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More "Acquirement" Quotes from Famous Books



... seal was broken—but the contents still a secret. Poor Agnes had learned to write as some youths learn Latin: so short a time had been allowed for the acquirement, and so little expert had been her master, that it took her generally a week to write a letter of ten lines, and a month to read one of twenty. But this being a letter on which her mind was deeply engaged, her whole imagination aided her slender literature, ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... being hardened into convictions; his natural gifts (and they were many) could be raised into talents; his life, in fact, could have been made a success by one influence—the love of a woman—the one influence that was forbidden: the single human acquirement that must for ever be beyond the priest's reach. This Christian Vellacott felt in a vague, uncertain way. He did not know very much about love and its influence upon a man's character, these questions never having come under his journalistic field of inquiry; but he had lately ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... of self-surrender, in its application to our possessions, implies that there shall be an element of sacrifice in our use of these; whether they be possessions of intellect, of acquirement, of influence, of position, or of material wealth. The law of help is sacrifice, and the law for a Christian man is that he shall not offer unto the Lord his God ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... knowledge of things through their primary causes. 2. The government of the passions, or the acquirement of the habit of virtue. ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza

... somebody, sneeringly. "Yes," said Duclos; "and I will tell you how. The great Conde, you will allow, was no fool; and the Duchesse de Longueville is cited as one of the wittiest women that ever lived. The Regent was a man who had few equals, in every kind of talent and acquirement. The Prince de Conti, who was elected King of Poland, was celebrated for his intelligence, and, in poetry, was the successful rival of La Fare and St. Aulaire. The Duke of Burgundy was learned and enlightened. His Duchess, the daughter of Louis ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... As regards the acquirement of mediumship qualities, information and scientific instruction is much needed, particularly at the present time. In this book we shall endeavor to throw much light upon this particular matter, and to give such instruction and information in a plain, practical form. We may begin by reminding the ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... human being is but the development of ideas in one for the benefit of others. To this end, attention should be directed,—1st, To the value of the ideas collected; 2dly, To their discipline; 3dly, To their expression. For the first, acquirement is necessary; for the second, discipline; for the third, art. The first comprehends knowledge purely intellectual, whether derived from observation, memory, reflection, books, or men, Aristotle or Fleet Street. The second ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... objects which I would entreat my countrymen to contemplate, as the most eligible to attain a knowledge of this important quarter of the globe, and to introduce civilization among its numerous inhabitants; by which means, our enemies will be excluded from that emolument and acquirement, which we supinely overlook and ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... the sickening part of it. People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking. We meet neither with modest ignorance nor studious acquirement. Their knowledge has been taken in too much by snatches to digest properly. There is neither sincerity nor system in what they say. They hazard the first crude notion that comes to hand, and then defend it how they ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... in the mind of an immigrant that there is a stake in the land for him, and his confidence that in the acquirement of his stake he gets a square deal from all concerned, are more important from the viewpoint of Americanization than the actual acquirement of any settlement on land; for not all immigrants desire to own a piece of land and work on it, and not all who desire to can actually do so. Other considerations—for ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek

... Because of the language difficulty, the giving of many tests, such as those in the upper years of the Binet system, could be regarded as most unfair. However, the simpler language tests she did fairly well, especially those where she could understand the commonsense questions. In regard to her acquirement of English, she has done better than her relatives, who continue to live in a neighborhood where their own Slavic dialect is spoken. When it came to dealing reasoningly with concrete situations, such as those presented by our performance tests, this young woman did comparatively well—quite above ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... see the mental powers of feeling and of thought unfolding themselves in infancy and youth in exact accordance with the progress of the organization. We see them perverted or suspended by the sudden inroad of disease. We sometimes observe every previous acquirement obliterated from the adult mind by fever or by accident, leaving education to be commenced anew, as if it had never been; and yet, with all these evidences of the organic influence, the proposition that the established laws of physiology, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... like. We come of the same race, we speak the same language, we worship the same God, we have the same ideas of culture and of pleasures. The difference is one that is not patent to the eye or to the ear. It is a difference of accidental incident, not of nature or of acquirement." ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... of the educational ladder. His bright colors fade, perhaps; the eyes of his mind are turned toward brighter and more ornamental things. What creature but a parrot devotes such long hours to the acquirement of perfection in each trivial stage of progress? What creature remembers so faithfully and so well? We know not what we are, you and I and the rest of us; but if we had had the application, patience, and ambition of the average parrot, we should be greater men. But ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... seriously uncomfortable. They were not likely to fool away this high promise for lack of effort. No, they practised cautiously, after supper, with right fair success, and so they spent a jubilant evening. They were prouder and happier in their new acquirement than they would have been in the scalping and skinning of the Six Nations. We will leave them to smoke and chatter and brag, since we have no further use ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Tendency to Make Certain Actions Automatic. It Is a Great Time Saver, and Forms the Basis for Training and the Acquirement ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... with the larger acquirement of facts the vivisection method would gradually become ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... hopelessly lost in attempting to imagine the number of years of patient toil which must have preceded his first request for food, and I contemplated with astonishment the indefatigable perseverance which has borne him triumphant through the acquirement of such a language. If the simple request for something to eat presented such apparently insurmountable obstacles to pronunciation, what must the language be in its dealings with the more abstruse questions of theological ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... something here which Mynie Boltwood could not understand. He was not ambitious in the acquirement of knowledge, however, and merely did as he was told—and ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish

... effected, gives new vigor continually to the mind, and also leads to the habit of that "industry and patient thought" to which the immortal Newton attributed all he had done; while at the same time a vivid pleasure is taken in the acquirement of knowledge so obtained beyond any that can be conferred by reward ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... so very unexpected to come upon such a fine and far-spreading view so suddenly and so close to bricks and mortar. Alas! the latter are fast encroaching upon this delightful but somewhat neglected spot, and unless the Croydonians are wise enough to secure the acquirement of the summit of the hill as a public open space, this splendid view will be entirely ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... to Charles Lloyd, senior, Coleridge had said: "My days I shall devote to the acquirement of practical ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... eye could have been formed by natural selection, is more than enough to stagger any one; yet in the case of any organ, if we know of a long series of gradations in complexity, each good for its possessor, then, under changing conditions of life there is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection. In the cases in which we know of no intermediate or transitional states, we should be very cautious in concluding that none could have existed, for the homologies of many organs and their intermediate ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... interested in them. Where the concern is large, and can afford a remuneration sufficient to attract a class of candidates superior to the common average, it is possible to select for the general management, and for all the skilled employments of a subordinate kind, persons of a degree of acquirement and cultivated intelligence which more than compensates for their inferior interest in the result. It must be further remarked that it is not a necessary consequence of joint-stock management that the persons employed, whether in superior or in subordinate ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... may be added that it has been the custom of those writing of Eugene Field to surround and endow him throughout his career with the acquirement of scholarship, and pecuniary independence, which he never possessed before the last six years ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... household. The rest of the day was devoted to the enormous correspondence and affairs of administration which devolved upon him as first minister of state and treasury. He was very ignorant. He had no experience or acquirement in the arts either of war or peace, and his early education had been limited. Like his master, he spoke no tongue but Spanish, and he had no literature. He had prepossessing manners, a fluent tongue, a winning and benevolent disposition. His natural capacity for affairs was considerable, and his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... at length fully turned his thoughts in this new channel. He seems to have disdained the acquirement of the English language. Perhaps he suspected first what he was bound to know before he completed his task, that the Cherokee language has certain necessities and peculiarities of its own. It is almost impossible to write ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown

... best lesson he had ever had in his life amongst the unruly children of Mr. Burke; but this lesson was not to be learned only by his ears and eyes; it would not have been enough for him to have seen Tom soused in the mire, or William with his bloody nose; his very bones were to suffer in the acquirement of it, and he was to get such a fright as ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... makes knowledge of them possible does not concern us. Those conditions which confer such a special fitness on things as to render them perceivable have but little to do with us; for our purposes which consist only in the acquirement of good and avoidance of evil, can only be served by knowledge and not by those conditions of ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... the natives, and proceeded without touching for refreshments, which doubtless might have been obtained in plenty; but the length and uncertainty of his passage seemed to forbid the least delay; nor was it at this time foreseen how much superior to every other consideration the acquirement of a wholesome change of diet would be found. The bay from which these men had come he named Indian Bay. At three P. M. the longitude was, by lunar observation, 156 deg. 55' east; and at six the furthest land in sight bore north, Cape Satisfaction ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... the whole of their brief leisure after the work of the day was over to the cultivation of a knowledge of Spanish, being fortunate enough, in their pursuit of this acquirement, to make the acquaintance of a young and very intelligent negro, who had been for many years valet to his master, but, being unlucky enough to incur that gentleman's displeasure, had been sent in disgrace into the field-gang. With him as a tutor their ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... courtesan would receive from the wife and children of the concierge! But beneath these conventional fictions the truth was that the concierge held the whip. At last he was using it. And he had given himself a half-holiday in order to celebrate his second acquirement of the ostentatious furniture and the crimson lampshades. This was one of the dramatic crises in his career as a man of substance. The national thrill of victory had not penetrated into the flat with the concierge and the law. The emotions ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... descriptions of the Orkneys, in the very complete and tastefully written Guide-Book of the Messrs. Anderson of Inverness, and of his own parish in the "Statistical Account of Scotland," had, both from the high literary ability and the amount of scientific acquirement which they exhibit, rendered me desirous to see. I was politely received, though my visit must have been, as I afterwards ascertained, at a rather inconvenient time. It was now late in the week, and the coming ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... It is not to a want of taste or of desire or of disposition to learn that we have to ascribe the rareness of good scholars, so much as to the want of patient perseverance. Grammar is a branch of knowledge; like all other things of high value, it is of difficult acquirement: the study is dry; the subject is intricate; it engages not the passions; and, if the great end be not kept constantly in view; if you lose, for a moment, sight of the ample reward, indifference begins, that is followed ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... works of art that treat of the problems and conditions of contemporary life. Part of this, to be sure, is expressive merely of some transient mood of the popular mind. The enthusiasm, happily passing, for the plays of Brieux or the craze for Algerian landscapes in France after the acquirement of the colony, are examples. Such preferences, being superficially motivated, correct themselves with ease, giving way to some new fashion in taste. The preference for works of art that reflect the more serious and permanent problems of contemporary society is more firmly rooted. Men inevitably ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... imitation when dealing with the riper adult. Rule of Thumb has the advantage that being born of and acquired by practice it can be applied and put into practice, but it is certainly rather late in the day to revert to it in the acquirement of languages. We have had some experience of Rule of Thumb in this town. The Grammatical Methods of teaching languages are those of teaching any science in a thorough manner. They classify the various parts of speech for the purpose of reducing them to rule, these are studied in detail ...
— The Aural System • Anonymous

