"Abstract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cheeks any hirsute appendages. One of the boarders whom I consulted on the subject attempted to persuade me that it was the story that had the whiskers; but it is nonsensical to suppose that a purely abstract affair like an untruth could be furnished with capillary growth, which belongs to ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... mind upon the subject in hand. When he tried to do so his conclusions seemed grotesquely fanciful and farfetched. This delay was all the more annoying because on the morrow the girl was to be buried, and, therefore, the precious hours were slipping away. He tried repeatedly to attain that abstract, subconscious mood in which alone shines the pure light of ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... And in Hilda's case, it is the simple consciousness of another's guilt, which is "almost the same as if she had participated" in it. The mutual relations of these persons, who are made to represent the whole of society, afford matter for infinite meditation, the artistic and moral abstract of which the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... period of youth, no impressions are more strong, or more universally operative. The poet and the priest either encourage the feeling, or do not take any pains to remove it. The agency of spirits and abstract principles, is countenanced by some of the records of religion, and by philosophers and physicians in their reasonings about occult causes, sympathies, coincidencies, and destinies. It is urged in vain, that ghosts and supernatural effects are ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... s; thus sugar is tugar, and doctor is togata. As with other barbarians, who have enjoyed the benefit of our instructions, the epithets of licentiousness and insult were most current, and most aptly applied. Strangers to abstract ideas, their words expressed the most common objects, sensations, and wants. Their songs, which reminded Labillardiere of the music of the Arabs of Asia Minor, were exceedingly soft and plaintive; their voices not ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... spies to work, and spies will always discover something. They found out that she kept up a regular correspondence with Count Armfelt. Their letters were opened, and evidence found in them of a plan to declare the young prince of age, or at least to abstract Duke Karl from the corrupting influence of Reuterholm. The angry feelings entertained by the latter personage towards Miss Rudenskjoeld were increased tenfold by this discovery, and he immediately had her thrown into prison. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... every word, every tone, every look—his sympathy with all good thoughts, his freshness and candour, were calculated to charm the coldest and most difficult of judges. Diana liked, and even admired him, but it was from an abstract point of view. He seemed a creature as remote from her own life as a portrait of Henry of Navarre, seen and admired in some royal picture-gallery to-day, to fade out of ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... now treading that illustrious Island, which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish, if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... spirits seemed at times quite indifferent to nice questions of constitutional law. Calhoun dismissed constitutional objections to a national bank with a wave of the hand: he thought discussion of such abstract themes "a useless consumption of time." On introducing his bill for internal improvements, in December, 1816, he intimated that he did not propose to indulge in metaphysical subtleties respecting the Constitution. "The instrument was not intended as a thesis for the logician ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... when, an hour later, they, too, disappeared into the darkness that swallowed up the trail to Ashley Ranch. That was the first of many such services. The preaching was always of the simplest kind, abstract questions being avoided and the concrete in those wonderful Bible tales, dressed in modern and in western garb, set forth. Bill and Hi were more than ever his friends and champions, and the latter was heard exultantly to exclaim ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... what utmost stretch of courage,—even though he were willing to devote himself certainly and instantly to the worst fate that he had pictured to himself,—could he immediately rush away from these abstract speculations, encumbered as they were with personal flattery, into his own most unpleasant, most tragic matter! It was the unfitness that deterred him and not the possible tragedy. Nevertheless, through it all, he was sure,—nearly sure,—that she was playing her game, and ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... already that Care was beginning to mark the trace which Time sooner or later would make a furrow. She could not be a beauty; if she had been, it would have been much harder for many persons to be interested in her. For, although in the abstract we all love beauty, and although, if we were sent naked souls into some ultramundane warehouse of soulless bodies and told to select one to our liking, we should each choose a handsome one, and never think of the consequences,—it is quite ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... should know, and that no effort will be made to cram into their poor little minds, theological dogmas which their tender age prevents them from understanding." Huxley defines his idea of a church as a place in which, "week by week, services should be devoted, not to the iteration of abstract propositions in theology, but to the setting before men's minds of an ideal of true, just and pure living; a place in which those who are weary of the burden of daily cares should find a moment's rest in the contemplation of the higher life which is possible ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... determined by increasing width and variety of experience. From the simplest form of sympathy, such as the painful thrill felt on seeing some one in a dangerous position, up to the elaborate complication of altruistic feelings involved in the notion of abstract justice, the development is very largely a development of the representative faculty. The very same causes, therefore, deeply grounded in the nature of industrial civilization, which have developed science and art, have also had ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... always to take the short cut and keeps it clear of crankery of every kind. The "isms" have no place in a newspaper