matter of fact we joined an alliance, we became a military power, we impaired our independence. We have more at stake than any one else in avoiding a repetition of that calamity. Wars do not, spring into existence. They arise from small incidents and trifling irritations which can be adjusted by an international court. We can contribute greatly to the advancement of our ideals by joining with other nations in maintaining such ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge

... balloon, being words of foreign origin, prove nothing as to the further existence of augmentative ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham

... back to two years ago," she continued, "for up to that time you never doubted the existence of my heart—in fact, you will remember you more than once told me that I was too tender-hearted, and that you hoped deep sorrow would never come to me, because I had the capacity to suffer more than most women. The great change ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith

... have married well. My brother was servile; he has attached himself to the retinue of a wealthy Baroness. But I was made of better stuff than that. I would play the hero. I would face danger and gladly die to give Berlin more life and uphold the House of Hohenzollern in its fat and idle existence; and for me ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... resolution of their Noble and Grand Mightinesses, adopted this day on the Memorial presented to their High Mightinesses by the Duc de la Vauguyon, wherein he demands the observance of an exact neutrality during the existence of the troubles with England in general, and the maintenance of the freedom of the flag of the Republic, as well as of the commerce and navigation of this country to the French ports in particular; unless in the meantime should be given by the said resolution ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... the former of whom is however yet struggling for his rights, annihilated the ancient Republics of Venice, Genoa, &c. &c. extinguished the authority of the House of Orange in Holland, endangered the very existence of the House of Austria and the Germanic Empire, and by the invasion of the Egypt and Syria, has even alarmed the Sultan of the Turks for the safety of his capital, whilst the hardy bands of Russia have been called forth into action both to defend her former inveterate foes, and to wrest the ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... seemed to swell out from her heart. She knew, as she would have known if a flame had destroyed her sight, that the turn life had taken had robbed her of the beauty of the world and was bringing her existence down to this ugly terminal focus, this moment when she sat in this cold kitchen, its cheap print and plaster the colour of uncleaned teeth, and tried to pluck up her energy to put on wet shoes and go through streets full of indifferent people and greased with foul weather to throw herself over ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... paradise is a genial balm to my mind, and the young spring cheers with its bounteous promises my oftentimes misgiving heart. Every tree, every bush, is full of flowers; and one might wish himself transformed into a butterfly, to float about in this ocean of perfume, and find his whole existence in it. ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... though struck a blow. With her warm tongue she would lick away the ice that froze to the long hair between Kazan's toes. For days after he had run a sliver in his paw she nursed his foot. Blindness had made Kazan absolutely necessary to her existence—and now, in a different way, she became more and more necessary to Kazan. They were happy in their swamp home. There was plenty of small game about them, and it was warm under the windfall. Rarely did they go beyond the limits ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... philosophic teaching, his own interest in which was that it contributed to clear up our idea of God and consolidate our faith in Him, and it is known in philosophy as Idealism; only it must be understood, his idealism is not, as it was absurdly conceived to be, a denial of the existence of matter, but is an assertion of the doctrine that the universe, with every particular in it, as man sees it and knows it, is not the creation of matter but the creation of mind, and a reflex of the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... a man in the real heart of life. He was engaged in a struggle that makes existence worth while—the effort to bring ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... provokingly unconscious of Harris's presence at the ticket window. The farmer took no pains to conceal his impatience, coughing and shuffling obviously, but it was not until the last box-car had been duly recorded that the agent deigned to recognize his existence. ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... of God's providence. I shall do all that I properly can to prevent it, and to encourage, and, if called upon, to aid my brethren now in immediate charge of the slaves, to fulfil their solemn trust; but anything like impatience and passion at the existence of slavery, I hold to be a sin against God. I pity those good men whose minds are so inflamed by the consideration of individual cases of suffering as not to perceive the great and steadfast march of the divine administration. Politicians and others who get their places, or their bread, by easy ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... afterwards withdrew, and Carl Perousse, satisfied that he had at any rate taken precautions to make known the existence of a spy in the city, if not to secure his arrest, turned to the crowding business on his hands with a sense of ease and refreshment. He might not have felt quite so self-assured and complacent, had he seen the worthy Bernhoff smiling broadly to himself ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... was song, song, song; I chirped, cheeped, trilled, and twittered, "Kate Brown's on the boards ere long, And Grisi's existence embittered!" ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... it with increasing vehemence, with ardent supplications. Once he said, "Ellen, you are destroying my happiness and your own; but not ours alone; you know not what you do. The fate of a pure and innocent existence is at this moment in your hands; do not doom it to secret anguish, to hopeless sorrow. Have mercy on yourself, on me, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... results of such errors are always, more or less, mischievous, and sometimes of so serious a nature as to lay the foundation of disease which ultimately proves fatal. This observation, moreover, it behoves a mother carefully to regard, since the symptoms, popularly supposed to indicate the existence of worms, are so deceptive, (and none more so than that which is usually so much depended upon—the picking of the nose,) that it may be positively asserted to be impossible for an unprofessional person to form a correct and sound opinion ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.