... excuse the tyranny of man, many ingenious arguments have been brought forward to prove, that the two sexes, in the acquirement of virtue, ought to aim at attaining a very different character: or, to speak explicitly, women are not allowed to have sufficient strength of mind to acquire what really deserves the name of virtue. Yet it should seem, allowing them ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... in silent rumination—a few moments brought our Heroes to the Horse Guards; and as the acquirement "devoutly to be wished" was a general knowledge of metropolitan manners, they proceeded to the observance of Real Life in a ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... and enlightened monarch, they still clung to the Spanish tongue as that of their fatherland, and were loth to banish its use entirely. But in all the schools and colleges in England so much time was in those days devoted to the various branches of English study, that little was left for the acquirement of what was now to them a foreign language. The rising Jewish generation was, therefore, not well acquainted with the language into which the prayers had been translated, and hence the desire of several members of the community to replace it by the ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... Lincoln's practice at the bar are thus ably summed up: "He did not make a specialty of criminal cases, but was engaged frequently in them. He could not be called a great lawyer, measured by the extent of his acquirement of legal knowledge; he was not an encyclopaedia of cases; but in the clear perception of legal principles, with natural capacity to apply them, he had great ability. He was not a case lawyer, but a lawyer who dealt in the deep philosophy of the law. He ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... reading and writing. Wendot, who had a natural love of study, and who had been taught something of these mysteries by his mother — she being for the age she lived in a very cultivated woman — shared his brother's studies, and delighted in the acquirement of learning. ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... themselves or dawdling, and because it is an hour and half an hour, neither more nor less, and not an uncertain time, which is left to the performer's pleasure. To make any progress with music after you are grown up, you must give three or four hours a day to its acquirement, and that you would find it difficult—almost impossible—to keep up. But, as I said before, music is a thing I am so ignorant of that I can give you no assistance and no advice ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... advance until it reached a point where, in selling I could realize a net gain of ten thousand dollars. I was doing well. I was putting by from two to three thousand dollars every year, and was in a fair way to get rich. But, as money began to accumulate, I grew more and more eager in its acquirement, and less concerned about the principles underlying every action, until I passed into a temporary state of moral blindness. I was less scrupulous about securing large advantages in trade, and would take the lion's share, if opportunity offered, without a moment's hesitation. ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur

... be undetected and unpunished? He who is undetected only gets worse, whereas he who is detected and punished has the brutal part of his nature silenced and humanized; the gentler element in him is liberated, and his whole soul is perfected and ennobled by the acquirement of justice and temperance and wisdom, more than the body ever is by receiving gifts of beauty, strength and health, in proportion as the soul is more honourable ...
— The Republic • Plato

... by inventors who apply them. Liaison is maintained at all points, but the attack varies from time to time. It may be intense at certain places and other sectors may be quiet for a time. There are occasional reverses, but the whole line in general progresses. Each year witnesses the acquirement of new territory. It is seen that through the centuries there is an ever-growing momentum as knowledge, efficiency, and organization increase the strength of this invading army of ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... engaged frequently in conflicts with Indians and marauders, often having men killed and wounded in their ranks. The fights were participated in by small numbers, and the casualties were not numerous, but there were opportunities for the acquirement of skill and the display of gallantry. Altogether the men of the regiment during their experience on the plains engaged in sixty-two battles and skirmishes. This training had transformed the older men of the regiment into veterans and enabled ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... narrow and wooded glen. Such studies of ivied rocks and twisted roots! A little stream tinkled lonely through the hollow. Poor Milly! In her odd way she made herself companionable. I have sometimes fancied an enjoyment of natural scenery not so much a faculty as an acquirement. It is so exquisite in the instructed, so strangely absent in uneducated humanity. But certainly with Milly it was inborn and hearty; and so she could enter into ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... compliance with the desire of the Protector. He was anxious that his child should be instructed in such elegant arts as those in which the ladies of France and England excelled—not remembering that, in a young, forward, and ill-educated woman, the dangerous desire of display succeeds the acquirement of accomplishments as surely and as ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... for believing that attention directed to personal appearance, and not to moral conduct, has been the fundamental element in the acquirement of the habit of blushing will now be given. They are separately light, but combined possess, as it appears to me, considerable weight. It is notorious that nothing makes a shy person blush so much as any remark, however slight, on his personal appearance. One cannot notice even the dress ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... private instruction; and it is probable, that inattention to this circumstance is the reason why so few people have distinct notions of natural philosophy. Learning by rote, or even reading repeatedly, definitions of the technical terms of any science, must undoubtedly facilitate its acquirement; but conversation, with the habit of explaining the meaning of words, and the structure of common domestic implements, to children, is the sure and effectual method of preparing the mind for the acquirement ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... and then with a judiciousness which proved the existence of a deliberate purpose, of some duty which awaited him on the other side of the water, a duty which would explain his long exile from his only parent and for which he must fit himself by study and the acquirement of such accomplishments as render a young man a positive power in society, whether that society be of the Old World or the New. He showed his shrewdness in thus dealing with this pliable and deeply affectionate nature. From this time forth Thomas felt himself ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... place, isn't it, father?" Fred asked, following his father's look and thought from the Morris chair to the student's lamp, and all those other things which nowadays seem an inevitable part of the acquirement of learning. ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... trouble might have arisen. George understood his host's mood and respected it. Lucas drove rapidly and fiercely, with appropriate frowns and settings of cruel teeth; his mien indeed had the arrogance of the performer who, having given only a fraction of his time to the acquirement of skill, reckons that he can beat the professional who has given the whole of his time. Lucas's glances at chauffeurs who hindered his swiftness were masterpieces of high disdain, and he would accelerate, after circumventing ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... frequent use of a warm general tone inclining to brownness. His ideal of form and of composition he possessed complete from the beginning; his mastery of light and color and the handling of materials was slower of acquirement; but he did acquire it, and in the end he is as absolute a master of painting as of drawing. He did not see nature in blue and violet, as Monet has taught us to see it, and little felicities and facilities of rendering, and anything approaching cleverness or the parade of virtuosity he ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox

... was thought to be never failing in its virtue to alleviate, if not to cure. Women in the last few years have been wiser than the doctors, for while they looked only at alleviation of pain, wives and mothers began to look beyond that, at the probable acquirement of the taste for drink, and now this prescription is becoming less frequent. Let the women of Canada banish this liquor from their sideboards and kitchens, and from their medicine chests. Let it be given as medicine, only as a last resort, and by the ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm

... to learning, no short cut to the acquirement of any valuable art. Let photographers and daguerreotypers do what they will, and improve as they may with further skill on that which skill has already done, they will never achieve a portrait of the human ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... but has changed hands since he can remember. In many cases the farm is now in the possession of a son; in some instances in that of a grandson of the owner as known by the writer in his boyhood days. In this particular community the acquirement of a farm by a person not related to the former owner has occurred in ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt

... the Dark Wood dwelt for a time a Wizard, whose life had been spent in the acquirement of many wonderful arts. As a young man he had wandered over Europe from university to university, until one day he became aware of the true secret of education and burnt ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl

... spending only on the lower creatures and inanimate things his waste energy, his dullest thoughts, his most languid emotions, and reserving all his acuter intellect for researches into his own nature and that of the gods; all his strength of will for the acquirement of political or moral power; all his sense of beauty for things immediately connected with his own person and life; and all his deep affections ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... though often on a small scale. Even the stems of seedlings before they have broken through the ground, as well as their buried radicles, circumnutate, as far as the pressure of the surrounding earth permits. In this universally present movement we have the basis or groundwork for the acquirement, according to the requirements of the plant, of the most diversified movements. Thus the great sweeps made by the stems of the twining plants, and by the tendrils of other climbers, result from a mere increase in the amplitude of the ordinary movement of circumnutation."—The Power of ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell

... dwells in darkness and stillness, as profound as that of a closed tomb at midnight. Of beautiful sights, and sweet sounds, and pleasant odours, she has no conception; nevertheless, she seems as happy and playful as a bird or a lamb; and the employment of her intellectual faculties, or the acquirement of a new idea, gives her a vivid pleasure, which is plainly marked in her expressive features. She never seems to repine, but has all the buoyancy and gaiety of childhood. She is fond of fun and frolic, and when playing with the rest of the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... never read the newspapers, not really, only little bits and scraps of them. But in Mariposa it's different. There they read the whole thing from cover to cover, and they build up on it, in the course of years, a range of acquirement that would put a college president to the blush. Anybody who has ever heard Henry Mullins and Peter Glover talk about the future of China will ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... Lardner of his day,—a man of general scientific acquirement, an indefatigable worker, venturing hazardous predictions, writing some fifteen or twenty volumes upon subjects connected with agriculture, foisting himself into the chair of Botany at Cambridge by noisy reclamation, selling his name to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... direction. The destruction of the enemy's fleet is the means to obtain naval control; but naval control in itself is only a means, not an object. The object of the campaign, set by the Government, was the acquirement of mastery upon the Niagara peninsula, to the accomplishment of which Brown's army was destined. Naval control would minister thereto, partly by facilitating the re-enforcement and supply of the American army, and, conversely, by impeding that of the British. Of these two means, the latter was ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... useful art consisted chiefly in the exploits of war,—in being able to undergo privations and hardships, and in wielding successfully the heavy instruments of bloodshed,—such an education as would conduce to the acquirement of that art must be estimated on different grounds from that system whose object is to develop ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews

... thought of a woman learning much, and still more, venturing to use such acquirement; but heretical Christians insisted that the respect which Romans had paid to the Vestal Virgin was her right, and each founder of a new sect had some woman as helper. But as a rule, her highest post during the first three centuries of Christianity was ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell

... his graver lore the more florid accomplishments of science, from the scholastic trifling of heraldry to the gentle learning of herbs and flowers, could scarcely hope for utter obscurity in that day when all intellectual acquirement was held in high honour, and its possessors were drawn together into a sort of brotherhood by the fellowship of their pursuits. And though Aram gave little or nothing to the world himself, he was ever willing to communicate to others any benefit or honour derivable from his researches. On ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... profit on the transaction. Imagine the mischief a temporary owner, steeped in debt, needy and urged on by the maturity of his engagements, can and must do to an estate held under a precarious title and of suspicious acquirement, which he has no idea of keeping, and from which, meanwhile, he derives every possible benefit:[4217] not only does he put no spokes in the mill-wheel, no stones in the dyke, no tiles on the roof, but he buys no manure, exhausts the soil, devastates the forest, alienates ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... symbolically visible to men than any that came before him. For here we are in the presence of a great tradition which a long series of artists have in succession wrought, each adding a little that expressed the noblest insight of his own soul at its highest and best moments, and the newest acquirement of his technical skill. Raphael broke up painting, as later on Beethoven broke up music. Not that that blow destroyed the possibility of rare and wonderful developments in special directions. But painting and music alike lost for ever the radiant beauty of their ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... Jimmy has been encouraged to ask questions to an extent which the world at large finds somewhat tiresome. For my part, I think one of the most useful accomplishments connected with the tongue is the art of holding it; and I believe in its early acquirement ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... Bernhard's Guide to Hebrew Students, books familiar to Cambridge men, he was soon able to read the Psalms in the original. I remember the admiration and despair I felt in witnessing Patteson's progress, and the wonder expressed by his teacher in his pupil's gift of rapid acquirement. We had some excellent introductions; amongst others, to Dr. ——, a famous theologian, with whom Patteson was fond of discussing the system and organisation of the Church in Saxony. Up to the time of his leaving England he was constantly ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... farmers, hunters, and fishermen. Commerce was slow to grow up among them. Trade was the means towards supporting a religious state; not a method for the acquirement of wealth. By and by, however, manufactures of cotton and woollen fabrics grew up, lumber was floated down to the coast, gunpowder and glass were made, and fish were cured for winter use and to be sent abroad. They ate corn-meal ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle

... he had neglected nothing. He gave his days and nights to the acquirement of various sciences. He understood anatomy better than any surgeon of his time; he knew history like a Benedictine, and the antiquities of Rome as a botanist does his favourite flora. But architecture was the art which he esteemed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various

... the acquirement of valuable information regarding the distribution of temperature in the fuel bed of gas producers and furnaces, showing a range of from 400 to 1,300 cent., and have thus furnished data indicating specific difficulties to be overcome ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson

... witnessed such quickness of mastery as the Maid showed, both in her acquirement of horsemanship and in the use of arms, in both of which arts we instructed her day by day. I had noted her strength and suppleness of limb the very first day I had seen her; and she gave marvellous proof ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... was born in London, in the year 1573. He sprung from a Catholic family, and his mother was related to Sir Thomas More and to Heywood the epigrammatist. He was very early distinguished as a prodigy of boyish acquirement, and was entered, when only eleven, of Harthall, now Hertford College. He was designed for the law, but relinquished the study when he reached nineteen. About the same time, having studied the controversies between the Papists and Protestants, he deliberately went over to ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... Canals disagreed, and it is only to the courage and rare ability of the late Senator Hanna and his associates, as minority members of the committee, that the nation owes the abandonment of the Nicaraguan project, the acquirement of the Panama Canal rights at a reasonable price and the making of the ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden

... years of age. He had already done a prodigious amount of work for his years. He was always busy. Every spare moment of his evenings was devoted either to writing his literary letter, to the steady acquirement of autograph letters in which he still persisted, or to helping Mr. Beecher in his literary work. The Plymouth pastor was particularly pleased with Edward's successful exploitation of his pen work; and he afterward wrote: "Bok ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok

... at Manassas, and a trained soldier of unusual acquirement, was so hounded and worried by ignorant, impatient politicians and newspapers as to be scarcely responsible for his acts. This may be said of all the commanders in the beginning of the war, and notably of Albert Sidney Johnston, whose early fall on ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... even fathom the means whereby it is effected; but this we do know, that it indispensably requires to be "wrought out with fear and trembling." The Saviour will be ours, only on condition of our being his. Religion must not be an acquirement, but a transformation; and surely that spirit, which could not make itself, and which, when made by God, has but degraded itself, is unable to "create itself anew in Christ Jesus unto good works." No, fear and trembling ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall

... No! Common sense, the acquirement of forty years, supervened, and informed her wild heart, with all the cold arrogance of sagacity, that these imaginings were vain. She felt that she must write a brief and firm letter to Arthur and tell him to desist. She saw with extraordinary clearness that this course was inevitable. And ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... elementary or minor species must have originated from their common ancestor must be quite different from the mode of origin of the varieties. We have assumed that the first come into existence by the production of something new, by the acquirement of a character hitherto unnoticed in the line of their ancestors. On the contrary, varieties, in most cases, evidently owe their origin to the loss of an already existing character, or in other less frequent cases, to the re-assumption of a quality [248] ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... indicated, we think the common estimate of the actual influence of even the costliest preceptive sayings is monstrously exaggerated. That an aphorism should really be of use, it must virtually be reproduced by the faculties of your own soul. But the mental energy and acquirement which thus recreate it in a great degree supersede the necessity of it, render it an expression not of a guidance you need from without, but of an insight and force already working within. Your character determines what maxims you will select or create far more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... we called your attention to the fact that the Yogis devote considerable time and practice to the acquirement of Concentration. And we also had something to say regarding the relation of Attention to the subject of Concentration. In this lesson we shall have more to say on the subject of Attention, for it is one of the important things relating to the practice ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... slightest thrill of joy or felt the least sensation of relief, although she was then not sixteen years old,—so entirely was her mind bent upon the crown of Russia. Partly to attain her end, and partly because it suited her intriguing, managing nature, she set herself immediately to the acquirement of the favor of the Empress on the one hand, and popularity on the other. The first she sought by an absolute submission of her will to that of Elizabeth, giving her self-negation an air of grateful deference; the latter she obtained, as most very popular people obtain their popularity, by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... choice propped up before her; and by the style of the novel jotted down in the rough, almost simultaneously with her reading, we know that to her the study of German was not—like French and music—the mere necessary acquirement of a governess, but an influence that entered her mind and helped to shape the ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... to relieve marriage from the danger of becoming a form of slavery. The rulers, teachers and artists especially were to be free, and the State was to assume all responsibilities. The reason is plain: he wanted them to reproduce themselves. But whether genius is an acquirement or a natural endowment he touches on but lightly. Also, he seemingly did not realize "that no hovel is safe ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... adornment for an old oak mantelshelf. They allowed her to look on at the milking of the cow, and at the churning of the butter; and at bread making, and cake making, and pie and pudding making; and some pleasant hours were spent in the acquirement of this useful knowledge. Mary did not neglect the invalid during this new phase of her existence. Lady Maulevrier was a lover of routine, and she liked her granddaughter to go to her at the same hour every day. From eleven to twelve was ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... method of teaching is confined to that wearisome system of loud-voiced repetition which is so annoying a feature in Indian schools; and the Koran is, of course, the text-book in all forms of education. Every Afghan gentleman can read and speak Persian, but beyond this acquirement education seems to be limited to the physical development of the youth by instruction in horsemanship and feats of skill. Such advanced education as exists in Afghanistan is centred in the priests and physicians; but the ignorance of both ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... may possess would fall to its portion; it would only be incoherent, inactive, and vague. Whereas by seeking it in ourselves, where it truly is; by observing it there, listening to it, marking how it profits by every acquirement of our mind, every joy and sorrow of our heart, we soon shall learn what we best had do to ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... active at Oxford. But, with the exception of some bad translations of Bossuet's admirable works, these establishments put forth nothing of the smallest value. It was indeed impossible for any intelligent and candid Roman Catholic to deny that the champions of his Church were, in every talent and acquirement, completely over-matched. The ablest of them would not, on the other side, have been considered as of the third rate. Many of them, even when they had something to say, knew not how to say it. They had been excluded by their religion from English schools and universities; nor ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... them; and who, as might be expected in such a state of things, are the least respectable members of the community. The only unprofessional man that I know in Philadelphia (and he studied, though he does not practice, medicine) who is also a person of literary taste and acquirement, has lamented to me that all his early friends and associates having become absorbed in their several callings, whenever he visits them he feels that he is diverting them from the labor of their lives, and the earning of their ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... charities; that as citizens they are sober and law-abiding to such a degree that he would hardly be able to discover a single case of crime so far among them; and, finally, that in those instances where they were able to purchase a little land and stock, they have made as good progress toward the acquirement of homes and property as have the average poor white immigrants to the State. He will first learn, then, from the refugees themselves something of the desperate nature of the causes that drove them from ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... who grasp quickly the major lines of their study, but who, in details, will only be moved by curiosity or by some special affection. There was nothing patient in him, and nothing applied, and in all this, in the matter of his scholarship as in his acquirement of it, he is of the dying ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc

... brought me new information, which my parents perfected. At length the alphabet was mastered, and afterwards spelling, reading, and so forth. My mind being thus previously filled with ideas, the acquirement of words and abstract terms became less irksome, and I cannot remember that thus far it cost me any trouble, much less pain. Information of every kind fit for childhood then really gave me pleasure. No doubt I am greatly ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... evil. One could well pardon his unpleasant features, his strange voice, even his very foppery and grimace, if one found these disadvantages connected with living talent and any spark of genuine goodness. If there is nothing more than acquirement, smartness, and the affectation of philanthropy, Chorley is a ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... his mind at rest by an assurance that he understood what was wanted; for how was it possible the good man could form any reasonable judgment about the matter? Mr Stelling's duty was to teach the lad in the only right way,—indeed he knew no other; he had not wasted his time in the acquirement of ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... higher degree called the "Forest of Pencils," which is open only to members of the Royal Academy, the Hanlin. The acquirement of this degree is the greatest honor to be attained; its possessor is highly esteemed, and may hold the highest offices ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... vigorous, independent race of thinkers, with prodigious strength and energy, with none but natural grace, and heartfelt unobtrusive delicacy. They were not at all sophisticated. The mind of their country was great in them, and it prevailed. With their learning and unexampled acquirement, they did not forget that they were men: with all their endeavours after excellence, they did not lay aside the strong original bent and character of their minds. What they performed was chiefly nature's handy-work; and time has claimed it for his own.—To these, however, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... Philips and the Louis, of whom France Newly is govern'd; born of one, who ply'd The slaughterer's trade at Paris. When the race Of ancient kings had vanish'd (all save one Wrapt up in sable weeds) within my gripe I found the reins of empire, and such powers Of new acquirement, with full store of friends, That soon the widow'd circlet of the crown Was girt upon the temples of my son, He, from whose bones th' anointed race begins. Till the great dower of Provence had remov'd The stains, that yet obscur'd our lowly ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... preliminary. Acquirement of every kind has two values—value as knowledge and value as discipline. Besides its use for guiding conduct, the acquisition of each order of facts has also its use as mental exercise; and its effects as ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... advise the reader where he is and whither he is going. Cardinal Newman, who had the ability to write not only so that he could be understood, but so that he could not be misunderstood, made frequent use of these guides. The question in one of his essays is "whether knowledge, that is, acquirement, is the real principle of enlargement, or whether that is not rather something beyond it." These fragments of sentences open a series of paragraphs. 1. "For instance, let a person ... go for the first time where physical nature puts on her wilder and more awful forms," etc. 2. "Again, the view ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... being practical—adapting himself to circumstances—he had never learned. It belongs to the department of Common Sense, in which, unfortunately, there has never been a professor at West Point. His after life does not seem to have been favorable to its acquirement. Withal, the hauteur characteristic to Cadets clung to him, and on many occasions rendered him unfortunate in his intercourse with volunteer officers. Politeness with him, assumed the airs and grimaces of a French dancing-master, ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

... maintaining schools and churches among them, of the devoted missionaries and teachers that had carried already so much of comfort and help into their sad lives, of the steady upward progress they were making in knowledge and intelligence, in the acquirement of homes and ability to care for themselves, all seemed to appreciate as never before the importance of the work that is ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various

... to people sitting by their firesides dreaming of bygone days, or, indeed, to go to anyone sitting anywhere, is merely humorous. The information which the dramatist seeks cannot be told—even by those who know. For the gaining of such knowledge is the acquirement of an instinct which enables its possessor automatically to make use of the effective in play-writing and construction and devising, and automatically to shun the ineffective. This instinct must be planted and nourisht by more or less (more if possible) ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various

... exists; to prohibit the admission of any more slave States; to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; to exclude slavery from all territories over which the general Government has exclusive jurisdiction, and finally to resist the acquirement of any more territories unless slavery shall ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... castle and wife are not transported beyond the sea, (5) the cat does not serve the hero voluntarily out of gratitude, (6) the hero himself journeys to recover his stolen charm. And yet there can be no doubt of the connection of our stories with this cycle. The acquirement of a charm, through the help of which the hero performs a difficult task under penalty of death, and thus wins the hand of a ruler's daughter; the theft of the charm and the disappearance of the wife; the search, which is ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... extensive undertaking. During two years this eccentric plan occupied his thoughts by day, his dreams by night: all the smiles of prosperity could not tranquillise the restless spirit, and while he anticipated an acquirement of fame, he little considered the perils that would attend ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... subscription; but under the expectation, 'tis said, of a public grant, has done nothing. Lastly, there is the "Institute of Irish Architects," founded in 1839 "for the general advancement of civil architecture, for promoting and facilitating the acquirement of a knowledge of the various arts and sciences connected therewith, for the formation of ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... activities of study may be divided into two groups, which, for want of better names, we shall call processes of acquisition and processes of construction. The mental attitude of the first is that of acquirement. "Sometimes our main business seems to be to acquire knowledge; certain matters are placed before us in books or by our teachers, and we are required to master them, to make them part of our stock of knowledge. At other times we are called upon to use the knowledge ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson

... had lived among noble men, and familiarity had bred its usual consequence. But he did want money. He fully recognized that gold entered every earthly gate, and he felt within himself the capacity for its acquirement. He had also precedents for this determination which seemed to justify it. The Duke of Norham's younger son had a share in an immense brewery and wielded a power far beyond that of his elder brother, who was simply waiting for a dukedom. Lord Egremont, a younger son ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr

... smaller sections of the one unique order of Nature. Note that Lamarck's Echelle is in no way a morphological one, and was not intended to be such. It is a scale of increasing physiological differentiation, and the stages of it are marked by the acquirement of this or that new organ (cf. Oken). "Observation of their state convinces one that in order to produce them successively Nature has proceeded gradually from the simpler to the more complex. Now Nature, ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... Fotheringay, though silent in general, and by no means brilliant as a conversationist, where poetry, literature, or the fine arts were concerned, could talk freely, and with good sense, too, in her own family circle. She cannot justly be called a romantic person: nor were her literary acquirement great: she never opened a Shakspeare from the day she left the stage, nor, indeed, understood it during all the time she adorned the boards: but about a pudding, a piece of needle-work, or her own domestic affairs, she was as good a judge as could be found; ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... kind old aunt at Beaubocage gave her nieces much valuable advice against the time when they should be old enough to assume the management of their father's house. The sweet unselfish lady of Beaubocage had indeed undergone hard experience in the acquirement of the domestic art. Heaven and her own memory alone recorded those scrapings and pinchings and nice calculations of morsels by which she had contrived to save a few pounds for her outcast brother. Such sordid economics show ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... succeeded in obtaining the services of one who was able to recall his Imperial master's unclouded countenance, that he came forward in a most unpresentable state of haste, and rose into the air uncommanded, for the display of his usually not unwelcome acquirement. This he would doubtless have executed competently had not Sen, who stood immediately behind him, suddenly and unexpectedly raised his voice in a very vigorous and proficient duck cry, thereby causing the one before him to endeavour to turn around in alarm, while yet in the air—an intermingled ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... step considered necessary for the acquirement of case and polish was begun at the nearest bar, and Tex, being the host, was so liberal that his friends had reached a most auspicious state when they followed ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... time after I first went to school I was still fed from the bosom of my mother." In some ways it is no doubt a source of strength for Japan that her men can spend from their earliest years to the age of twenty-six on the acquirement of knowledge and self-discipline—the privileges of the student class and the generosity of their families and friends and the public at large are remarkable—but the disadvantages are plain. No ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... are mistaken. I am teaching my pupil an art, the acquirement of which demands much time and trouble, an art which your scholars certainly do not possess; it is the art of being ignorant; for the knowledge of any one who only thinks he knows, what he really does know is a very small matter. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on the foundation already well laid by Mr. Herbert Spencer—that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Much light will be thrown on the origin ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... of most unconscious goodness under his uncouth, embarrassed ways, and she determined to cultivate it. No little tact was required, however, to coax the wild, forlorn creature into so much confidence as she desired to establish; but tact is a native quality of the heart no less than a social acquirement, and so she did the very thing necessary ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... Herbert Spencer states that "acquirement of every kind has two values—value as knowledge and value as discipline. Besides its use for guidance in conduct, the acquisition of each order of facts has also its use as mental exercise." Many students of education would assert that one very important value of knowledge is here overlooked, i. ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... one another's houses and discussed all the important social and religious topics of the day. They were mostly young people, college-bred, learned, artistic and thoughtful, and of high ideals in intellectual acquirement, religion and social life. They were all agreed that there were many evils to be eradicated from society; in what way—individualistic, governmental or socialistic, or by a combination ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... feeling may be cultivated by yet another means, namely, by the acquirement of the characteristic known as positiveness. There is a beautiful legend in which it is related of Christ Jesus, that He, with others, passed the dead body of a dog. The others turned aside from the hideous sight, but Christ Jesus spoke admiringly of the creature's beautiful ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... the bench, surrounded by the usual scenes of a court-house, even if she filled these offices with ability and talent, to render honor rather to her, who laying on the altar of sacrifice whatever of genius, or acquirement, or loveliness she may possess, goes forth to cheer and to share the labors and cares of the husband of her youth, in his errand of ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... else, how nearly he has done it. In judging his own technical skill in the accomplishment of his aim, it is easy for him to be absolutely unbiased, technique being a thing wholly apart from one's self, an acquirement. But, in a poem, the way it is done is by no means everything; something else, the vital element in it, the quality of inspiration, as we rightly call it, has to be determined. Of this the poet is rarely a judge. To him it is a part of himself, and he is scarcely ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... the adversary to disentangle at a quick rate. These qualities make Mr. Bird one of the most dangerous opponents in "skittle play," or in matches regulated by a fast time limit; but they prove almost antagonistic to the acquirement of excellency as an author on the game. For the first-class analyst is not merely expected to record results, but to judge the causes of success or failure from the strictly scientific point of view, and he has often to supplement with patient research ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird

... will some day be a reaction in England in this matter. The prevalent present plan is to give every advantage to the clever boy (which means a boy who has a faculty for acquirement, but often lacks those qualities most needed to make him a valuable citizen), and to let those who are not so bright at book-learning, and need every aid, scramble along as they can. It was certainly not the system which Sutton designed, and there are not a few who, without being by any means ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... particularly at Court, but English was a rare acquirement, still more Italian or Spanish. There was, however, a small inner circle where these languages were studied, chiefly in order to read the master-works of modern literature. And this was all the more creditable because there were no good teachers to be found at Dessau, and people ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... the actual want of cultivation," said Mrs. Evelyn, warming;—"time taken up with other things, you know,—usefully and properly, but still taken up,—so as to make much intellectual acquirement and accomplishments impossible; it can't be otherwise, you know,—neither opportunity nor instructors; and I don't think anything can supply the want in after life—it isn't the mere things themselves which may be acquired—the mind should grow up in the atmosphere ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... could boldly draw upon a large fund of acquired knowledge for supplying the expenditure of far-fetched and extravagant images, which their compositions required. The book of Nature is before all men; but when her limits are to be overstepped, the acquirement of adventitious knowledge becomes of paramount necessity; and it was but natural that Cambridge and Oxford should prize a style of poetry, to which depth of learning ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... it in the kitchen, where she is making bread, with the volume of her choice propped up before her; and by the style of the novel jotted down in the rough, almost simultaneously with her reading, we know that to her the study of German was not—like French and music—the mere necessary acquirement of a governess, but an influence that entered her mind and helped to shape the ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... property, but the majority of the Senate Committee on Interoceanic Canals disagreed, and it is only to the courage and rare ability of the late Senator Hanna and his associates, as minority members of the committee, that the nation owes the abandonment of the Nicaraguan project, the acquirement of the Panama Canal rights at a reasonable price and the making of the ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden

... a true knowledge of the art of painting is by no means an easy acquirement; it is not a natural gift, but demands much reading and study. Many there are, no doubt, who may be able to descant speciously enough, perhaps, on the perfections and defects of a picture; but, on that account alone, they ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... in republics become the origin of the most forceful aristocracies. As a rule commerce enriches the cities and their inhabitants, and increases the laboring and mechanical classes, in opening more opportunities for the acquirement of riches. To an extent it fortifies the democratic element in giving the people of the cities greater influence in the government. It arrives at nearly the same result by impoverishing the peasant and land owner, by the many new pleasures offered him and by displaying ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... love will be opened in your hearts or what exquisite delight your minds will receive when the secrets of the world will be unfolded to you and ye shall become acquainted with the beauty of the universe—Your souls now growing eager for the acquirement of knowledge will then rest in its possession disengaged from every particle of evil and knowing all things ye will as it were be mingled in the universe & ye will become a part of that celestial ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

... steadiness of direction. The destruction of the enemy's fleet is the means to obtain naval control; but naval control in itself is only a means, not an object. The object of the campaign, set by the Government, was the acquirement of mastery upon the Niagara peninsula, to the accomplishment of which Brown's army was destined. Naval control would minister thereto, partly by facilitating the re-enforcement and supply of the American army, and, conversely, by ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... for the adversary to disentangle at a quick rate. These qualities make Mr. Bird one of the most dangerous opponents in "skittle play," or in matches regulated by a fast time limit; but they prove almost antagonistic to the acquirement of excellency as an author on the game. For the first-class analyst is not merely expected to record results, but to judge the causes of success or failure from the strictly scientific point of view, and he has often to supplement with ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird

... sell their services in the best theatrical markets of the world, which seems to me to be a pretty "useful" sort of a property for one to have in their permanent possession. If I here repeat that frequent practice on the part of the student is necessary for the correct acquirement of Musical Comedy dancing, I am merely stating what is right and necessary that all should understand who desire to make their services in this line of endeavor available for public approval and a corresponding cash return. And this applies to every ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... has its faults of style, to be sure,—principal among which is a tendency to make too much of the scientific investigation and the acquirement of the writer, extending sometimes almost to pedantry in the use of long words and large phrases; but it contains much information that is important and can be found nowhere else except by troublesome comparison of extended treatises, and a deal of plain common-sense that should commend it to attention ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... degree called the "Forest of Pencils," which is open only to members of the Royal Academy, the Hanlin. The acquirement of this degree is the greatest honor to be attained; its possessor is highly esteemed, and may hold the ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... of Sallust, he had obtained the degree of Bachelor of Arts, he travelled abroad, whether at his own charges, or in the company of a son of one of his patrons is not recorded, principally in Germany, Italy, and France, where he applied himself, with an unusual assiduity and success, to the acquirement of the languages spoken in those countries and to the study of their best authors. In the chapter "Of unprofytable Stody," above mentioned, which contains proof how well he at least had profited by study, he cites certain continental ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt

... suggests the many advantages that accrue from attrition and propinquity. Everybody is stirred to increased endeavor; everybody knows the scheme which will not work, for elimination is a great factor in success; the knowledge that one has is the acquirement of all. Strong men must match themselves against strong men: good wrestlers will need only good wrestlers. And so in a match of wit rivals outclassed go unnoticed, and there is always an effort to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... of some bad translations of Bossuet's admirable works, these establishments put forth nothing of the smallest value. It was indeed impossible for any intelligent and candid Roman Catholic to deny that the champions of his Church were, in every talent and acquirement, completely over-matched. The ablest of them would not, on the other side, have been considered as of the third rate. Many of them, even when they had something to say, knew not how to say it. They had been excluded by their religion from English ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... hereditary transmission. Neither of these theories, however, is sufficient to explain the inequalities that we meet with in our everyday life. Those who believe in the one-birth theory, that we have come here for the first and last time, do not understand that the acquirement of wisdom and experience is the purpose of human life; nor can they explain why children who die young should come into existence and pass away without getting the opportunity to learn anything or what purpose is served by their coming thus for a few days, remaining in utter ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda

... you would forgive obvious evil. One could well pardon his unpleasant features, his strange voice, even his very foppery and grimace, if one found these disadvantages connected with living talent and any spark of genuine goodness. If there is nothing more than acquirement, smartness, and the affectation of philanthropy, Chorley ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... is not to a want of taste or of desire or of disposition to learn that we have to ascribe the rareness of good scholars, so much as to the want of patient perseverance. Grammar is a branch of knowledge; like all other things of high value, it is of difficult acquirement: the study is dry; the subject is intricate; it engages not the passions; and, if the great end be not kept constantly in view; if you lose, for a moment, sight of the ample reward, indifference ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... another, and he says, 'I am Culture, and intellectual acquirement; or my name is Education, and I am going to make the tree good in the most scientific fashion, because what makes men bad is that they do not know, and if they only knew they would do the right.' Now, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... of the holdings, the value of which has been created by their own intelligent work. In England farmers of this type would assuredly have a lease, and their Irish brethren hold that schemes for the gradual acquirement of land by tenants should be accompanied by the "Three F's," and extended over fifty instead of thirty-five years. The latter plan would, they think, be of little use to the present tenant, as it would practically raise his rent too far, and thus prevent ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... But finding this right of property unprotected and undetermined, the State by its criminal law protects property against robbers, and by its civil as distinguished from criminal law, it defines numerous open questions between possessors as to manner of acquirement and conditions of tenure. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... after life, is here pre-eminent. Adjoining the upper end is another room, called "the library," in which there is not a book, but there is "the block," which speaks volumes; and as a library may, by a little forcing, be defined to be a chamber set apart for the acquirement of learning, this ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.

