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Particularity   /pərtˌɪkjəlˈærəti/   Listen
Particularity

noun
(pl. particularities)
1.
The quality of being particular and pertaining to a specific case or instance.  Synonym: specialness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Particularity" Quotes from Famous Books



... man moved out of sight. But his face had made in those few thrilling seconds a deep impression on Hilda; so that in her mind she still saw it, with an almost physical particularity of detail. It presented itself to her, in some mysterious way, as a romantic visage, wistful, full of sad subtleties, of the unknown and the seductive, and of a latent benevolence. It was as recondite and as sympathetic as the town in which she ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... rightly saw that history was irreducible to concepts, that it is the contemplation of the individual, and therefore not a science. Having proceeded thus far, he might have gone further, and realized that the material of history is always the particular in its particularity, that of art what is and always is identical. But he preferred to execute a variation on the general motive that was in fashion at ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... she spoke; and Elinor, to screen Marianne from particularity, as she felt almost certain of its not being Willoughby, quickened her pace and kept up with her. They were soon within thirty yards of the gentleman. Marianne looked again; her heart sunk within her; and abruptly turning round, she was hurrying back, when ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... of the sites left something to be desired in particularity. But that, I reasoned, rather made for Tobias's veracity than otherwise. Were the document merely a hoax, as John continued to suspect, its author would have indulged his imagination in greater elaboration. The very simplicity of the directions ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... on himself, and added that it was the last time he ever went away without a formal leave of absence. His particularity in little things has often been commented on. He applied it to all his affairs. Dr. Kirkpatrick, Professor of Moral Philosophy, came into the president's office and asked for a certain paper. My father told him where it could be found. After a while, turning ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... that the T-pattern nuts on a movable shank will be my method of attachment to the fixed portion next to the cam? Eh? So it is, but" (and here his eye brightened), "anyone could have arranged that. My particularity is that I have a freedom of movement even at the lowest speeds, and an accuracy of notation even at the highest, which is secured in a wholly novel manner ... and yet so simply. What do ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... subway uptown to spend an hour with the birds of America in their habitats. Sandy with great difficulty pried them away from the Natural History Museum in time to catch the 6:15 train. Dinner in the dining-car. They inquired with great particularity how much it was costing, and when they heard that it was the same, no matter how much you ate, they drew deep breaths and settled quietly and steadily to the task of not allowing their host to be cheated. ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... do to-night is to lay before you an account of the nature of the discovery which Harvey made, and which is termed the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood. And I desire also, with some particularity, to draw your attention to the methods by which that discovery was achieved; for, in both these respects, I think, there will be much matter for ...
— William Harvey And The Discovery Of The Circulation Of The Blood • Thomas H. Huxley

... eastern winter to a Californiac, he tells you with great particularity of the dreadful storms he encountered there. Nothing whatever about the beauty of the snow. To a Californiac, snow and ice are more to be dreaded than hell-fire and brimstone. If you mention the eastern summer, he refers in scathing terms to the puny trees we produce, the ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin

... dirty, and as his hands were none of the whitest, the neighbouring lumps became soiled, and acquired a flavour which did not add to their sweetness. She had told him of it a score of times; but he did not amend, and seemed to think her particularity rather a vice than a virtue. So it is that, as love gilds all defects, lack of love sees nothing but defect in what is truly estimable. Notwithstanding the sugar-tongs, Zachariah—excusable, perhaps, this time, considering the warmth of the speech he was making against ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... your mind dwell as little as possible on the subject, and do not make it a matter of frequent conversation. Especially, do not make trouble to the friends who entertain you, when away from home, by excessive particularity. You may find some wholesome dish on the most luxurious table; and if the table is lean, you need ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... that is involved in your high office. Let your toil procure me rest from all men. Avoid the rocks on either side of you. These warnings come rather from my over-particularity[735] than from any distrust of you, for I believe that with God's help you will order all things as shall be best for our fame ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... in age and most important in the action of this tragedy, it is needful to speak with more particularity. He was young, and, like the rest of his breed, singularly handsome—so handsome, indeed, that he is said to have gained an infamous ascendency over the great Duke of Bracciano, whose privy chamberlain he had become. Marcello was an outlaw for the murder ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... gentleman to whom she had referred had seated himself at a table not far distant, given an order with some particularity, and settled himself to the reading of a newspaper which he had drawn from the pocket of his blue serge coat. He was at once absorbed, and the presence of the Claibornes gave him apparently ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... yet it is only coarsely outlined. We may some day return to it with a fond particularity; for let me warn the reader that I have that love of such scenes, nay, for the very verdure of the lawn, that I could put an ink-mark for every blade of the fresh-springing grass, and yet feel that the tale of its beauty, and of its emerald ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... less perfection, regulated the intercourse of savages, of the Asiatic empires, and of the ancient republics. The third brings me to the consideration of the law of nations, as it is now acknowledged in Christendom. From the great extent of the subject, and the particularity to which, for reasons already given, I must here descend, it is impossible for me, within any moderate compass, to give even an outline of this part of the course. It comprehends, as every reader will perceive, the principles of national independence, the intercourse of nations in peace, the ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh

... of military commissions to try persons for offenses which, according to the rules and precepts of the law of nations, and more particularly the law of war, are cognizable by such tribunals."[1198] Where, conversely, Congress defines with particularity a crime which is "an offense against the law of nations," the law is valid, even if it contains no recital disclosing that it was enacted pursuant to this clause. Thus the duty which the law of nations casts upon every government to prevent a wrong being done within its own dominion to another ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... by persons who are ignorant of the construction of the skin, and of the influence which its treatment has on the health of the body. Persons deficient in such knowledge, frequently sneer at what they deem the foolish and fidgety particularity of others, whose frequent ablutions and changes of clothing, exceed their own ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... knew Baker and had a kind word to give him. But they could never learn anything about him other than that his name was Baker—"jess Baker, that's all"—and that he came from Georgia—"jess Georgy." Occasionally a stranger would ask him with urgent particularity concerning his past history, but he then would merely look helpless and puzzled and would say nothing. As to his name, it was "jess Baker;" but on rare occasions, when pressed with hard cruelty, his lips could be seen to form the words, "Hunder'd'n ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow

... little equipment of fundamental assumptions before you, heartily glad of the opportunity you have given me of taking them out, of looking at them with the particularity the presence of hearers ensures, and of hearing the impression they make upon you. Of course, such a sketch must have an inevitable crudity of effect. The time I had for it—I mean the time I was able to give in preparation—was altogether too limited ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... posture which, from some considerable experience, I would recommend at this exercise, is sitting with the head reclined upon the desk. The prayer, besides being short, should be simple in its language and specific in its petitions. A degree of particularity and familiarity which would be improper elsewhere is not only allowable here, but necessary to the production of the proper effect. That the reader may understand to what extent I mean to be understood to recommend this, I will subjoin a form, ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... of manner, and went into another room. I saw at once that the slightness of the attention was an "anchor to windward," and that, in even those few minutes the prince had recognized a rare gem, and foreseen that, in the pursuit of it, he might need to be without any remembered particularity of attention. Lady ——- conversed with him with her usual earnest openness, but started a little, once or twice, at words which were certainly unaccompanied by their corresponding expression of countenance; and this, too, I put down for an assumption of disguise on the part of the prince. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... suppressed excitement at the Mill-House on Saturday night, when he put in a claim for the car, announced his intention of driving himself and instructed the maids with unusual particularity to see that he ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... they have chiefs to whom they give the title of Sagamo; but all of them almost, at some time or other, assume to themselves this quality, which is never granted by universal consent, but to the personal consideration of distinguished merit in councils, or in arms. Their troops have this particularity, that they are, for the most part, composed of nothing but officers; insomuch that it is rare to find a savage in the service that will own himself a private man. This want of subordination does not, however, hinder them from concurring ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard

... vpon earth, Luk. 18. 8. and the Diuell loosed from his thousand yeares imprisonment, [g]Reuel. 20. 3. enraged with great wrath walketh about, and seeketh whom he may deuoure .1. Pet. 5. 8. Because he knoweth hee hath but a short time, Reu. 12. 12. Before I enter into the particularity of the narration intended, it shall be materiall to set downe some generall propositions, as a handfull of gleanings gathered in the plentifull haruest of such learned men, who haue written of this argument, whereby the erronious may be recalled, the weake strengthened, the ignorant informed, and ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts

... Cartier, for instance, says, Il y a aussi grand nombre d'oyseaulx, scauoir grues, signes, oltardes, oyes sauuages, blanches, & grises. Others speak of outardes et oyes. They do not generally describe it with particularity. Champlain, however, in describing the turkey, cocq d'Inde, on the coast of New England, says, aussi gros qu'vne outarde, qui est une espece d'oye. Father Pierre Biard writes, et au mesme temps les outardes arriuent du midy, qui sont grosses cannes au double des nostres. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain

... the intermixture of love and war, and by the blending of arms with amours in the conventional style of historic fiction. The lowest depth is reached when the reminiscences of an Emperor's valet, to whom he is still a kind of hero, are served up with that succulent dressing of vivid particularity which is swallowed with relish because it brings down a great man to the level of the most ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... it. I always thought I knew that piece of history well enough, but was still afraid to trust it, because there was not that convincing particularity about it that one likes to have in history; but when you mentioned every name, the other day, and every date, and every little circumstance, in their just order and sequence, I said to myself, this sounds something like—this is history—this is putting it in a shape ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... found him examining the equipment of the car with great particularity. Above him was the throat of the balloon bunched and tied together, but with an open lumen through which Bert could peer up into a vast, empty, quiet interior, and out of which descended two fine cords of unknown import, one white, one crimson, to pockets below the ring. The netting about ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... you my compliments," said the Prime Minister, "on the particularity and speed with which your department has become informed. That at all ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... me, and ask him about some detail or other in the early part of his battle which she said had greatly interested her, and would he be so good as to describe that part again and with a little more particularity?—which of course precipitated the whole battle on us, again, with a hundred lies added that had ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... This particularity of detail is necessary to emphasize the fact that that champagne, that port, and above all, that brandy—the green and yellow and white liqueurs did not count—was placed at the absolute disposition of Dirkovitch, and he enjoyed ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... her immediate circle, was in her old age "a great genealogist of all Sussex families, and much consulted." The names Frewen and Jenkin may almost seem to have been interchangeable at will; and yet Fate proceeds with such particularity that it was perhaps on the point of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... from such imputations. 'It was done in the usual way in all cases where the proof of death is only presumptive. The evidence, such as it was, was laid before the court by the applicants, your husband's cousins; and the servants who had been with him deposed to his death with a particularity that was deemed sufficient. Their error was, not that somebody died—for somebody did die at the time affirmed—but that they mistook one person for another; the person who died being not Sir Blount Constantine. The court was ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... the aperture there presently became disclosed to his view the strong and robust figure of one who was evidently of a seafaring habit. From the gold braid upon his hat, the seals dangling from the ribbon at his fob, and a certain particularity of custom, he was evidently one of no small consideration in his profession. He was of a strong and powerful build, with a head set close to his shoulders, and upon a round, short bull neck. He wore a black cravat, loosely tied into a knot, and a red ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle

... judge, I summon thee within forty days to meet me before the throne of the Most High!" According to some accounts this fearful sentence included the King, by whom, if uttered, it might have been heard. The earliest allusion to this awful speech does not contain that striking particularity, which, if part of it, would be fatal to its credibility, i.e., the precise date of Clement's death. It was not till the year after that Clement and King Philip passed to their account. The fate of these two men ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... his face white and calm. With a senseless particularity he placed his envelope exactly in the centre of the little polished table. He walked to the door, closed it noiselessly as he went out, and in a few minutes was tramping through the rain out of sight of White Gables, going nowhere, seeing ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... representation is at the basis of all our concepts of externality; that sensation, per se is mere interruption of activity; that per se it possesses no spatial or extensive or external suggestiveness; that sensations nevertheless serve to denote or give feature and particularity to our experience of activity; that all perception of the external is at bottom therefore a mental representation of exertional activity and its forms, denoted, punctuated, identified by sensation, which latter by itself, we repeat, carries no suggestion ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip

... of hesitation to me with the utmost particularity. He went right past the door, and then, with his hands in his pockets and making an infantile attempt to whistle, strolled right along beyond the end of the wall. There he recalls a number of mean dirty shops, and particularly that of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... wilderness swallows him. It is at once the rendezvous, the place of good-byes, and the gossip-exchange of the North; here, the incomer first apprehends the intimate, village spirit of that vast land, where a man's doings are registered with more particularity than in the smallest hamlet outside. For where there are not, in half a million square miles, enough white men to fill a room, or as many white women as a man has fingers, each individual fills a large space in the picture. Away up in Fort Somervell, ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... morning commenting on her mastery of all the details of the crime had scarcely done her justice. Before she concluded, Crown had heard from her lips little incidents that had gone over his head. She put new and accurate meaning into facts time and time again, speaking with the particularity ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... adjoining room. It was similar in every respect to the one from which it was entered, but somewhat differently furnished. The centre was occupied by a long green table, at which the President sat shuffling a pack of cards with great particularity. Even with the stick and the Colonel's arm, Mr. Malthus walked with so much difficulty that every one was seated before this pair and the Prince, who had waited for them, entered the apartment; and, in consequence, the three took ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... black shroud. Have her features changed? I cannot remember one—only at an interval her eyes. Does she look into the faces of people as she used? Or does she stare carelessly away? Softly between the eyes, is what I meant. I mean—but my reason for this particularity is very simple. I would state it to you, and to no other. I cannot have peace till she is restored; and my prayer is, that I may not haunt her to defeat your labour. Does her face appear to show that I am ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... contempt of the nothing, as she nobly calls it, about which she had been giving such particular directions, to wit, her body; and her apologizing for the particularity of those directions from the circumstances she was in—had the same, and as strong an effect upon me, as when I first read the animated paragraph; and, pointed by my eye, (by turns cast upon them all,) ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... which was one suspended moment of doubt she saw Erik only casually, at an Eastern Star dance, at the shop, where, in the presence of Nat Hicks, they conferred with immense particularity on the significance of having one or two buttons on the cuff of Kennicott's New Suit. For the benefit of beholders they ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... it" that her son was like Rousseau, but he disclaimed the honour antithetically and with needless particularity (see his letter to Mrs. Byron, and a quotation from his Detached Thoughts, Letters, 1898, i. 192, note). There was another point of unlikeness, which he does not mention. Byron, on the passion of love, does not "make for morality," but he eschews nastiness. The loves of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... "'Nor is the particularity of some of the dates and alleged circumstances of much weight in our judgment. He must be a miserable inventor of fiction indeed, who cannot clothe a narrative in some verisimilitude of this kind. It is said, that the historian makes ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... artist must now step down, don his working clothes, and become the artisan. He now resolutely commits his airy conception, his delicate Ariel, to the touch of matter; he must decide, almost in a breath, the scale, the style, the spirit, and the particularity of execution ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... mention of Sterne's name in Germany may well be the brief word in the Hamburgischer unpartheyischer Correspondent[6] for January 19, 1762, in a letter from the regular London correspondent, dated January 8. In a tone of particularity which would mark the introduction of a new and strange personality into his communications, the correspondent states the fact of Sterne's departure for Paris in pursuit of lost health. This journal may further be taken ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... dear ones, and family reunions; anxieties occasioned by illness, or the armies' depredations; courageous efforts on the part of mothers not to allow their children's education and occupations to suffer unnecessarily; tragedies of death and ruined homes—all are recorded with a "particularity" for which we are now grateful to ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey

... he carried me again to my adventures, which he heard all over again with more particularity, and extraordinary approval, swearing at intervals that I was "a queer ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... him, with an ungrudging particularity, about Putney, and her life at Putney, there gradually arose in his brain a vision of a kind of existence such as he had never encountered. Putney had clearly the advantages of a residential town in a magnificent situation. It lay on the slope of a hill whose foot was washed by a glorious ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... there was a purpose in the particularity with which we described our people and their histories," so the Egyptian proceeded. "He we go to find was called 'King of the Jews;' by that name we are bidden to ask for him. But, now that we have met, and heard from each other, we may know him to be the Redeemer, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... moment, if he chooses,—and choose he must!—can inform me where to find the schedule, the documents, the evidences, in whatever shape they exist, of the vast amount of Uncle Jaffrey's missing property. He has the secret. His boast was no idle word. It had a directness, an emphasis, a particularity, that showed a backbone of solid meaning within the mystery ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Lord Blackadder saw me then, at the start. But at Bellegarde, the Swiss frontier, where there was a wait of half an hour for the Customs examination, an irritating performance always, but carried out here with the most maddening and overbearing particularity, everyone was obliged to alight from the train, and for the moment I trembled for Lady Claire. But the appeal addressed to the French brigadier, "un galant homme," of an invalid lady, too ill to be disturbed, ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... supposed conscientious chronicler of events, had he been a naturalist, would have further detailed, with graphic particularity, the rich, exuberant, and varied flora of the region—from the largest plant that waved and blossomed in the prairie winds to the lowliest floweret that nestled among the tender and sweet-scented grasses on the prairie's ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... pressed nearer to me, or, to speak more properly, farther from the mate, whose countenance was particularity grim just at ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... excavated at Pompeii, would be wearisome in the extreme. We intend therefore merely to select some of the most important, to be described at length, the arrangement of which may serve, with variations according to place and circumstances, as a type of the whole. Some, which offer no particularity in their construction, are remarkable for the beauty of their paintings or other decorations; and, indeed, it is from the paintings on the walls that many of the houses have derived their names. Some again are designated from mosaics or inscriptions on the threshold, from the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... yet while seeming continually to reflect the most poetical phases of nature and of rural life—so delicate is the appreciation of natural beauty, and so pure and unaffected and exquisitely graceful the style of composition—it has throughout even a Flemish truth and particularity of detail. If we were called upon to name a literary performance that is more than any other American in its whole character, we cannot now think of one that would sooner receive this praise. A record of real observations during the daily walks of many ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... author. Nevertheless, let such seeds of thought as here are carelessly flung out, nurtured in the good soil of charity, and not unkindly forced into foolish accusations of my own conceit, whereas their meaning is general, (as if forsooth selfishly dibbled in with vain particularity, and not liberally broadcast that he may run that reads,)—let such crude considerations excuse my own weak and uninjurious invasion of the provinces of other men. The wisdom for social purposes of infinitesimal division of labour, may be proved good by working ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... amnis latus recentibus ac sumptuosioribus aedificiis attollebatur; antiquius et ipsa vetustate in cultius quod in Paphiis finibus exstructum erat." The English version is: "The town on Salaminia side was better built than that in Paphia." Surely there is in the Latin the particularity which we might expect from a person who had known Athlone before the war. The English version is contemptibly bad, I need hardly say that the Paphian side is Connaught, and the Salaminian ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... contemplated the strange fanatic before him, and listened to his heated rhapsody, with indescribable bewilderment. He looked him in the face with curious particularity; saw there the marks of education; and wondered the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... {opp. 78} speciality, specialite^; individuality, individuity^; particularity, peculiarity; idiocrasy &c (tendency) 176; personality, characteristic, mannerism, idiosyncrasy; specificness &c adj.^; singularity &c (unconformity) 83; reading, version, lection; state; trait; distinctive feature; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... chronicles tell of the good King Arthur, the last and greatest representative of the power of the ancient British aborigines. It is a curious illustration of the uncertainty which attends all the early records of national history, that, notwithstanding all the above particularity respecting the life and death of Arthur, it is a serious matter of dispute among the learned in modern times whether ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... difference between the views is that one bitterly and broadly condemns the present for its unlikeness to the ideal past; while the other, assuming the present to be as necessary as the past, does not affect to disregard or censure it. It is not worth our while to analyse with any particularity that philosophy of politics, art, education, ethics, and social relation which was constructed on the basis of a state of nature. It still possesses singular fascination for the looser thinkers of every country, and is no doubt the parent, more or less remote, of almost all the prepossessions which ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... of nature. Forest, ocean, and stream are the things for which he really cares; and men and women are the accessories, inconvenient and often uncomfortable, that must be endured. Of the former he speaks with a loving particularity that lets nothing escape the attention. Yet minute as are often his descriptions, he did not fall into that too easily besetting sin of the novelist, of overloading his picture with details. To advance the greater he sacrificed ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... peculiar term. But it differs from the great canyons in the lowness of the bordering walls and in the great breadth of the space between. Neither Simpson nor Jackson describe the canyon or valley with as much particularity as could be desired, but Mr. Jackson has furnished a map, Fig. 29, showing the course of the stream with the walls of the canyon shaded in, and with the breaks or gullies through these walls reduced to a scale. This ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... intelligence, and as I have warm friends in the people of Dyrrachium, I have come to them, after writing the former part of this letter at Thessalonica. When I turn my face from this town towards your house I will let you know, and for your part I would have you write me everything with the utmost particularity, whatever its nature. I am now expecting some definite step or ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... seemed to have seized her spirits. Let Jane recollect how she once related to me the curious history and character of Percival Stockdale! It happened at the house of a friend in London, whom I shall not point out with too much particularity. Dibdin endeavoured to excite the envy of some of us litterateurs, that we were not, like him, members of the Roxburgh, which had dukes, and earls, and chancellors of the exchequer, and judges, and the great Magician of the North into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various

... to her. It was queer play. But then, who would do it? And it was not for Mrs. Eldridge alone. She brushed away with a good heart, while the poor old woman was hovering over the chair on which her supper was set, munching bread and herring with a particularity of attention which shewed how good a good meal was to her. Matilda did not disturb her, and she said never a word to Matilda; till, just as the little girl had brought all the sweepings of the floor to the threshold, where they lay in a heap, and another ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner

... The second particularity of his life, which had relation to St. Francis, is, that he gloriously verified his prediction as to the fruits of sanctity which he was to bring to the Order. Having been elected general when he was five and thirty years of age, in consequence of his great ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... sense of ownership was dulled in one who had seen magnificent properties masterless, or apparently belonging to some limp, bloodstained bundle of flesh that lay in one of the rooms. In vain Cummings urged the state of the market, repeating with more particularity and force what Whipple had said. The mines were tied up by strike; their stock, while perfectly good, was down to twenty cents on the dollar; to sell now would be madness. Worth ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... till the year 1857. These facts will soon become curiosities in agricultural literature, and so are worth preserving. They furnish excuse, too, for what may appear to learned agriculturists an unnecessary particularity in what might seem the well-known facts relative ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... Captain Poke relieved my mind considerably; and laying aside the bison-skin, I asked him to have the goodness to examine the localities, with some particularity, about the termination of the dorsal bone, in order to ascertain if there were any encouraging signs to be discovered. Captain Poke put on his spectacles, for time had brought the worthy mariner to their use, as he said, "whenever he ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... products. The life of Methuselah and the mind of Shakespeare together could hardly take the whole of critical knowledge to be their joint province. But the area of survey may be constantly increased; the particularity of knowledge constantly ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... men is partly the cause and partly the effect of a corresponding change in the nature of their intellectual operations, of a change by which science gains and poetry loses. Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems. They give us vague phrases instead of images, and personified qualities instead of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... about my climbing capacity in a way which piqued me, and giving me the routes with a particularity which somewhat mystified me, "Now I will write a letter to Olaf of the Mountain and to Elsket. I once was enabled to do them a slight service, and they will receive you. It will take him two or three weeks ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page