office, certainly not in Mulberry Street. I confess I was rather glad of it. I had no stomach for abstract discussions of social wrongs; I wanted to right those of them that I could reach. I wanted to tear down the Mulberry Bend and let in the light so that we might the more readily make them out; the others could do ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... and piled them up on my fish basket, eager for the fray. "You claim to own this farm, but it is my opinion that you are the hired man, puffed up with a little authority. You can't order me off this ground till you show me a duly certified abstract of title and then identify yourself. What protection does a gentleman have if he is to be kicked and cuffed about by Tom, Dick and Harry, claiming they own the whole State. Get out! Avaunt! If you don't avaunt pretty quick I'll scrap you and sell ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... masculine and trenchant figures "The Four Powers." These are of heroic height, and create an impression of superhuman size and strength even when raised so far above the ground. They have a simple robustness that accords well with their theme. Two of the Powers are abstract, the driving powers of thought; these are Invention and Imagination. Two are concrete, representing the mightiest powers of modern mechanics, Steam Power and Electric Power. Steam Power is forcing the driving arm of an engine; Electric Power, ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... at the same time that, in strictness, they separate from the religious bodies around them, only because they know of a purer or a happier religion" (p. 126). It is useful to turn, from time to time, from the abstract to the concrete, in order to steady and purge our mental vision. Let us therefore, in passing, gaze upon Theophile Gautier, the high priest of the pride of human form, whose unspeakably impure romance has been pronounced by Mr. Swinburne to be "the holy writ of beauty;" and, on the other, upon ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... in their sons' lives—these mothers! The very possibility of her in the abstract brings a shadow ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... again for social appearing. Aunt Candace had hung about my tie and the set of my coat, and for my old army head-gear she had resurrected the jaunty cap I had worn home from Massachusetts. With my hands in my pockets, whistling softly to abstract my thoughts, I slipped through the bushes and stood once more ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... exception to this rule. It offers itself in a great number of applications of calculation to the movements of the heavenly bodies, or to the physics of terrestrial bodies, and in general in the problems which lead to equations of a high degree. As soon as he wishes to quit the domain of abstract relations, the calculator has occasion to employ the roots of these equations; thus the art of discovering them by the aid of an uniform method, either exactly or by approximation, did not fail at an early period to ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... victory to Iuppiter Victor, the man who is taking an oath to Iuppiter as the deus Fidius. As a still later development the cult-title will, as it were, break off and set up for itself, usually in the form of an abstract personification: Iuppiter, in the two special capacities just noted, gives birth to ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... his reasons that induce his state. Barbara declared that he could not; though, to be sure, it was, as she added most promptly, no concern of hers; for she cared not whether I were in love or not, nor how deeply, nor with whom, nor, in a word, anything at all about the matter. It was an abstract opinion she gave, so far as love, or what men chose to call such, might be involved; as to seemliness, she must confess that she had her view, with which, may be, Mr Dale was not in agreement. The girl at the gardener's ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... discussion of this theory the author reserved for the Royal Society. The London Athenaeum gives a brief abstract of his paper, in its report of the proceedings ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... actions. Yet, it is unavoidable that certain groups of questions should predominate for a while. This volume indicates, for instance, that the aesthetic processes have attracted our attention in an especially high degree. But even if we abstract from their important relation to the motor functions, we have good reasons for turning to them, as the aesthetic feelings are of all feeling processes decidedly those which can be produced in the laboratory most purely; their disinterested character makes them more satisfactory for experimental ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... of disease. Perhaps he would have granted that destructive principles are pregnant with human interest in the abstract, but his intelligence certainly was not challenged by these dark systems of activity. He saw that even if his mind were not held in anguish, he lacked the equipment to cope with Pleiad affairs. As it was, his attention positively would not concentrate ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... She knew that her father's resentment was based on no abstract love of law and order. It had back of it no feeling that crime had been committed or justice outraged. The frontier was in its roistering youth, full of such effervescing spirits that life was the cheapest thing it ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... only this very condensed and incomplete abstract of Mr. John Fiske's argument; you must read it for yourself in his "Destiny of Man." And as he has there shown, this can have but one result, and that is the family life of man. And we may yet very possibly have to acknowledge ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... power of abstract reasoning and of an analytical treatment of things is in existence, the learner is now less to be moulded and more to be guided than he was. We want now to give this mind we have established, the most stimulating and invigorating ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... other hand, the greatest writers of Greece, Thucydides, Plato, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Demosthenes, are generally those which are found to be most difficult and to diverge most widely from the English idiom. The translator will often have to convert the more abstract Greek into the more concrete English, or vice versa, and he ought not to force upon one language the character of another. In some cases, where the order is confused, the expression feeble, the emphasis misplaced, or the ...