... experience concurs in supporting it. We see the mental powers of feeling and of thought unfolding themselves in infancy and youth in exact accordance with the progress of the organization. We see them perverted or suspended by the sudden inroad of disease. We sometimes observe every previous acquirement obliterated from the adult mind by fever or by accident, leaving education to be commenced anew, as if it had never been; and yet, with all these evidences of the organic influence, the proposition that the established laws of physiology, as applied to the brain, should ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... has said that "promptness is a contagious inspiration." Whether it be an inspiration, or an acquirement, it is one of the practical ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... The presence of his friend Brewster in the Wampanoge village, also gave it increased attractions in the eyes of Henrich. The good man was still his friend and preceptor; and with his assistance, he made considerable progress in the acquirement of the native language, as well as in every other kind of knowledge that Brewster was able to impart. But all the elder's instructions were made subservient to that best of all knowledge—the knowledge of God, ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... the eternal Inner. In the simple life, external possessions unnecessary and recognized as vain, the soul would turn within and seek Reality. Only a tiny section of humanity has time to do it now. There is no leisure. Civilization means acquirement for the body: it ought to mean development for the soul. Once sweep aside the trash and rubbish men seek outside themselves today, and the wings of their smothered souls would stir again. Consciousness would expand. Nature ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... the physical. But my history will afford you more instruction than mere advice. Sagestus concurred in opinion with her, observing that the senses of children should be the first object of improvement; then their passions worked on; and judgment the fruit, must be the acquirement of the being itself, when out of leading-strings. The spirit bowed assent, and, without any further prelude, entered ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... which Mynie Boltwood could not understand. He was not ambitious in the acquirement of knowledge, however, and merely did as he was told—and let it ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish

... history? What if you and I, from the very fact that we are living now, have in the dim groundwork of our nature something that would not have been there had we lived one, three, twelve hundred years ago? What if there be such a thing as cumulative acquirement for the race of men, so that a new generation starts with an available capital of associations and ideas of which the generation last preceding it owned but a part? Take such words as "feudalism," "the Crusades," "the Renaissance," "the printing press," consider how much they mean to us, ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... than any one else, what he wanted to do, and he knows, better than any one else, how nearly he has done it. In judging his own technical skill in the accomplishment of his aim, it is easy for him to be absolutely unbiased, technique being a thing wholly apart from one's self, an acquirement. But, in a poem, the way it is done is by no means everything; something else, the vital element in it, the quality of inspiration, as we rightly call it, has to be determined. Of this the poet is rarely a judge. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... It seemed years instead of weeks at last, and yet as if he had only been truly alive and free since love had made him captive. He could not fasten himself down to his work without great difficulty, though he built many a castle in Spain with his imagined wealth, and laid deep plans of study and acquirement which should be made evident as ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... an only son, born and reared in the midst of that ostentatious greatness which he looked on as his own by divine right; whereas his father remembered that it had chiefly become his by fortuitous acquirement, and much of it by means not likely to look well in the sight of Heaven. This son was Charles, count of Charolois, afterward celebrated under the name of Charles the Rash. He gave, even in the lifetime of his father, a striking specimen of despotism ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... rudiments of the physical and psychological sciences, and a fair knowledge of elementary arithmetic and geometry. He should have obtained an acquaintance with logic rather by example than by precept; while the acquirement of the elements of music and drawing should have been a ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... practice at the bar are thus ably summed up: "He did not make a specialty of criminal cases, but was engaged frequently in them. He could not be called a great lawyer, measured by the extent of his acquirement of legal knowledge; he was not an encyclopaedia of cases; but in the clear perception of legal principles, with natural capacity to apply them, he had great ability. He was not a case lawyer, but a lawyer who dealt in the deep philosophy of the ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... begets love. I did love and delight in them, and when they died I mourned their loss. Every day brought me new information, which my parents perfected. At length the alphabet was mastered, and afterwards spelling, reading, and so forth. My mind being thus previously filled with ideas, the acquirement of words and abstract terms became less irksome, and I cannot remember that thus far it cost me any trouble, much less pain. Information of every kind fit for childhood then really gave me pleasure. No doubt I am greatly indebted to my parents for their judicious management. My ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... The gradual acquirement of the erect position by the human infant admirably repeats this long phylogenetic evolution.[4] At first the limbs are of almost no use in locomotion, but the fundamental trunk muscles with those that move the large joints are more or less spasmodically ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... I high: from me descend The Philips and the Louis, of whom France Newly is govern'd; born of one, who ply'd The slaughterer's trade at Paris. When the race Of ancient kings had vanish'd (all save one Wrapt up in sable weeds) within my gripe I found the reins of empire, and such powers Of new acquirement, with full store of friends, That soon the widow'd circlet of the crown Was girt upon the temples of my son, He, from whose bones th' anointed race begins. Till the great dower of Provence had remov'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... Such studies of ivied rocks and twisted roots! A little stream tinkled lonely through the hollow. Poor Milly! In her odd way she made herself companionable. I have sometimes fancied an enjoyment of natural scenery not so much a faculty as an acquirement. It is so exquisite in the instructed, so strangely absent in uneducated humanity. But certainly with Milly it was inborn and hearty; and so she could enter into my ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... greatest works. For by a strange yet not unprecedented contradiction, David's fame to-day rests, not upon the great classical pictures which were the admiration of his time and by which he thought to be remembered, but on the portraits which, with his mastery of technical acquirement, he painted with surprising ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various

... are informed that during the course of his attendance at the University, he gave ample evidence of both genius and industry, by the rapid growth and development of mental power, and the equally rapid acquirement of extensive learning, in both of which respects he surpassed his fellow-students. That this must have been the case, his future eminence, so early achieved, sufficiently proves; but nothing of a very definite nature, relating to that period, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... quickness of mastery as the Maid showed, both in her acquirement of horsemanship and in the use of arms, in both of which arts we instructed her day by day. I had noted her strength and suppleness of limb the very first day I had seen her; and she gave marvellous proof of it now. She possessed also that power ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... kept by Captain Glazier during his horseback ride from ocean to ocean, we shall gather most of the incidents of his journey—a journey, so far as we are aware, without any precedent, and having for its sole object the acquirement of knowledge. His intention was to lecture in the leading cities and villages through which he passed, in the interest of the relief fund of the "Grand Army of the Republic," to which order he was ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... dogmatism, and Hodder's own opinions on such matters were now in a strange and unsettled state. Mr. Parr liked best to talk of his treasures, and of the circumstances during his trips abroad that had led to their acquirement. Once the banker had asked him ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Europe. A fine person,—the accomplishments of his time in literature and the arts,—the display of gorgeous prodigality,—raised him to a sort of chivalrous rivalry with Francis I. In mental culture he excelled George IV., who owes much of his reputation for capacity and acquirement to an imposing manner, and the eagerness to applaud a prince: stripped of this charm, his ideas and language appeared worse than common when he put them on paper. Both had the same dominant ambition to be distinguished ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various