... extremely interesting, as every thing adorned by Mr. Macaulay's luminous style must necessarily be, but it lacks a little of that bright and living reality, which, in the account of Sedgemoor, and in many other parts of the book, are imparted by minute particularity and precise local knowledge. It runs ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various

... the office was brief, as he soon found himself growing fatigued. As he was leaving Walcott inquired politely for Mrs. Dean, then with great particularity for ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... truths. 58 Sec. 2. Misapplication of the aphorism: "General truths are more important than particular ones." 58 Sec. 3. Falseness of this maxim, taken without explanation. 59 Sec. 4. Generality important in the subject, particularity in the predicate. 59 Sec. 5. The importance of truths of species is not owing to their generality. 60 Sec. 6. All truths valuable as they are characteristic. 61 Sec. 7. Otherwise truths of species are valuable, because beautiful. 61 Sec. 8. And many truths, valuable if separate, may be objectionable ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... "Knowing his particularity, I hurried after him, and running till I could scarcely stand, arrived at one end of the street just in time to see the coach go off with my uncle at the other. Dearly did I pay for ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb

... the rankly new. The farm on the veld stood on the veld, a thing of the veld, a thing rooted and established there and nowhere else. The dusty, crude, brick-field desolation of the Rand on the other hand did not really belong with any particularity to South Africa at all. It was one with our camps and armies. It was part of something else, something still bigger: a monstrous shadowy arm had thrust out from Europe and torn open this country, erected these chimneys, piled these heaps—and ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... The minute particularity is very noteworthy, scourging, plucking the beard, shame, all sorts of taunts and buffets on the face, and the last indignity of spitting. Clearly, then, He is not only to suffer persecution, but is to be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... those who have seen men die. Egan had the larger experience, but Dan the finer imagination. Mulcahy shivered when the former spoke of the knife as an intimate acquaintance, or the latter dwelt with loving particularity on the fate of those who, wounded and helpless, had been overlooked by the ambulances, and had fallen into the hands ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling

... according to the English custom. There was a piece of Christmas brawn to-day, from a pig fattened on oats and peas, and hardened by being lodged (while he lived) on a boarded floor; all this was told Robin across the table with particularity, while he ate it, and drank, according to etiquette, a cup of bastard. He attended to all this zealously, while never for an instant was he unaware ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... spoken discourses. A listener in Westminster Hall or the House of Commons, unlike the reader by his fireside in the next century, is always thinking of arguments and facts that bear directly on the special issue before him. What he wishes to hear is some particularity of event or inference which will either help him to make up his mind, or will justify him if his mind is already made up. Burke never neglected these particularities, and he never went so wide as to fall for an instant ...
— Burke • John Morley

... Laurence Oliphant's brilliantly humorous "Autobiography of a Joint Stock Company"—apologies if by slip of memory the title is given at all incorrectly. Occasionally, it is true, our plays treat financial matters with some particularity; one may cite Mammon and A Bunch of Violets, both versions of Feuillet's drama Montjoie, and Mr Arthur Jones's clever piece A Rogue's Comedy, and Business is Business, the adaptation of Les Affaires sont les ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... stabb'd him, and left him dead upon the Place. The people of Genoa all in a Rage fought for the Murtherer, who was forced to fly, his Quality not being able to protect him. In another Account of him, this Particularity is mentioned; that the Murderers pursued him to Rome, and on Enquiry learned, that an Oratorio of his Composition was to be performed that Evening; they went with an Intent to execute their Design, but were so moved with his Composition, that they rather chose to tell him his Danger, advised ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi

... offices and employments corruptly disposed of by the said Warren Hastings, and did offer and engage to prove and establish the same by sufficient evidence. That this account is stated with a minute particularity and precision; the date of each payment, down to that of small sums, is specified; the various coins in which such payments were severally made are distinguished; and the different persons through whose hands the money passed into those of the said Warren Hastings are named. That such ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... where he had the effrontery to hand in a boasting memorial of his services, written with that particularity which gives an air of extreme accuracy to any statement. In this art he was generally accomplished, yet he seems on this occasion to have failed. For some time he flourished; alternately, one day at Versailles—one day at St. Germains; and, whilst an under-current ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... Juliet"; but the portraiture here, both physical and moral, is more detailed and peculiar than it was in the earlier play. Shakespeare now knows his Rosaline intimately. The mere facts that here again her physical appearance is set forth with such particularity, and that the "hard-heartedness" which Mercutio noted in her has now become "wantonness" is all-important, especially when we remember that Miss Fitton was probably listening to the play. Even at Christmas, 1597, Shakespeare's ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... the wood-measurer looked at him with amazement; for such particularity generally provoked a quarrel. Christopher had still some logs over; these he kept by him on the wagon. At this moment the servant Sauer came up, and asked ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various

... even with much, delight. It seldom rises above a good man's rhetoric. Cowper, instead of writing about himself and his pets, and his cucumber-frames, wrote of the wicked world from which he had retired, and the vices of which he could not attack with that particularity that makes satire interesting. The satires are not exactly dull, but they are lacking in force, either of wit or of passion. They are hardly more than an expression of sentiment and opinion. The sentiments are usually sound—for Cowper ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... it is the side of the definite existence, the sphere of its formal reality, the sphere of the reverence paid to God. To comprehend the absolute connection of this antithesis is the profound task of metaphysics. This limitation originates all forms of particularity of whatever kind. The formal volition (of which we have spoken) wills itself and desires to make its own personality valid in all that it purposes and does; even the pious individual wishes to be saved and happy. This pole of the antithesis, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... the old boy, who, I am sure, would not have sleeped a wink through the night for disappointment, had he not got a free breast made of it, I at long and last consented—provided his story was not too long. My chief particularity on this point, as I should mention, was, that it was past Benjie's bedtime, and the callant had a hoast, which required all his mother's as well as my own good doctoring—having cost us two bottles of Dantzic black beer, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... said Tenney, with a particularity that seemed to cause him an intense pain of concentration. "She never'd hang it up with t'others. It's folded. Mebbe in her work-basket, mebbe—my God in heaven! she wouldn't ha' kep' it. She's burnt it up. You take off the cover o' the kitchen stove. You ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... only was the stove blooming cherry-red at the far end of the apartment, but the little-used fireplace was aglow with blazing pine-logs, and two extra lamps were set upon the table. He noted these things with that particularity a man spends upon detail at those times of subdued and profound emotion when he seems incapable of noting anything, and took his seat carelessly at the table in his accustomed place. The juge, and the garde, and the bachelor chemist, and the chief of the gendarmerie, and all the rest ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... of his absence and particularity, as it is characteristick of the man, may be worth relating. When he and I took a journey together into the West, we visited the late Mr. Banks, of Dorsetshire; the conversation turning upon pictures, which ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... in ever so menial position, about her person, who is not mentioned with kindness and particularity. A footnote annexed to the humble name almost always contains a short biography of the individual, whether wardrobe-maid, groom, or gillie. Thus of her trusty attendant John Brown (1826-83) she writes: 'The same who, in 1858, became my regular attendant out of doors everywhere in the ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous

... should not, to "wince and relent and refrain'' from what they should: these things, howbeit regrettable, are common to humanity, and may happen to any of us. But amateur bookselling is foul and unnatural; and it is noteworthy that our language, so capable of particularity, contains no distinctive name for the crime. Fortunately it is hardly known to exist: the face of the public being set against it as a flint — and the trade ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame

... considerable particularity the coast, giving the names of the Indian tribes, and cataloguing the native productions, vegetable and animal. He bestows his favorite names liberally upon points and islands—few of which were accepted. Cape Ann he called from his charming ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the pronouns are incorporated in the verbs as prefixes, infixes, or suffixes. In such cases we will call them article pronouns. These article pronouns point out with great particularity the person, number, and gender, both of subject and object, and sometimes of the indirect object. When the article pronouns are used the personal pronouns may or may not be used; but it is believed that the personal ...
— On the Evolution of Language • John Wesley Powell

... Thomas Parr) lived the famous Countess of Desmond. From deeds, settlements, and other indisputable testimonies it appeared clearly that she was upwards of 140, according to the computation of the great Lord Bacon, who knew her personally, and remarks this particularity about her, that she thrice changed ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various