— Charmides • Plato
... admits of an abstract definition; all nations are beings of many qualities and many sides; no historical event exactly illustrates any one principle; every cause is intertwined and surrounded with a hundred others. The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... defiance. In this, as in other disputes, probably neither party will ever convince the other; and the only effect of the contention is to fix each more immovably in its own opinion. But, waiving at present the abstract question, which of the two systems is in itself preferable, or essential to dramatic success, there is a practical consideration of deep interest to society, with which we are all concerned and the result of which throws no small light on the theoretical principle. It is this. Placing the creators ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... ships, able for duty. Of our men 21 have died, and many more are sore hurt or sick. Mr Burton has been sick for six weeks, and is now so very weak that, unless God strengthen him, I fear he will hardly escape. Your worship will find inclosed an abstract of all the goods we have sold, and also of what commodities we have received for them; reserving all things else till our meeting, and to the bearer ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... few moments of deliberation, his honor decided that the demand was one of right, strictly due, not merely to the prisoner and to the abstract merits of the case, but also to the necessity which such an event clearly occasioned, of establishing certain governing principles for restraining those holding situations so responsible, who should so far wilfully betray their trusts. The lawyer was ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... re-echoed Vologonov irritably. "Are we not, then, to respect ANYONE or ANYTHING? Only he is worthy of respect who does not harm his fellows; and of those who do not harm their fellows there are but few. To this point you must pay attention—you must teach him words of variable import, words more abstract, as well as ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... to Mrs. Hervey, Miss Howe, and Mrs. Norton, at length likewise: but, although every letter varies in style as well as matter from the others; yet, as they are written on the same subject, and are pretty long, it is thought proper to abstract them. ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... forever feeling this in Shakespeare. His imagination went down to the very bases of things, and while his characters are the most natural that poet ever created, they are also perfectly ideal, and are more truly the personifications of abstract thoughts and passions than those of any allegorical ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... to keep a firm footing on the shifting quicksand of the other's arguments. He knew a little of paradynamics, of course, but only as something supposed to remake the world and all science in some abstract future. It had been originated as a complex mathematical analysis of nuclear relationships, and had been seized on for some reason by the sociologists. It had no bearing he could see on ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... something was going on, other boys came flocking up until a large number of the school were assembled there, while Whalley still kept tight hold of Penn, and Henderson watched that he should play no tricks; the Noelites meantime exclaiming very loudly against the supposed infringement of their abstract rights. ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... orchestra, and feel them through the infection of passionate emotion. Dr. Johnson kicking the stone to confute Berkeley is not more bent on common-sense concreteness than Wagner: on all occasions he insists on the need for sensuous apprehension to give reality to abstract comprehension, maintaining, in fact, that reality has no other meaning. Now he could apply this process to poetic love only by following it back to its alleged origin in sexual passion, the emotional phenomena of which ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... is usually called a very good family—being nearly connected with the Walpoles, Earls of Orford, and the Turners of Warham, in Norfolk. But for further information on this point, we refer them to an abstract of the pedigree prefixed to the letters. In the year 1777, and several following years, Nelson's principal correspondents were his brother, the Rev. William Nelson, who succeeded as second Baron Nelson of the Nile and of Hilborough, and was created Earl Nelson—Captain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... called, because they had been hearers of the apostles themselves, were mostly Jews; but among the Egyptians and Greeks of Alexandria their religion lost much of its purely moral caste, and became, with the former, an astrological mysticism, and with the latter an abstract speculative theology. It is of the Egyptian Jews that Hadrian speaks in his letter just quoted; many of them had been already converted to Christianity, and their religion had taken the form ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... predilections on the black art from a consistent regard to the solemnity of the subject were delivered within the walls of a vast and gloomy cavern. The schoolmen taught that all knowledge might be obtained from the assistance of the fallen angels. They were skilled in the abstract sciences, in the knowledge of precious stones, in alchymy, in the various languages of mankind and of the lower animals; in the Belles-Lettres, Moral Philosophy, Pneumatology, Divinity, Magic, History, and Prophecy. They could controul the winds and waters, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... expressed, that it is in imagination, and not always in fact. For certainly great riches, have sold more men, than they have bought out. Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly. Yet have no abstract nor friarly contempt of them. But distinguish, as Cicero saith well of Rabirius Posthumus, In studio rei amplificandae apparebat, non avaritiae praedam, sed instrumentum bonitati quaeri. Harken also to Solomon, and beware of hasty gathering ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... This abstract has been given to show the singular manner of legislating in those times.