... I'll only say this, that I've lost a little of my memory, and am glad I didn't lose my life. But go on. I'm up to it now, Jack. You wrote to Number Three, proposing to elope, and were staking your existence on her answer. You wished me to order a head-stone for you at Anderson's, Four feet by eighteen inches, with nothing on it but the name and date, and not a word about the virtues, et cetera. There, you see, my memory is all right at last. And now, old boy, what does she say? When ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... hardly tell," replied Catherine, "unless it is that the events of the day have impressed on my mind the necessity of our observing more distance to each other. A chance similar to that which betrayed to you the existence of my brother, may make known to Henry the terms you have used to me; and, alas! his whole conduct, as well as his deed, this day, makes me too ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... Maximilian Morrel, who had passed a wretched existence since the previous day. With the instinct peculiar to lovers he had anticipated after the return of Madame de Saint-Meran and the death of the marquis, that something would occur at M. de Villefort's in connection with his attachment for Valentine. His presentiments were realized, as we shall see, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the train of thought in the Chinese mind was that, as it is the fittest who survive, those who have successfully passed through the process of "putting out the flowers" have proved their fitness in the struggle for existence. Nowadays vaccination is general, and the number of pockmarked faces seen is much smaller than it used to be—in fact, the pockmarked are now the exception. But, as far as I have been able to ascertain, the Ministry of ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... word of honour, sir," replied my father coldly, "that I was quite unaware of even the existence of the caverns till a few days ago; and even then I did not know that they ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn

... stop her, and my first impulse was flight. But on second thoughts I changed my mind, and stayed. Time had dulled the feelings with which I had contemplated her share in the tragedy that attended her birth, and I was not without a certain curiosity to see this young creature for whose existence I ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce

... and this had made him doubly sore when the name of Randal Leslie was mentioned. But the fact really was, that the Leslies of Rood had so shrunk out of all notice that the squire had actually forgotten their existence, until Randal became thus indebted to his brother; and then he felt a pang of remorse that any one save himself, the head of the Hazeldeans, should lend a helping hand to the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... was saying. "Don't ask my opinion. I am bereft of speech. Never, in all my existence, have I ever beheld such an ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... lordship, with the true pathos of a man whose happiness is dependent upon the weather. His scheme of going upon the water being now impracticable, he lounged about the room all the rest of the morning, supporting that miserable kind of existence, which idle gentlemen are doomed to support, they know not how, upon a rainy day. Neither Lady Augusta nor her mother, in calculating the advantages and disadvantages of an alliance with his lordship, ever once ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... the cannonade from the river, mistook every tree for an American; and till the real state of the case should be ascertained, it would be improper to expose the troops by moving any of them from the shelter which the bank afforded. But these doubts were not permitted to continue long in existence. The dropping fire having paused for a few moments, was succeeded by a fearful yell; and the heavens were illuminated on all sides by a semi-circular blaze of musketry. It was now manifest that we were surrounded, and that by a very superior force; and that no alternative ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... the efforts of the Duke of Treviso to subdue the flames. The incendiaries kept themselves concealed. Doubts even were entertained of their existence. At length, strict injunctions being issued, order restored, and alarm for a moment suspended, each took possession of a commodious house or sumptuous palace, under the idea of finding comforts that had been dearly purchased by long ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... The masters have half of their labour for nothing, or because they are their slaves: with the rest of their labour they support themselves. The meum et tuum is not, and indeed cannot be very strictly observed by the poor people who have to support such a precarious existence; and when Said went down to bring up the meat to cook for supper, he found this young gentleman had carried it nearly all off to cook for his own supper, leaving what remained for us to make ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... would protect. Honest fellows like Quilp here (more triumphant tail flourishes), dogs that love you like a brother, that will run for you, carry for you, bark for you, whose candour is so transparent and whose faithfulness has been the theme of countless poets—dogs like these would be taxed out of existence. ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... weighing no less than ninety-six and a-half pounds troy, and valued at 4000 pounds. Gold has been found in Scotland, and in the county of Wicklow, Ireland, where about 10,000 pounds worth was picked up in the bed of a river by the inhabitants, before the Government became aware of its existence. Gold is so malleable that a single grain can be beaten out to form a gold leaf covering a surface of fifty-six square inches, and it is so ductile that the same quantity may be drawn into a wire 500 feet in length. Silver is found embedded in various rocks, where it occurs in ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston

... happy. No hopes, no dreams of future joy, could make him forget the wealth of love he was leaving. Nor did he wish to forget. And woe to the man or woman who would buy composure and contentment by forgetting!—by really forfeiting a portion of their existence—by being a suicide ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... amusement out of it if I pleased? Why shouldn't I enjoy your surprise at finding in a place you had hardly heard of, and would certainly count most uninteresting, the record of a fact that concerned your own existence ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... own sorrows—the sufferings, the pangs, the bereavements of our own existence—we should never cease to regard them, in some measure, at least, as the chastisements of an Almighty Father. Smitten friends, according to the sentiment of a distinguished poet, are messengers of mercy to us—are sent ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... tale, in which the lycanthropy is far from being altogether a mere effort of the imagination, appears to be founded upon the belief in the continued existence of this rare species of madness down to our own day—or near it—for the story seems to belong to the ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... from an edition by Wynkyn de Worde we have at least one piece of salvage. It must be owned, indeed, that to claim a ballad as the product of any one century is rather rash, and that in some form or another this cycle was probably in existence before Chaucer died. The 'Ballad of Otterburn,' again, is founded on an incident of border war which took place in 1388 when Chaucer had just begun work on the Canterbury Tales, and this also belongs to fourteenth-century tradition. But both the one and the other, and still more ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... she took up the letter with a firmer hand, and began to read it through again. The tears came this time—great rushing tears that blinded her and blotched the paper. She felt nothing but that Arthur was cruel—cruel to write so, cruel not to marry her. Reasons why he could not marry her had no existence for her mind; how could she believe in any misery that could come to her from the fulfilment of all she had been longing for and dreaming of? She had not the ideas that could make up the notion ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... mysterious language. There are little rustlings, little sighings, little scurryings and patterings among the dry leaves, drowsy chirpings and plaintive croakings. The old workaday world seems to have slipped out of existence and a fairy world to have taken its place. And the girl who truly loves nature and the wide outdoors will not be frightened at being alone in the woods at night. It is like laying her ear against the wide, warm heart of the night and hearing ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... metropolitan papers for the mysterious legatee, for there is no man so faithful to his trust as the administrator of another's estate. Although the property had not yet succeeded to his hands, the judge was proceeding in confidence. If the existence of Isom Chase's son could not be proved, neither could ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... glimpse of Freedom, of becoming a Gentleman at large, but I am put off from day to day. I have offered my resignation, and it is neither accepted nor rejected. Eight weeks am I kept in this fearful suspence. Guess what an absorbing stake I feel it. I am not conscious of the existence of friends present or absent. The E.I. Directors alone can be that thing to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Railsford might have to say on the subject, he at least expected that his own statement should be received in an equally candid spirit, particularly (as he was anxious to point out) since he had personally inspected a portrait of Cromwell not long ago, and verified the existence of the two ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed

... suffered during that space of time. The burning sand forced itself into my garments, the pores of my skin were closed, I hardly ventured to breathe the hot blast which was offered as the only means of protracted existence. At last I fetched my respiration with greater freedom, and no more heard the howling of the blast. Gradually I lifted up my head, but my eyes had lost their power, I could distinguish nothing but a yellow glare. I imagined that I was blind, and what chance could there be for ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... or decorations. But of woodwork painted in any color beware, take care! Finely finished hardwood has the honesty of true worth and needs no dressing up; but its poor relation, that hideous product of old-time dark stain and varnish is only a kill-beauty, and should be wiped out of existence with ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... first century upon the earth—that age of gold when Man was sufficient unto himself. A century undisputed master of the world! A century of familiar converse in Eden's consecrated groves with the great First Cause—the omnipresent and omnipotent God. Picture one day of such existence! Ambition and Avarice, Jealousy and Passion, those demons that have deluged the world with blood and tears, have no place in Adam's peaceful bosom. He is not in the Grove of Daphne, where lust is law, but ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... rope with one hand, and pass it and his arm in at the window so as to get a grip inside, for evidently he expected that the rope would be discovered and cut. Though even then, unless Jarette were willing to save him, it would only be prolonging his existence for a few minutes, since it would have been impossible for us to draw so bulky a man through the circular hole which lit and ventilated Mr ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... nations. No one particular science or philosophy is able to grant us this central standpoint for viewing the field of knowledge and the meaning of life. The answer to the complexity of the problem of existence is to be found in something which gathers up under a larger and more significant meaning the results of knowledge and life. This volume will attempt to elucidate this all-important point of view—a point of view which is so needful in our ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones

... finds himself surrounded by the signs of a power and wisdom higher than his own; and, in all ages and nations, men of all orders of intellect, from Bacon and Newton, down to the rudest tribes of cannibals, have believed in the existence of some superior mind. Thus far the voice of mankind is almost unanimous. But whether there be one God, or many, what may be God's natural and what His moral attributes, in what relation His creatures stand to Him, whether He have ever disclosed Himself to us by any other revelation ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Never have I been more pained than I then was; for in that place I found myself close to making discoveries of surpassing archaeological value, and yet I was as completely cut off from them as though they had no existence. ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... should do unto you. They take that maxim and frame it about and make it the "Golden Rule" of human life. They exalt Jesus as the perfect example, telling us that if we shall govern our life by him, make him our constant copy, imitate him, we shall fill our daily existence with righteousness and truth. In fact, if we seek a panegyric on the humanity of Christ; if we desire to see his goodness exalted to the heavens, and his humanity put beyond compare with the sons of men—we ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... appearances, one might be tempted to imagine nothing good could thrive. Here also there were rats, and cats too, besides dogs of many kinds; but they all of them led hard lives of it, and few appeared to think much of enjoying themselves. Existence seemed to be the height of their ambition. Even the kittens were depressed, and sometimes stopped in the midst of a faint attempt at play to look round with a scared aspect, as if the memory of kicks and blows was strong ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... hard. "I think I see," he said slowly. "You mean, they're here and they know all they need to know. But instead of coming out into the open, they're making governments recognize their existence. They're letting the rulers of Earth know they can't be resisted. But we did knock off one of their ships ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... lump of sugar in his tea, and another into his pocket, "a glorious spectacle, to see a population that was supposed to be given up to luxury, subsisting cheerfully week after week upon the simplest necessaries of existence." "I have not tasted game once this year, and the beef is far from good," sighed old gentleman No. 2; "but we will continue to endure our hardships for months, or for years if need be, rather than allow the Prussians to enter Paris." This sort of Lacedemonian twaddle went on during the whole ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... the acquaintance of a brute whom anyone can see to be the most vicious sort of London man about town. Before I give myself the trouble to resist such claims, I may as well find out whether they have any real existence. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... governmental powers, is, in its last analysis, a formal expression of adherence to that which in modern times has been called the higher law, and which in ancient times was called natural law. The jurisprudence of every nation has, with more or less clearness, recognized the existence of certain primal and fundamental laws which are superior to the laws, statutes, or conventions of living generations. The original use of the term was to import the superiority of the Imperial edict to the laws of the Comitia. All nations have ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... "conjuration" or "goopher," my childish recollection of which I have elsewhere embodied into a number of stories. The derivation of the word "goopher" I do not know, nor whether any other writer than myself has recognized its existence, though it is in frequent use in certain parts of the South. The origin of this curious superstition itself is perhaps more easily traceable. It probably grew, in the first place, out of African fetichism which was brought over from the dark continent along with the dark people. ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... her entreating arms and eyes, as he had so often before in like moments, when the need to put aside the consciousness of existence, of the world as it appears, had come to one of them or both. Yet it seemed that this love was like some potent spirit, whose irresistible power waned, sank, each time demanding a larger draught of joy, a more delirious tension ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... And he did not receive a single demerit during his entire college career—for rusty gun, or cap on the floor, or late at drill, or twisted belt,—or any of the hundred and one things that are the bane and stumbling block of the West Pointer's existence. Such a record seems almost too good to be true, and one is tempted to wish for at least one escapade to ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden

... man this was, who thus on a sudden in the middle term of life relinquished all the ease and pleasure of a patrician existence to work often eighteen hours daily, not for a vain and brilliant notoriety, which was foreign alike both to his tastes and his turn of mind, but for the advancement of principles, the advocacy of which in the chief scene of his efforts was sure to obtain for him only contention ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... "dismal trash" as Sydney almost justly called it, is perhaps worth reading once (nothing but the sternest voice of duty could have made me read it twice) because of the existence of Corinne, and because also of the undoubted fact that, here as there, though much more surprisingly, a woman of unusual ability was drawing a picture of what she would have liked to be—if not of what she actually thought herself.[11] ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... power. It was Shakspeare's prerogative to have the universal, which is potentially in each particular, opened out to him, the 'homo generalis', not as an abstraction from observation of a variety of men, but as the substance capable of endless modifications, of which his own personal existence was but one, and to use this one as the eye that beheld the other, and as the tongue that could convey the discovery. There is no greater or more common vice in dramatic writers than to draw out of themselves. How I—alone ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... an attendant at the picnic excursions in the woods as Master Teddy himself, and, having developed sufficient interest in the rabbits to summon up courage to run after them, which Teddy graciously permitted him to do, these outings perhaps gave the little animal the only pleasure he had in existence, save eating; for he was then allowed, for a brief spell at all events, to use his own legs instead of being carried ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson

... dream—when I wonder at the desk under my hand, at my body itself—when I ask myself if there is a street before my house, and if all this geographical and topographical phantasmagoria is indeed real. Time and space become then mere specks; I become a sharer in a purely spiritual existence; I see ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... footpath, or highway, that, having enjoyed but little life, merely seen the light of the sun to have its eye pained by its beams, some woman as she passed by might receive its little soul, and thus it might be born again, and still enjoy its share of existence. With these rites were the wife and child of the great chief of the Knisteneaux laid in the earth from ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... which they have given to the east coast, which was minutely explored by Captain Cook. It is worthy of remark that the French geographers had, from a comparison of the tracks navigated by Abel Tasman, previously concluded on the existence and direction of ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... impossible to contemplate such a prosperous state of things in a colony that has only just completed the eleventh year of its existence, without feeling satisfied that some unusually favourable circumstances had brought it about. Had South Australia been as distant from the older colonies on the continent as Swan River, the amount of stock she would have possessed in an equal length of time, could not have amounted ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... Hungary, but a homogeneous state, solidly based. Our soil gives us minerals and fuel and almost suffices for our needs. Our people are one of the most prolific in the world and certainly not the least intelligent. We have behind us a continuity of national existence lacking in other nations in this quarter of the globe. In our modern epoch we have assimilated French culture with indisputable success, and have given in every field proof of a great faculty of adaptability and progress. ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... of the rarest issues of ten dollar coins in existence? Somethin' happened to the die: they only issued a few," Massey stammered. ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long

... of those days which make mere existence a pleasure; the air felt light and invigorating, the sun was bright and warm; all seemed so different from the damp muggy air or fierce burning sunshine of which we have had so ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... after her own fashion was fond of him. He gave her comforts. She had lived so long without comforts that she appreciated these good things of life to the full. She had never really been much attached to Maggie, who was too like her own father and too unlike herself to allow of the existence of any sympathy between them. Maggie, even before Mrs. Howland met Martin the Shepherd's Bush grocer, had been more or less a thorn in the ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade

... constant correspondence with the popular leaders in this kingdom. Your Majesty will, therefore, judge how perfectly impracticable it is for me to hope to conduct your Government upon the plan which I have stated to be necessary to its existence, and which is in the very teeth of those ideas which have been adopted by the persons whom, from the exigency of public affairs, your Majesty has probably been obliged to ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... of Prof. Neilson. The association records its pride in the establishment and maintenance of 115 acres of nut trees for purposes of experimentation and variety testing. In so far as known to the association there is no other tract of equal area in existence for this purpose. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... heavenly Miss Burnet, daughter to Lord Monboddo, at whose house I have had the honour to be more than once. There has not been anything nearly like her, in all the combinations of beauty, grace, and goodness the great Creator has formed, since Milton's Eve, on the first day of her existence." Lord Monboddo made himself ridiculous by his speculations on human nature, and acceptable by his kindly manners and suppers in the manner of the ancients, where his viands were spread under ambrosial lights, and his Falernian was wreathed with flowers. At these suppers Burns sometimes made his ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... of copyright in the United States is not to take effect as to any foreigner until the actual existence of either of the conditions just recited, in the case of the nation to which he belongs, shall have been made known by a proclamation of the President of ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... ought not to save these people, if we can? God forbid. The weakly, the diseased, whether infant or adult, is here on earth; a British citizen; no more responsible for his own weakness than for his own existence. Society, that is, in plain English, we and our ancestors, are responsible for both; and we must fulfil the duty, and keep him in life; and, if we can, heal, strengthen, develop him to the utmost; and make the best of that which "fate and our own deservings" have given us to deal with. I ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... into a financial power. But owing to the confined boundaries of Belgium, there grew to be a congestion of population. This produced a strong democratic and socialistic uplift which even threatened the existence of the monarchy. Also, all that monarchy ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... from death, to the no small delight of the cow. Some days after, when passing through the same field, the cow came up to him as if to thank him for his kindness. As among the various animals with which the earth abounds none is more necessary to the existence of man than the cow, so likewise none appears to be more extensively propagated; in every part of the world it is found, large or small, according to the quantity and quality of its food. There is no part of Europe where it grows to ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... only person alive that knew of the existence of this room or of the secret passage until half an hour ago. I had it built a few years since by Yaquis when I was warden of the prison. The other end, the one opening from the palace, I had finished after I ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... you to stand by me. I could have even remained among these harmless simians if you had cared for me. You're all the friend I need. But you've become one of them. It isn't in you to take an intelligent interest in me, or in what I care for. I've stood this sort of existence long enough. Now I'm all ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... this year, we received a check of no small importance. I have mentioned that we were invited to join in an Italian league, having for its object to oppose the Emperor. We joined this league, but not before its existence had been noised abroad, and put the allies on their guard as to the danger they ran of losing Italy. Therefore the Imperialists entered the Papal States, laid them under contribution, ravaged them, lived there in true Tartar style, and snapped their fingers at the Pope, who ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... calculated to inspire pain quite as poignant. In the fond admiration of her fancy's first object, she had vehemently longed for a portrait of that rather singular face—a long oval, with lofty forehead, already somewhat corrugated by habits of deep thought, in his lonely night-loving existence; its mixture of passion, dumb poetry, its constitutional or adventitious profound melancholy, ever present, till his countenance gradually lighted up, after her coming and her animating discourse, like some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... of Lake Huron. Engineers sent by the intendant reported favourably of the coal-mines in Cape Breton; the specimens tested were deemed to be of very good quality. In this connection may be mentioned a mysterious allusion in Talon's correspondence to the existence of coal where none is now to be found. In 1667 he wrote to Colbert that a coal-mine had been discovered at the foot of the Quebec rock. 'This coal,' he said, 'is good enough for the forge. If the test is satisfactory, I shall see that our vessels take ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais

... power on earth would have shown less arrogance towards the most feeble. Not only was England called upon to send no more troops to South Africa, but to withdraw most of her forces already in the country, and this by a state that owed its very existence to her, and whose total population was not more than that of ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty

... the bane of my existence," declared the lawyer, with exasperation. "Those women are determined to obtain a much greater share of the estate than belongs to them or than the testator ever intended. Their testimony, I believe, is false. But as the apportionment of the property of ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose

... it is because the natives who get their living by hammock- carrying poison them, others say the tsetse fly finishes them off; and others, and these I believe are right, say that entozoa are the cause. Small, lean, lank yellow dogs with very erect ears lead an awful existence, afflicted by many things, but beyond all others by the goats, who, rearing their families in the grassy streets, choose to think the dogs intend attacking them. Last, but not least, there is the pig—a rich source of practice ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... POMPILIA. Her evidence is the story of her life. It is given from her deathbed; and its half-dreamy reminiscences are uttered with the childlike simplicity with which she may have opened her heart to her priest. She is full of strange pathetic wonder at the mystery of existence; at the manner in which the thing we seem to grasp eludes us, and the seemingly impossible comes to pass. "Husbands are supposed to love their wives and guard them. See how it has been with her! That other man—that friend—they say he loves her; his kindness ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... group of primitive men has attracted more attention from the civilized world than the pygmy blacks. From the time of Homer and Aristotle the pygmies, although their existence was not absolutely known at that early period, have had their place in fable and legend, and as civilized man has become more and more acquainted with the unknown parts of the globe he has met again and ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed

... fifteen years the Erie has spent hundreds of millions of dollars. More money indeed has been used legitimately for improvement and development since the reorganization of 1896 than during the previous sixty years of its existence. Of course this outlay has meant that the Erie has had to create new mortgages and borrow many millions; but a large part of the expenditure for improvement has come directly from earnings. The Underwood administration has been conservative ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody

... pseudo-Longinus has a similar history in England. Published by Robortelli in Basel in 1554, it was reissued three times, once with a Latin translation, before Langhorne edited it (1636) at Oxford. No Elizabethan writer alludes to it or seems to have been aware of its existence until Thomas Farnaby cites it as an authority for his Index Rhetoricus (1633). The advance of classical scholarship in England is indeed no better illustrated than by a comparison of Farnaby's cited sources with those of Thomas Wilson ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... churches have completed one full and rounded period of their existence. The age of theology in which they played a conspicuous part has passed away, never to return. The world has entered into the full swing of the age of science and practical achievement. What the work, the usefulness, and the destiny of the Protestant churches shall henceforth ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... This Assembly came into existence in peculiar times and for a remarkable purpose. England was goaded to desperation by the despotism of King Charles. As king of that nation and head of the Episcopal Church, he attempted to stifle liberty ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... a higher intelligence shines than in their dull, unintellectual orbs; in what respect they have proven themselves worthy of or suited for an immortal life. Would that be a prize of any value to the vast majority? Do they show, here upon earth, any capacity to improve, any fitness for a state of existence in which they could not crouch to power, like hounds dreading the lash or tyrannize over defenceless weakness; in which they could not hate and persecute, and torture, and exterminate; in which they could not trade, and speculate, and over-reach, and entrap ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... Boniface, of the date of 1465, is our earliest and only VELLUM treasure of the XVth century. But you will doubtless take the Monastery of Goettwic in your way?" I replied that I was wholly ignorant of the existence of such a monastery. "Then see it—(said, he) and see it carefully; for the library contains Incunabula of the most curious and scarce kind. Besides, its situation is the noblest in Austria." You ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... hundred yards, began at his leisure to knock holes in the walls. Meantime, twenty guns, anchored out in the river, played on the broad face of the fort and swept the Commandant's lunette out of existence. And with all this prodigious waste of powder but five of the garrison had fallen, and three of these by the bursting of a single shell. The defenders understood now that they were fighting for time, and told each other that when their comedy was played out and the ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... pedagogic tyranny, this peevishness, this futile discussion, this acrid, puerile quibbling, this ungraciousness, this charmless life, without politeness, without silence, this mean-spirited pessimism, which lets slip nothing that can make existence poorer than it is, this vainglorious unintelligence, which finds it easier to despise others than to understand them, all this middle-class morality, without greatness, without largeness, without happiness, without beauty, all these things are odious and hurtful: they make ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... of dew. MY 'circle theory,' as you call it, applied to human electric force, is very simple; but I have proved it to be mathematically correct. Every human being is provided INTERNALLY and EXTERNALLY with a certain amount of electricity, which is as necessary to existence as the life-blood to the heart or fresh air to the lungs. Internally it is the germ of a soul or spirit, and is placed there to be either cultivated or neglected as suits the WILL of man. It is indestructible; yet, if neglected, it remains always a germ; and, at the death of the body it inhabits, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... conglomerate, with holes in it, covers many spots; when broken, it looks like yellow haematite, with black linings to the holes: this is probably the ore used in former times by the smiths, of whose existence we now find still ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... for existence, and an aged tree, like an aged person, has not only a striking appearance, but an interesting biography. I have read the autobiographies of many century-old trees, and have found their life-stories strange and impressive. The yearly growth, or annual ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... polygamy is the prevailing evil: this is the greatest obstacle to Christianity. The Mahommedan religion, planned carefully for Eastern habits, allowed a plurality of wives, and prospered. The savage can be taught the existence of a Deity, and become a Mussulman; but to him the hateful law of fidelity to one wife is a bar to Christianity. Thus, in tropical climates there will always be a slower advance of civilization than in ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... how much virtue must he not possess to resist the temptation which such circumstances bring before him! That great crimes do very commonly result from such circumstances in Roman Catholic countries, is proved by the existence of the penalties which the canon law imposes on the authors of such crimes, in the book which goes by the title of "De Solicitante in Confessione." In almost all the cities of Spain are recounted scandalous examples of this class of abuses, and it is generally believed that in the ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... plank blindfolded. But this was while he was a young man, and no one dared to reproach him with it even when he grew old. When Granfer was alive the cave was a secret one, and none of the revenue officers knew of its existence. Only a few of Granfer's chosen friends knew how to find it. It was said, too, that he died there while hiding from the Preventive officers, and that ever since he had haunted the place, and that his voice might ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... the form of the government, or of the persons administering it. Consequently the Treaties between the United States and France were not treaties between the United States and Louis Capet, but between the two nations of America and France, and the nations remaining in existence, tho' both of them have since changed their forms of government, the treaties are not ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane



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