... beyond his power to follow. His love, he acknowledged for the first time, had never been easy or contented or happy. It had been obscure, like the night about him now; it resembled a fire that he held in his bare hands. Hannah's particularity, too, was allied to this strange newly- awakened peril. In a manner it was that which had carried Phebe out of the mountains. Now the resemblance between them was far stronger than ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... cognizance, and will, doubtless, in due time, illumine the world with various knowledge in this department of rural economy, not yet "dreamt of in our philosophy." The recently published poultry books, too, with an amplitude and particularity in the discussion of the different breeds and varieties, which shuts all suspicions of self-interest into the corner, have given such a fund of information on the subject, that any further inquiry may, with entire good will, be turned ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... information is anywhere vouchsafed; perhaps the publishers had judged the work too unimportant; and we are still left ignorant whether or not we owe the woodcuts in the body of the volume to the same hand that drew the plan. It seems, however, more than probable. The literal particularity of mind which, in the map, laid down the flower-plots in the devil's garden, and carefully introduced the court-house in the town of Vanity, is closely paralleled in many of the cuts; and in both, the architecture of the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the impression to her eyes; there was that air of freshness and purity which some people always carry about with them, and which has to do with the clear look of temperance as well as with great particularity of personal care, and in part also grows out of the moral condition. In three breathless seconds Eleanor took note of it all, characteristics well known, but seen now with the novelty of long disuse and with the background of that huge black savage, ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... a military official at Chiang-chiu also issued a proclamation to warn the people against poison, and giving the confession of the above-mentioned criminal with great particularity. The criminal is made to say that a few months ago he had been decoyed and sold to foreigners. In company with more than fifty others—he was conveyed by ship to Macao. There they were distributed among the foreign ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg

... observation, which enabled him to draw from his surroundings a comprehensive knowledge of the world and of man. He ceased lecturing in 1797, and in 1804 old age ended a life which had always, even in minute detail, been governed by rule. A man of extreme devotion to duty, particularity, and love of truth, and an amiable, bright, and witty companion, Kant belongs to the acute rather than to the profound thinkers. Among his manifold endowments the tendency to combination and the faculty of intuition (as ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... for Panchito, and Pablo lingered a moment at the fence, gazing after him curiously. Could it be possible that Don Miguel Jose Maria Federico Noriaga Farrel had, while sojourning in the cold land of the bewhiskered men, lost a modicum of that particularity with women which had formerly distinguished him in the ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... not apply to the third count, certainly there is a particularity which is quite unnecessary in the others; it states that by certain devices and contrivances they endeavoured to raise the price of the funds, to the prejudice of His Majesty's subjects, to an undue elevation, and so on, there is enough to ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney

... gathered round him; but as yet, there is no written accusation, no written statement of the offence which it is alleged he has committed. True, he has heard evidence—he has heard a charge made orally against him—but the law requires greater particularity than this before a man shall be put in peril upon a criminal accusation. The facts disclosed in the evidence before the magistrates must be put in a legal form; the offence must be clearly and accurately defined in writing, by which the accused may be informed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... intention to weary the reader with the details of each day's travel; indeed, my limited space would not admit of such particularity. I shall, however, as briefly as possible, relate such incidents of the journey as I may deem especially worthy of mention. When we reached Lancaster, we discovered that our funds had entirely given out, for we had lived expensively at taverns on the way, instead of exercising a judicious economy. ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson

... sudden change from it to His asking for Mary; Martha's return to the house and whispering in her sister's ear, "The Master is come and calleth for thee;" the hurried obedience to the call—all these incidents are recorded by John with the particularity and ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed

... believe, either a separate creation or a composite of the parrot and the magpie. I have not yet discovered their particular function in nature but have observed them with some particularity. They wear top hats and are constantly making speeches, both of which are easy things to do and quite pleasant minor accomplishments.—So far as I can gather their chief use has been to pass something called a Budget. From the fact that this Budget ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... large and general it is. Its method is the classical appeal to universal knowledge and feeling, not the romantic method of strangeness of sentiment and detailed particularity of truth. Matthew Arnold once recommended those who cannot read Greek or Latin to read Milton as a far better key than any translation can be to the secret of the greatness of the ancient poets. This is the truth: and not only for the reason on which Arnold laid just stress—the "sure and flawless ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... possible, in all the screaming emphasis of red ink, is this: that the circumstances of my upbringing and the circumstances of Isabel's upbringing had left not a shadow of belief or feeling that the utmost passionate love between us was in itself intrinsically WRONG. I've told with the fullest particularity just all that I was taught or found out for myself in these matters, and Isabel's reading and thinking, and the fierce silences of her governesses and the breathless warnings of teachers, and all the social and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... man rejoined, looking at him with a particularity and speaking with an emphasis which attracted our attention, 'but those of many others, who I can assure you will very shortly yield them up to you, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... and attentively, and with a nice particularity to every syllable. Otherwise than as his great deliberation seemed unnatural, and perhaps the result of an effort equally great, he allowed no sign of emotion to escape him. When he had read it through, he ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens



Words linked to "Particularity" :   particular, specificity, generality, quality



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