* Not, but that it was necessary thus to legislate, as it was certainly better to have some kind of civil government than none. The raising of two regiments of cavalry was suggested by Gen. Greene, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... and continual engagements, he never forgot his first friends, the Salters, and still strolled over of an evening, accompanied by Roscoe, to sit in the veranda, talk, smoke, and listen, until his companions began to discuss such abstract questions as, "What is the real driving force of life?" or to argue on the philosophy of Buddhism, or Herbert Spencer's "Descriptive ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... avoid a complex abstract subject, with pitfalls galore. "Which may very well endanger her future.... Well!—may endanger the happiness of both.... I don't mean that she isn't in love with him—whatever the word means, and sometimes one hardly knows. I mean now that she is under an influence which may last, or ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... body else's advantage. He was low born and low bred, in the worst sense of the words; and I fear that no education will change his original quality, or greatly modify his early bias. So while the wasting of his substance is a great wrong in the abstract, it may be a real blessing to him. Events in this life work out strangely to our human eyes, yet there is a Providence in them that ever ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... returned the king, "that the law is bound to regard thee in thy abstract condition as a human being, and is disabled from taking cognisance of thy acquired capacity of smuggler—rebel, I might say, seeing that ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... presented as a social tool. The prevailing divorce between information and character, between knowledge and social action, stalks upon the scene here. The moment mathematical study is severed from the place which it occupies with reference to use in social life, it becomes unduly abstract, even upon the purely intellectual side. It is presented as a matter of technical relations and formulae apart from any end or use. What the study of number suffers from in elementary education is lack of motivation. ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... revolution is a natural right possessed by every people. They may revolutionize their governments when they become oppressive. The Constitution was adopted as the logical consequence of this idea. There is no use now in discussing the abstract question of secession. We must treat the present condition of the Gulf States as a revolution in fact accomplished. We must meet them fairly. I vote against this amendment, and wish to stand right upon ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... abstract words in the poetry have a very wide range of meanings, diverging widely from the prose usage, synn, for instance, means simply injury, mischief, hatred, and the prose meaning sin is only a secondary one; hata in poetry is not only ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... he looked at me. "Then you encumber yourself with me from abstract duty. Personally you ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... as has been said, some builders worked imaginatively, imitating in the round naves of a few churches the rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre. Other instances of devout imitation might be found, if we looked for them. But the imitation of a concrete model is a different thing from translating abstract mysteries into the plan and elevation of a building. And, although the ground plan with nave, transepts, and chancel, certainly forms a cross; and, although, as time went on, the resemblance to the chief symbol of the Christian faith was no doubt recognised ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... anything surprising in this pronouncement; it was accepted as seriously as any similar statement of the Prophet Samuel to the Children of Israel, and was evidently meant to imply that abstract ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Andy," said Henslowe nervously stroking his moustache. "You care much more about your work than any abstract idea of asserting your right of individual liberty. Even if you don't get caught.... I think the chances of getting caught are mighty slim if you use your head.... But even if you don't, you haven't enough money to live for long ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... probable that, notwithstanding the ferment in which his heart was kept, he occasionally and desultorily occupied his hours in study. Among other proofs of industry, which I have found among his manuscripts, and which may possibly be referred to this period, is an abstract of the History of England—nearly filling a small quarto volume of more than a hundred pages, closely written. I have also found in his early hand-writing (for there was a considerable change in his writing afterwards) a collection ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... "silly" sex had been characterized by perhaps more vigilant scorn and disparagement than was necessary. Cressy had accepted it as she had accepted her new studies, with an indolent good-humor, and at times a frankly supreme ignorance of their abstract or moral purpose that was discouraging. "What's the good of that?" she would ask, lifting her eyes abruptly to the master. Mr. Ford, somewhat embarrassed by her look, which always, sooner or later, frankly confessed itself an excuse for a perfectly irrelevant examination of his features in detail, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... professional finery, but which, on closer inspection, turns out to be an imp of a child, made a fool of by its mother and milliner; and my lady—in inadequate garments, and a pair of wings, flourishing as some heathen divinity or abstract virtue! Look at those girlish features, just mantling into fairest womanhood, with their sweet serious look, exhibiting all the self-possession of simplicity; the drapery and other accessories natural, and in perfect keeping with the unpretending character ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Hermes, embodied in books the occult and hermetic sciences, with their own discoveries and the revelations of the Sibyls. They studied particularly the most abstract sciences, discovered the famous geometrical theorems which Pythagoras afterward learned from them, calculated eclipses, and regulated, nineteen centuries before Cæsar, the Julian year. They descended to practical investigations as to the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... them on the floor beside his chair, his mind boring this way and that for a solution. He had now come to the point where he ceased to see the photographs or the green stones. The