... only a random thought; I didn't expect you to understand it. How did you get your English; is it an acquirement, or just ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Beaubocage gave her nieces much valuable advice against the time when they should be old enough to assume the management of their father's house. The sweet unselfish lady of Beaubocage had indeed undergone hard experience in the acquirement of the domestic art. Heaven and her own memory alone recorded those scrapings and pinchings and nice calculations of morsels by which she had contrived to save a few pounds for her outcast brother. Such sordid economics show but poorly on earth; but it is probable ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... Tibetan Buddhism, already spread to some extent among them, the readiest means of civilising his countrymen. But he may have been quite sincere in saying what is here ascribed to him in this sense, viz.: that if the Latin Church, with its superiority of character and acquirement, had come to his aid as he had once requested, he would gladly have used its missionaries as his civilising instruments instead of the Lamas and their trumpery. (Rubr. 313; Assemani, III. pt. ii. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... acutely observant of the things that interested him, but reluctant to proceed with studies which, in his eyes, seemed to have nothing to recommend them. Books possessed no attraction for him, although he knew his alphabet and could even read imperfectly. The acquirement of book-learning he found a dull and dolorous business, to which he was driven only by the threats or entreaties of his parents, who showed some concern lest he should become ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... acquirement of this horizontal speed, even in commencing flight, that most heavy birds, when possible, rise against the wind, and even run at the top of their speed to make their wings available, as in the example of the eagle, mentioned ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... cycles, it is true, taking the Red Branch heroes for contemporaries of the Fianna, which is much as if one should make Heracles meet Odysseus or Achilles in battle; but he had these earlier legends by heart, a rare acquirement ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... experience of the actual ideas, feelings, and intellectual and moral tendencies of his own country and of his own age. The true practical statesman is he who combines this experience with a profound knowledge of abstract political philosophy. Either acquirement, without the other, leaves him lame and impotent if he is sensible of the deficiency; renders him obstinate and presumptuous if, as is more probable, he is ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... once said of Longfellow: "Mr. Longfellow is not a scholar in the German sense of the word—that is to say, he is no pedant, but he certainly is a scholar in another and perhaps a higher sense. I mean in range of acquirement and the flavor that comes with it." Those words might have been written of himself. It is sixty-five years since Lowell was appointed to his professorship at Harvard, and during this long period erudition has not been idle here. It is quite possible that the ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... suppose that the ordinary boy of the upper classes went to school, under the care of a paedagogus, after the Greek fashion, rising before daylight, and submitting to severe discipline, which, together with the absolute necessity for a free Roman of attaining a certain level of acquirement, effectually compelled him to learn to read, write, and cipher.[274] This elementary work must have been done well; we hear little or nothing of gross ignorance or ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic. Of all these varied cases, however, I cannot recall any which presented more singular ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... strength and energy, with none but natural grace, and heartfelt unobtrusive delicacy. They were not at all sophisticated. The mind of their country was great in them, and it prevailed. With their learning and unexampled acquirement, they did not forget that they were men: with all their endeavours after excellence, they did not lay aside the strong original bent and character of their minds. What they performed was chiefly nature's handy-work; and time has claimed it for his own.—To these, however, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... name of fleeting, dreaming, vaporing imagery. Yet it is nothing. We exist in eternity. Dissolve the body and the night is gone; the stars are extinguished, and we measure duration by the number of our thoughts, by the activity of reason, the discovery of truths, the acquirement of virtue, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... in the food crops, which are more evidently their own. I let them go ahead very much as they choose; I make regulations for the good of all, as in the matter of carts, oxen, etc., but the minutiae I do not meddle with, except as a matter of curiosity and acquirement of knowledge. They work well, some of them harder than in the old time; the lazy ones are stimulated to exertion for their own benefit, the ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... with a judiciousness which proved the existence of a deliberate purpose, of some duty which awaited him on the other side of the water, a duty which would explain his long exile from his only parent and for which he must fit himself by study and the acquirement of such accomplishments as render a young man a positive power in society, whether that society be of the Old World or the New. He showed his shrewdness in thus dealing with this pliable and deeply affectionate nature. From this ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... is not true that such advance necessarily accrues to the benefit of every individual, or equally to all individuals. In its lowest stages, developing communalism lifts all its individual members to about the same level of mental and moral acquirement. In its middle stages it develops all individuals to a certain degree, and certain individuals to a high degree. In its highest stages it develops among all its members a uniformly high grade of ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... necessary, I will allow," replied Mustapha; "but I trust I can soon prove to your highness that writing is as dangerous as it is useless. More men have been ruined by that unfortunate acquirement, than by any other; and dangerous as it is to all, it is still more dangerous to men in high power. For instance, your sublime highness sends a message in writing, which is ill-received, and it is produced against ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... her earliest childhood she had the scholar's instinct and love of learning; she read fluently French, German, and Italian; she was well grounded in Latin, and for the Greek she had that impassioned love that made its literature to her an assimilation rather than an acquirement. Its rich intellectual treasure entered into her inmost life. She also read Hebrew, and all her life kept with her a little Hebrew Bible, as well as a Greek Testament, the margins of both of which are filled with her ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... who were to have private audiences, and superintended all the arrangements of the household. The rest of the day was devoted to the enormous correspondence and affairs of administration which devolved upon him as first minister of state and treasury. He was very ignorant. He had no experience or acquirement in the arts either of war or peace, and his early education had been limited. Like his master, he spoke no tongue but Spanish, and he had no literature. He had prepossessing manners, a fluent tongue, a winning and benevolent disposition. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... formed by natural selection, is more than enough to stagger any one; yet in the case of any organ, if we know of a long series of gradations in complexity, each good for its possessor, then, under changing conditions of life there is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection. In the cases in which we know of no intermediate or transitional states, we should be very cautious in concluding that none could have ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... the English language is spoken from the throat, and, in general, also with the mouth nearly closed. The Italian singer finds no difficulty in bringing out his voice; but the Englishman has first to conquer the habit of his life, and to overcome the obstacles his native tongue opposes to his acquirement of this new but necessary, mode of using the voice. The difficulty, of laying this only foundation of real sterling excellence in the vocal art, is very great, and much care and study is indispensable. Those who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... embodied Aristotle's ideas of Reason. Here it is: "Logic is often called the art of reasoning, and many people study it with a view to mastering an art of correct thinking, hoping thereby to get an instrument useful in the acquirement of truth. It may be doubted, however, whether the mind gets much aid in the pursuit of truth by studying logic." There is no doubt at all about it,—not one rational individual out of a hundred thousand collegians will confess that he ever got any benefit in reasoning ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various

... bungler in his speech, but he was not fluent. He hesitated, and was at a loss for words, but whatever he wrote had a wonderful flow of harmony. The right word was always in the right place. Doubtless had he devoted as much attention to the acquirement of conversational ease, as he did to skill in writing, he would have been as successful in the one art as in the other. From early life it was his great ambition to be not merely a fine but a forcible ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... whom, Sept. 19, 1836, formed a club that met at one another's houses and discussed all the important social and religious topics of the day. They were mostly young people, college-bred, learned, artistic and thoughtful, and of high ideals in intellectual acquirement, religion and social life. They were all agreed that there were many evils to be eradicated from society; in what way—individualistic, governmental or socialistic, or by a combination of ways—few ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... that with the larger acquirement of facts the vivisection method would gradually become obsolete. ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... clumsy and heavy. But what Lescott noticed was not so much the things that went on canvas as the mixing of colors on the palette, for he knew that the palette is the painter's heart, and its colors are the elements of his soul. What a man paints on canvas is the sum of his acquirement; but the colors he mixes are the declarations of what his soul can see, and no man can paint whose eyes are not touched with the sublime. At that moment, Lescott knew ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... of the proposition and the relation alleged between them; and there must be such definite and deliberate mental representation of these terms as makes possible a clear consciousness of this relation.... Along with acquirement of more complex faculty and more vivid imagination, there comes a power of perceiving to be necessary truths, what were before not recognized as truths at all.... All this which holds of logical and mathematical truths, holds, with change of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... the reasoning powers interesting to mankind, spreading the knowledge of sentiments both humane and social, checking wicked inclinations, standing up for oppressed and suffering virtue against all wrong, promoting the advancement of men of merit, and in every way facilitating the acquirement of knowledge and science;"—of this honest silly man, and his attempts to carry out all his fine projects by calling himself Spartacus, Bavaria Achaia, Austria Egypt, Vienna Rome, and so forth;—of Knigge, who picked his ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley

... must beg to differ from you," said Ah Ben. "There is a law for the acquirement of this soul-power which is as fixed and certain as the law of gravitation; and when a man has once gained it, he has no more use for worldly wealth than he has for the ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale

... the giving of many tests, such as those in the upper years of the Binet system, could be regarded as most unfair. However, the simpler language tests she did fairly well, especially those where she could understand the commonsense questions. In regard to her acquirement of English, she has done better than her relatives, who continue to live in a neighborhood where their own Slavic dialect is spoken. When it came to dealing reasoningly with concrete situations, such as those presented by our performance tests, this young woman did ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... large, and can afford a remuneration sufficient to attract a class of candidates superior to the common average, it is possible to select for the general management, and for all the skilled employments of a subordinate kind, persons of a degree of acquirement and cultivated intelligence which more than compensates for their inferior interest in the result. It must be further remarked that it is not a necessary consequence of joint-stock management that the persons employed, whether ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... imagine the number of years of patient toil which must have preceded his first request for food, and I contemplated with astonishment the indefatigable perseverance which has borne him triumphant through the acquirement of such a language. If the simple request for something to eat presented such apparently insurmountable obstacles to pronunciation, what must the language be in its dealings with the more abstruse questions of theological and metaphysical science? Imagination ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... lifts his hoofs high in air as he parades before the eyes of his fellows.... Many children clearly exhibit this instinct of self-display; before they can walk or talk the impulse finds its satisfaction in the admiring gaze or plaudits of the family circle as each new acquirement is practiced; a little later it is still more clearly expressed by the frequently repeated command, "See me do this," or "See how well I can do so and so"; and for many a child more than half the delight of riding on a pony, of wearing a new coat, consists in the satisfaction of this instinct, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... life. Part of this, to be sure, is expressive merely of some transient mood of the popular mind. The enthusiasm, happily passing, for the plays of Brieux or the craze for Algerian landscapes in France after the acquirement of the colony, are examples. Such preferences, being superficially motivated, correct themselves with ease, giving way to some new fashion in taste. The preference for works of art that reflect the ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... wit, such rumours but fixed public attention upon him and made him the topic of the hour. He was not of the build or stateliness of Lord Roxholm, and much younger, but was as much older than his years in sin as the other was in unusual acquirement. He was a slender and exquisitely built youth, with perfect features, melting blue eyes, and rich fair hair which, being so beautiful, he disdained to conceal with any periwig, however elaborate and fashionable. When Roxholm returned to England, this male ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the ways in which elementary or minor species must have originated from their common ancestor must be quite different from the mode of origin of the varieties. We have assumed that the first come into existence by the production of something new, by the acquirement of a character hitherto unnoticed in the line of their ancestors. On the contrary, varieties, in most cases, evidently owe their origin to the loss of an already existing character, or in other less frequent cases, to the re-assumption of a quality [248] ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... she was then not sixteen years old,—so entirely was her mind bent upon the crown of Russia. Partly to attain her end, and partly because it suited her intriguing, managing nature, she set herself immediately to the acquirement of the favor of the Empress on the one hand, and popularity on the other. The first she sought by an absolute submission of her will to that of Elizabeth, giving her self-negation an air of grateful deference; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... as possible the comforts of life. We claim no credit for preferring these lines of investment. We make no sacrifices. These are the lines of largest and surest return. In this particular, namely, in cheapness, ease of acquirement, and universality of means of subsistence, our country easily surpasses that of any other in the world, though we are behind other countries, perhaps, ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller

... the proud and splendid modernization, derive a yearning and a craving towards the unknown simple antique. Unknown to us, in our first studies, as we read upward from our own day into the past glories of our vernacular literature; but which, when, with gradually mounting courage, endeavour, and acquirement, we have made our way up so far, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... education, it is training to do tricks. The worker does not take over what can be called experience from one task to another. He forms certain motor habits, called skill. But under the efficient methods of scientific management the acquirement of this skill is robbed even of the educational value that it had under the unscientific method of factory work, which within its limited field, left the worker to discover by trial and error what were the best methods of getting results. Moreover, the standards ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot

... Lasswade, where he died; is characterised by Stopford Brooke as "owing to the overlapping and involved melody of his style one of our best, as he is one of our most various miscellaneous writers"; he was a writer of very miscellaneous ability and acquirement (1785-1859). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... superhuman stature; and an undefinable curiosity for all that is connected with the Danish race began to pervade me; and if, long after, when I became a student I devoted myself with peculiar zest to Danish lore and the acquirement of the old Norse tongue and its dialects, I can only explain the matter by the early impression received at Hythe from the tale of the old sexton, beneath the pent-house, and the sight of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... cannot exist, certainly not manifest itself, without talents, I would advise every scholar, who feels the genial power working within him, so far to make a division between the two, as that he should devote his talents to the acquirement of competence in some known trade or profession, and his genius to objects of his tranquil and unbiassed choice; while the consciousness of being actuated in both alike by the sincere desire to perform his duty, will alike ennoble both. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Lacedemonians and many other nations of antiquity, a useful art consisted chiefly in the exploits of war,—in being able to undergo privations and hardships, and in wielding successfully the heavy instruments of bloodshed,—such an education as would conduce to the acquirement of that art must be estimated on different grounds from that system whose object is to develop the moral and ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews

... become out of date, may be rejected, and that that which has proved itself inimitable may be appropriated; in general, so that it may be kept up to the requirements of the times. And, finally, the school must, by examinations and reports, aid the pupil in the acquirement of a knowledge of his real standing. The examination lets him know what he has really learned, and what he is able to do: the report gives him an account of his culture, exhibits to him in what he has made improvement and in what he has fallen behind, what defects he has shown, what talents ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... road to learning, no short cut to the acquirement of any valuable art. Let photographers and daguerreotypers do what they will, and improve as they may with further skill on that which skill has already done, they will never achieve a portrait of the human face divine. Let biographers, novelists, and the rest of us groan as we may ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... back to England on a matter of business, I cut short my stay in Paris, and arrived at Hollins without having advanced much as an artist, but with an important linguistic acquirement. The value of French to me from a professional point of view is quite incalculable. The best French criticism on the fine arts is the most discriminating and the most accurate in the world, at least when it is not turned aside from truth by the national jealousy ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... was a capitalistic acquirement, and some of his fellow-townsmen described it as "cast-iron." But for his daughter it was ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... the number of the primary and secondary feathers of the wings. Again, the length of the feet and of the beak,—although they have no relation to each other, yet appear to go together,—that is, you have a long beak wherever you have long feet. There are differences also in the periods of the acquirement of the perfect plumage,—the size and shape of the eggs,—the nature of flight, and the powers of flight,—so-called "homing" birds having enormous flying powers; [1] while, on the other hand, the little Tumbler is so called because of its extraordinary faculty of turning head over heels ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley

... that his child should be instructed in such elegant arts as those in which the ladies of France and England excelled—not remembering that, in a young, forward, and ill-educated woman, the dangerous desire of display succeeds the acquirement of accomplishments as surely and as regularly ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure. This definition is useful; but as it would include novels and other works of fiction, which yet we do not call poems, there must ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... progress of general education had been great and remarkable. Music [223], from the earliest time, was an essential part of instruction; and it had now become so common an acquirement, that Aristotle [224] observes, that at the close of the Persian war there was scarcely a single freeborn Athenian unacquainted with the flute. The use of this instrument was afterward discontinued, and indeed proscribed in the education of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... leeward of Martinique, with an inferior force, more and more did it become impossible to him to assure conditions sufficiently favorable. With the highest personal courage, he did not have eminent professional daring; nor, with considerable tactical acquirement, was he gifted with that illuminative originality which characterized Hood and Nelson. He therefore needed either a reasonable probability of success, or the spur of imminent emergency, to elicit the kind of action needed to save the British cause. The chances to windward of Martinique would ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... haste to her own task, as saith the Prophet, 'Like as the hart desireth the water brooks, so longeth my soul after the strong, the living God.' Wherefore from all these proofs it is evident that the acquirement of virtue is within our reach, and that we are lords over it, whether we will embrace or else the rather choose sin. They then, that are in the thraldom of wickedness, can hardly be torn away therefrom, as I have ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... of traders; of arbitrary imprisonment of citizens; of difficulties originating from outbreak of war or insurrection; and of reclamations already committed to diplomatic treatment, but requiring a speedy acquirement ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund

... believe, sir, the winged word in daily use to mark those of us who may still cling to the effete and obsolete belief that music remains a science, difficult of acquirement and not either a toy art, or a mere nerve titillater. We are not, sir, by any means ashamed to bear the stigma of being academic; on the contrary, we feel it a genuine compliment—gratifying because, although perhaps unintentionally it implies that we have acquired the possession of "that one ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... natural gifts (and they were many) could be raised into talents; his life, in fact, could have been made a success by one influence—the love of a woman—the one influence that was forbidden: the single human acquirement that must for ever be beyond the priest's reach. This Christian Vellacott felt in a vague, uncertain way. He did not know very much about love and its influence upon a man's character, these questions never having come under his journalistic field of inquiry; but he had lately begun to wonder ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... encouraged to acquire a knowledge of this, or any other branch of physical science? What is the use, it is said, of attempting to make physical science a branch of primary education? Is it not probable that teachers, in pursuing such studies, will be led astray from the acquirement of more important but less attractive knowledge? And, even if they can learn something of science without prejudice to their usefulness, what is the good of their attempting to instil that knowledge into boys whose real ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... and settlement of the broad plains (pampas) and the frozen region of the south, a new world was created, much as in the United States of America a new world was created by the acquirement and settlement of the western plains, ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various

... the seal was broken—but the contents still a secret. Poor Agnes had learned to write as some youths learn Latin: so short a time had been allowed for the acquirement, and so little expert had been her master, that it took her generally a week to write a letter of ten lines, and a month to read one of twenty. But this being a letter on which her mind was deeply engaged, her whole imagination aided her slender literature, and at the ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... public schools, and is very generally spoken by the intelligent people. Education is more general, and culture is of a higher grade in Sweden than is common with the people of Southern Europe, while music is nearly as universal an acquirement here as it is in Italy. The population is frugal, honest, self-helping, and in many respects resembles that ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... the mind of the normal child as thoughts of fear and cowardice. A child should never have suggested to him that he is afraid. He should be constantly assured that he is brave, loyal, and fearless. The daily repetition of these suggestions will contribute much to the actual acquirement of the very traits of character that are thus suggested. This does not mean that a child should not be ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... be taken as admitted that self-control is a noble acquirement for a man. (1) If so, let us turn and consider whether by language like the following he was likely to lead his listeners onwards (2) to the attainment of this virtue. "Sirs," he would say, "if a war came upon us and we wished to choose a man who would best help us to save ourselves and to subdue ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... practical—adapting himself to circumstances—he had never learned. It belongs to the department of Common Sense, in which, unfortunately, there has never been a professor at West Point. His after life does not seem to have been favorable to its acquirement. Withal, the hauteur characteristic to Cadets clung to him, and on many occasions rendered him unfortunate in his intercourse with volunteer officers. Politeness with him, assumed the airs and grimaces of ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

... the message of December 1, 1884, by which I transmitted to the Senate, with a view to ratification, a treaty negotiated with Belgium touching the succession to and acquirement of real property, etc., by the citizens or subjects of the one Government in the domain of the other, I now address you in order to recall the treaty thus ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson

... as could be bought for a song. The two men were in a position to choose their opportunities; none that were good escaped them, and they shared the profits of mortgage-usury, which retards, though it does not prevent, the acquirement of the soil by the peasantry. So Dionis took a lively interest in the doctor's inheritance, not so much for the post master and the collector as for his friend the clerk of the court; sooner or later Massin's share in the doctor's money would swell the ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... of the Dark Wood dwelt for a time a Wizard, whose life had been spent in the acquirement of many wonderful arts. As a young man he had wandered over Europe from university to university, until one day he became aware of the true secret of education and burnt ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl

... But Cyrus' acquirement of the chunk of hair was his last triumph. His downfall was near; and, although it involved Cecily in a most humiliating experience, over which she cried half the following night, in the end she confessed it was worth undergoing just to get ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Miss Fotheringay, though silent in general, and by no means brilliant as a conversationist, where poetry, literature, or the fine arts were concerned, could talk freely, and with good sense, too, in her own family circle. She cannot justly be called a romantic person: nor were her literary acquirement great: she never opened a Shakspeare from the day she left the stage, nor, indeed, understood it during all the time she adorned the boards: but about a pudding, a piece of needle-work, or her own domestic affairs, she was as good a judge as could be found; and not being misled ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... with the dry chronicles of a law office. The acquirement of learning is a slow process in life, and perchance a slower one in the telling. I lacked not application during the three years of my stay in Richmond, and to earn my living I worked at such odd tasks as came ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... importance of the idea as behind, distinct from, and manifested through, the technical means. The vocal machinery must necessarily be in first-class order, but the influence of the mind upon the body is so intimate and so extraordinary that even technical acquirement hangs to no small extent upon ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... Professor Henslow, whose lectures on botany he attended. He joined in the class excursions and found them delightful. But still more profitable to him were the long and almost daily walks which he enjoyed with his teacher, during the latter half of his time at Cambridge. Henslow's wide range of acquirement, modesty, unselfishness, courtesy, gentleness, and piety, fascinated him and exerted on him an influence which, more than anything else, tended to shape his whole future life. The love of travel which had been kindled ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... rest on the imitation of accepted models. Many students in all schools of journalism come from immigrant families and are both inconceivably ignorant of English and inconceivably satisfied with their acquirement of English, as we all are with a strange tongue we have learned to speak. Even in families with two or more generations of American life, the vocabulary is limited, construction careless, and the daily contact with any literature, now that family prayers and Bible reading are gone; almost nil. ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper









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