movements of his hands were almost automatic. And in this abstract manner he came to the last photograph. He built a necklace and even ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... to give some notion of the mischief done to British commerce in India, by ships from Mauritius, an abstract of all the captures made in the first sixteen months of the war, so far as they came to our knowledge in the Garden Prison, is subjoined. There are probably several omissions; and the supposed values annexed to them are the least that can be estimated, perhaps ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... hard to grasp. It attempts to measure the difference between tweedledum and tweedledee. Russia's difference with Austria was over the attempt of the latter to crush Servia. Germany would not interfere in the latter, but would as an abstract proposition mediate between Russia and Austria. For all practical purposes ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... He looked upon their projects as childish and theatrical, that gave as little promise of changing the world's history as battles between tin soldiers on some nursery floor. He seemed no longer concerned with ideals, abstract rights, or "eternal verities." Those who misunderstood him or were little associated with him were horrified at what they thought was his cynical indifference to such glorious visions as liberty, fraternity, and equality. Like Darwin, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... as it seems to me, philosophy moves toward this reading of existence. The revolt from the last century's materialism is almost complete. In religious language, abstract thought is again finding and feeling God within the world; and finding too in this discovery and realization the meaning, and perhaps—if we may dare to use such a word—the purpose of life. It suggests—and ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... ended, some of the performers were so hoarse from incessant singing that they could hardly speak. [Footnote: Compare the account of La Harpe with that of the Chevalier de Beaurain; both are in Margry, VI. There is an abstract in ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... covenant, is, that it may be deduced from the verb bearing the meaning to choose, and to which there would appear no objection, provided that that meaning were reckoned to be secondary to the signification to eat. The idea implied in the verb to choose is essentially abstract. Not so is that included in either the verb to cut, or the verb to eat. From one of these, which may be considered as collateral primary meanings, it must therefore be deduced. And since it cannot be ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... from his own theory of poetry: "Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, spheres and the like, but equations for the human emotions. If one have a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... Parliament. Hist vol. v. p. 221. The king himself after all his magnificent boasts, was obliged to make his escape through a distinction which he framed between a king in abstracto and a king in concreto: an abstract king, he said, had all power; but a concrete king was bound to observe the laws of the country which he governed. King James's Works, p. 533. But how bound? by conscience only? or might his subjects resist him, and defend their privileges? This he thought not fit to explain. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... and appreciate its advantages. Indeed, I have known old sailors, whose rough and wrinkled visages, blunt and repulsive manners, coarse and unrefined language, were enough to banish gentle Cupid to an iceberg, exhibit the kindest and tenderest feelings when speaking of WOMAN, whom in the abstract they regarded as a being not merely to be protected, cherished, and loved, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... those days it was a part of the wisdom of our educators to make us learn Latin out of a grammar written in that language, and I retain some recollection of the perfectly useless mental fatigue and puzzlement that I was made to undergo in learning abstract statements about grammatical science that were written in a tongue which I could not possibly understand. The idea of taking a child five and a half years old, and making it learn a dead language by abstract rules, is of itself a great error. The proper ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Bartolommeo's painting that are in San Marco—where he, as well as Fra Angelico, had been a monk;—in the Academy, and in the Uffizi and Pitti galleries; and had learned to recognize the peculiarities of his grouping of figures, and their abstract, devotional faces, his treatment of draperies, and the dear little angels, with their musical instruments, that are so often sitting at the feet of ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... century sculptors failed less in their representations of the crucifixion than almost any set of artists; though it was certainly an easier thing to do in stone than on canvas, especially in such a case as this where the representation is so highly abstract; nevertheless, I wish I could say something more about it; failing which, I will say something ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... that malignant philosophy, which, disregarding the actual state of the world, and estimating at nothing the miseries of a vast portion of the human race, can coolly and deliberately pursue, through oceans of blood, abstract systems for the attainment of some fancied untried good, were gathered in the French West Indies. Instead of proceeding in the correction of any abuses which might exist, by those slow and cautious steps which gradually introduce reform without ruin, which may prepare ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... merely a business corporation, and look at things from a business point of view only, you must remember that they are composed of individuals, and that individuals can be influenced if they can be got at. For instance, Cossey and Son are an abstraction and harshly disposed in their abstract capacity, but Mr. Edward Cossey is an individual, and I should say, so far as this particular matter is concerned, a benevolently disposed individual. Now Mr. Edward Cossey is not himself at the present moment actually one of the firm of Cossey and Son, ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... distinguish themselves in literature, and have given proofs of considerable talent in this career; but knowledge is not yet sufficiently diffused to create a public judgment formed by individual opinions. The character of the Russians is too passionate to allow them to like ideas in the least degree abstract; it is by facts only that they are amused; they have not yet had time or inclination to reduce facts to general ideas. In addition, every significant idea is always more or less dangerous, in the midst of a court where mutual observation, and more frequently ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... the abstract and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... literature extending back twenty or thirty centuries; yet no history, no chronology, no annals. They have a philosophy as acute, profound and, spiritual as any in the world, which is yet harmoniously associated with the coarsest superstitions. With a belief so abstract that it almost escapes the grasp of the most speculative intellect, is joined the notion that sin can be atoned for by bathing in the Ganges or repeating a text of the Veda. With an ideal pantheism resembling that of Hegel, is united the opinion that Brahma and Siva can be driven ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... longer to remember that than I had expected, seeing how quick she had been up to the present. Yet, at length this too was accomplished and she gave each paw without mistake. Strange as it may seem, I found later on that abstract reckoning and spelling came easily enough, while the movements of any particular portion of the body—with the exception of those habitually practised—were always attended with greater difficulty. It would seem as if she ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... constituted authorities of this Republic are bound to regard the rights of the South in this respect as they would view any other legal and constitutional right, and that the laws to enforce them should be respected and obeyed, not with a reluctance encouraged by abstract opinions as to their propriety in a different state of society, but cheerfully and according to the decisions of the tribunal to which their exposition belongs. Such have been, and are, my convictions, and upon them I shall act. I fervently hope that the question is at rest, and that ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... degrees than that of the hills above, or of the upper part of the Soane valley, while the nights on the other hand were decidedly warmer. The dew-point was even lower in proportion, 7.6 degrees, and the climate consequently drier. The following is an abstract of the observations taken at Mr. Hamilton's house on the banks ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... of red (hoist side), blue, and red; centered on the hoist-side red band in yellow is the national emblem ("soyombo" - a columnar arrangement of abstract and geometric representation for fire, sun, moon, earth, water, and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... sequestered rocky hollow in the rear of the marquee, which had been devoted to a fernery. Here he came to a sudden pause; for, seated a few yards before him on a gray crag, and the moonlight full on his face, he saw a solitary man, looking upwards with a still and mournful gaze, evidently absorbed in abstract contemplation. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in principles that demand the demolition of all upon which the civilisation of Europe has its basis-worship, property, and marriage—in order to reconstruct a new civilisation adapted to a new humanity, it is scarcely possible for the serenest contemporary to keep his mind in that state of abstract reasoning with which Philosophy deduces from some past evil some existent good. For my part, I believe that throughout the whole known history of mankind, even in epochs when reason is most misled and conscience most perverted, there runs visible, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... harmonious law of evolution. All the interesting phenomena that we meet in ontogeny and paleontology, comparative anatomy and dysteleology, the distribution and habits of organisms—all the important general laws that we abstract from the phenomena of these sciences, and combine in harmonious unity—are the broad bases of our ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... frighten any one who is in the habit of learning foreign tongues. The ear and the tongue gradually become familiar with the peculiarities of inflection and accentuation, and practice fulfils the same function as abstract rules. ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... into his presence, Iemon made profound obeisance and explained the cause of their presence. The visitations of O'Iwa to the district were causing the greatest public commotion. Not as a matter of private interest, but of public utility his interference was sought. If Iemon thought to abstract a copper "cash" from the priestly treasury he made a gross mistake. Besides, the individual who disturbs the public peace suffers severely from official mediation, no matter what form this takes. Shu[u]den inquired minutely as to the visit of the Daiho[u]-in, of which he seemed to have heard. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... a question between ideals, yours and mine—pure abstract ideals, and yours are the nobler. I was bound up in the old vicious notions, and all the time you were splendid and new." His voice broke. "I must actually thank you for what you have done—for showing me what I really am. Solemnly, I thank you for showing me a true woman. Will ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... bill on that principle all over the State in 1854, in 1855, and in 1856; and he has no excuse for pretending to be in doubt as to my position on that question. It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory under the Constitution; the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... plainly and faithfully did he testify. Fond as he was of doctrinal subtilties, keen as was his analysis of disinterested benevolence, he did not, like some in our day, confine himself to analyzing virtue in the abstract, but took upon himself the duty of practicing it in the concrete without fear of consequences,—well knowing that there is no logic like that of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... will be moved Northward, and the other branch, with the masters, will be moved Southward, so that, by the time the Northern army will have penetrated to the centre of the border slave States, they will be relieved of the substance and abstract rights of slave property for ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... persons who, when the war broke out, remained faithful to their allegiance to the crown, were of opinion that the British government was pursuing a policy unwise in the extreme, although they had no doubt of the abstract legal right of that government to pass the Grenville and Townshend acts for taxing the colonies. Chatham, Burke, Conway, and Barre were the most prominent public men who, in powerful language, showed the dangers of the unwise course pursued by the ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... be found to correspond with the item or items of the bill, he shall enter the aggregate amount, with the date and number of the invoice, in a book provided for that purpose, after which he shall endorse the bill correct, and file it, together with an abstract of his daily disbursements, in the office of ...
— Rules and Regulations of the Insane Asylum of California - Prescribed by the Resident Physician, August 1, 1861 • Stockton State Hospital
... was he so sad because some people who were members of the parasite class and were probably devoid of all political idealism had had to stop having a good time? It was, she supposed, that ethereal abstract sorrow, undimmed by personal misery and unconfined by the syllogisms of moral judgment, that poets feel: that Milton had felt when he wrote "Comus" about somebody for whom he probably wouldn't have mixed a toddy, that she herself had often felt when the evening star ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... representative of a Peking newspaper he never expressed the views attributed to him. Be this as it may, I cannot help having my doubts. All Dr. Goodnow is alleged to have said bearing on the merits of the monarchical and republican system of government as an abstract subject of discussion, such as the necessity of the form of state (Kuo-ti) being suited to the general conditions of the country and the lessons we should learn from the Central and South American republics, are really points of a very simple nature and ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... and three appended tractates on the virtues "Courage," "Humanity," and "Repentance." Scholars[83] are of opinion that there are gaps in the extant "Life of Moses," but the general plan of the work is clear. It is at once an abstract and an interpretation of Jewish law for the Greek world, and also an ideal biography of ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... "I," the practical, intelligent, abstract-making, idealising, generalising, clever, separated "I," the "I" which has a past, a present and a future, renounces its usurpation of the steering apparatus, that play can be. "I," to play or to pray or to love, must be born again. "I" must relinquish all. "I" must have neither experience ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... nameless, that terror in the mind of a woman pursued. Yet without it one of the first of her abstract attractions would be gone. Undoubtedly it is the joy of the pursuer that the quarry should take to flight. Would there be any chase without? But long years of study amongst the more advanced of us have made the fact of rather common knowledge. The ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... ball Denry Machin was seated one Monday alone in Mr Duncalf's private offices in Duck Square (where he carried on his practice as a solicitor), when in stepped a tall and pretty young woman, dressed very smartly but soberly in dark green. On the desk in front of Denry were several wide sheets of "abstract" paper, concealed by a copy of that morning's Athletic News. Before Denry could even think of reversing the positions of the abstract paper and the Athletic News the young woman said "Good-morning!" in a very friendly style. She ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... If I might use abstract words, I would say that Christ's death potentially opens the path for every man, which being put into plain English—which is better—is just that by the death of Christ every man can, if he will, go to God, and live beside ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... life? You would not be likely to think the better of me, and I should certainly think less well of myself. Though I am conscious of a homespun quality of thought and diction, I must keep within the limits set me by nature, eschewing "brilliancy" and continuing to deal not in abstract considerations but ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... his home, and so forth, all the way up the Red Sea. It was much easier than he had supposed to converse with a woman for an hour at a time. Then Mrs. Zuleika, turning from parental affection, spoke of love in the abstract as a thing not unworthy of study, and in discreet twilights after dinner demanded confidences. Georgie would have been delighted to supply them, but he had none, and did not know it was his duty to manufacture them. Mrs. Zuleika ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... dear fellow, let this individual thing stand separately, away from politics and abstract ideas. I mean to ask your sister whether I can have her heart, and, as far as her will goes, her hand. If you are displeased I suppose we shall have to part,—for a time. Let theories run ever so high, Love will be stronger than them all." Lord Hampstead at this moment gave no assurance ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... instilled a respect for law and order, is it strange that we should ourselves sometimes lump the word of God and the principles of law and order together under the head of "sentimentality" and shrug our shoulders? Justice in the abstract is our aim—any American will tell you that—so why haggle over details and insist on justice for ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... he had been fully posted from the minute he set foot in the town. The Spanish Minister was rather sarcastic about his opinion of a General who would venture to occupy a capital without being in possession of means of telegraphic communication. The old soldier was in no mood for argument on abstract questions, and was playing for too big stakes to stop and dicker, so he passed this over lightly and suggested that we go back and discuss with the Director-General of Telegraphs the possibilities of reestablishing communications. Then the ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... women do wince when a man really verges on his true conclusions concerning love in the abstract, however satisfactory his love in the concrete may be to them. "I am sure they love ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... him without any effort on his part. A new invention concealed no mysteries from him; he looked into it; understood, calculated its scope. A strange piece of news from any part of the world found him unsurprised, explanatory. He liked mathematics, and was wont to say jocosely that an abstract computation had a fine moral affect, favouring unselfishness. Music was one of his foibles; he learnt an instrument with wonderful facility, and, up to a certain point, played well. For poetry, though as a rule ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... had to concern himself with what he might do for one girl's future. It was exquisitely sad and sweet to put it that way, though Kurt knew that if he had never seen Lenore Anderson he would have gone to war just the same. He was not making an abstract sacrifice. ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... views of 1888 as to instruct their delegates to the Conference of that year to the effect that "the Government consider that the objection, on humanitarian grounds, to the bombardment of unfortified towns is too strong to justify a resort to that measure, even though it may be permissible under the abstract doctrines of international law [?]. They wish it, however, to be clearly understood that any general prohibition of such practice must not be held to apply to such operations as the bombardment of towns or places used as bases ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... abstract of the history of Virginia Maria de Leyva is based on Dandolo's Signora di Monza (Milano, 1855). Readers of Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi, and of Rosini's tiresome novel, La Signora di Monza, will be already ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... he continued. "Pickpockets usually abstract the money, instantly, and throw the book and papers away. They want no tell-tale evidence. It may be the case here—they, likely, didn't examine the letter, just saw it was a letter and ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... of it even if he could. The man of social enthusiasm is to him an annoyance and an affront. He does not like to hear him talk and considers him per se "unsafe." Such a business man would admit, as an abstract proposition, that society is susceptible of modification and would even agree that all human institutions imply progressive development, but at the same time he deeply distrusts those who seek to reform existing conditions. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... be read by all who believe themselves capable of abstract thought, if they would not fall under the judgment of Turgot, which Emerson quotes: "He that has never doubted the existence of matter may be assured he has no aptitude for metaphysical inquiries." The most essential ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the movement were now intelligibly and clearly settled. Guert was to head a party provided with large clothes-baskets, who were to enter the kitchen, during Doortje's absence, and abstract the dishes, which could not yet be served, as all in Albany, of a certain class, sat down to supper at nine precisely. As for Doortje, a negro who was in the house, in waiting on one of the guests, his ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... admits that a false step has been taken, to face the obloquy and sneers sure to attend upon any proposal to retrace it. However, the repealing measure was proposed and carried, Shelburne supporting the ministers with all his might, though, doubting as he did even the abstract right of England to tax her colonies, he with only four other peers divided the House against them on the question of the well-known declaratory resolution. Sic vos non vobis. Though the Rockingham administration repealed the Stamp Act, it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... attendant who had nursed her during her long illness. Her friends agreed not to have communication with her of any sort. It is needless to give the details of the treatment in this and the following cases. A mere abstract will suffice to indicate the rapid ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... say that it forms a photographic picture of the object; for there can be no photographing taste or smell or feeling; but it forms an image of some kind which it presents to the intellect. This power at once proceeds to form, not a brain-picture, but an intellectual or abstract image of the object presented. For instance, you see this book, and at once you, in some mysterious way which has never yet been explained, impress some image of it on your brain. That you do so is clear from the fact that the image remains ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... be one of the later writings of Plato, in which the style has begun to alter, and the dramatic and poetical element has become subordinate to the speculative and philosophical. In the development of abstract thought great advances have been made on the Protagoras or the Phaedrus, and even on the Republic. But there is a corresponding diminution of artistic skill, a want of character in the persons, a laboured march in the dialogue, and a degree of confusion and incompleteness ...
— Philebus • Plato
... concrete materials for inquiry. Indeed, it holds true, by and large, that nothing else than this German-dynastic complement of ways and means has, or can effectually, come under their observation in such a degree of intimacy as to give body and definition to the somewhat abstract theorems on cultural aims and national preconceptions that have come to them from outside. In short, they have borrowed these theoretical formulations from abroad, without the concrete apparatus of ways and ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... directed to a proper object, is followed by delight. The sense delights in the object perceived through its abstract similitude, either by reason of its beauty, as in vision, or by reason of its sweetness, as in smell and hearing, or by reason of its healthfulness, as in taste and touch, properly speaking. But all delight is by reason of proportion. But since species is the ground of form, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... hundred years, becomes, in its turn, an acquired right, is not explained in the address to which we allude. The principal fault to be found with such reasoning as this of the Prussian Conservatives, is that it is altogether too vague and abstract. There can be no development without something new; there can be, in social affairs, nothing new without some sort of innovation. Innovation, as such, can therefore not be condemned without condemning development. Moreover, development, as the organic growth of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various |
