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Abstract   Listen
noun
Abstract  n.  
1.
That which comprises or concentrates in itself the essential qualities of a larger thing or of several things. Specifically: A summary or an epitome, as of a treatise or book, or of a statement; a brief. "An abstract of every treatise he had read." "Man, the abstract Of all perfection, which the workmanship Of Heaven hath modeled."
2.
A state of separation from other things; as, to consider a subject in the abstract, or apart from other associated things.
3.
An abstract term. "The concretes "father" and "son" have, or might have, the abstracts "paternity" and "filiety.""
4.
(Med.) A powdered solid extract of a vegetable substance mixed with lactose in such proportion that one part of the abstract represents two parts of the original substance.
Abstract of title (Law), a document which provides a summary of the history of ownership of a parcel of real estate, including the conveyances and mortgages; also called brief of title.
Synonyms: Abridgment; compendium; epitome; synopsis. See Abridgment.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Abstract" Quotes from Famous Books



... intellect—the supreme satisfaction that comes through thinking. This is the pure Platonic philosophy: to find our gratifications in exalted thought and not in bodily indulgence. Plato's theory that five years should be given in early manhood to abstract thought, abstaining from all practical affairs, so as to acquire a love for learning, has been grafted upon a theological stalk and comes down to our present time. It has, however, now been discarded by the world's best thinkers as a fallacy. The unit of man's life is the day, not the month or ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... mankind in the abstract, Miss Mabel McKee, in "A Gift from the City", presents a concrete example of the workings of the human heart. Her subject and treatment are not startlingly original, but such themes lose very little when repeated in pure English and ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... I would add one consideration of rather an abstract character. When our Saviour died on the cross, why did He not revive at once? Instead of that we know that He waited until the third day. I have no doubt that one reason was, that He intended that all believers in Him might have a ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio

... a little too large for assurance on this idea. I felt an impatience to see it opened. About eleven, as nothing seemed happening, I walked back, full of such thought, to my home in Maybury. But I found it difficult to get to work upon my abstract investigations. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... as that the mysterious doctrines were mere sets of words, over which it was superfluous to quarrel. The doctrine was essentially traditional; for it was impossible to represent the doctrines of the church of England as deductions from any abstract philosophy. But the traditions were not regarded as having any mysterious authority. Abstract philosophy might lead to deism or infidelity. Paley and his like rejected such philosophy in the spirit of Locke or even Hume. But it was always possible to treat a tradition like any other statement of ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... given to them in a direct and simple form, and perhaps there is nothing that has less influence upon them in the formation of their characters than advice so given. And there is good reason for this; for either the advice must be general, and of course more or less abstract, when it is necessarily in a great measure lost upon them, since their powers of generalization and abstraction are not yet developed; or else, if it is practical and particular at all, it must be so with reference to their own daily experience in life—in which case it becomes ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... Halle. "He spent many hours with us," said Spangenberg {1773.}. "He expounded his views, and we heard him to the end. In reply we told him our convictions, and then we parted in peace from each other." When Semler published his "Abstract of Church History," he sent a copy to Spangenberg; and Spangenberg returned the compliment by sending him the latest volume of his "Life of Zinzendorf." At these friendly meetings with learned men the Brethren never argued. Their method was different. It was the ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... as in the case of the child who tries to draw what he sees, there is a continuous reciprocal action between perception and expression, in virtue of which each in turn helps forward the evolution of the other. Even in so abstract and impersonal a subject as mathematics, the reaction of expression on perception is strong and salutary. The student who wishes to master a difficult piece of bookwork should try to write it out in his own words; ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... pleasure, nor was it pain, but a chilliness of soul which proceeded from the gloomy and severe task that I had undertaken—a task which, when I considered the danger and the advantages annexed to its performance, was sufficient to abstract me from every other object. It was really the first exercise of that jealous spirit of mistaken devotion which keeps the soul in perpetual sickness, and invests the innocent enjoyments of life with a character of sin and severity. It was this gloomy feeling that could alone have ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... papers relating to the Loyalists in the Canadian Archives there is an abstract of the numbers of the settlers in the five townships at Cataraqui and the eight townships on the St Lawrence. There were altogether 1,568 men, 626 women, 1,492 children, and 90 servants, making a total of 3,776 persons. These were, of course, only the original settlers. ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... moved along under the line as an aid to the vision. The special verse in the Book of Ruth was sought out by Bathsheba, and the sublime words met her eye. They slightly thrilled and abashed her. It was Wisdom in the abstract facing Folly in the concrete. Folly in the concrete blushed, persisted in her intention, and placed the key on the book. A rusty patch immediately upon the verse, caused by previous pressure of an iron substance thereon, told that this was not the first time the ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... admiration, his short but brilliant career, we shall have incessant occasion to remember the laws which regulated its march—laws ever-acting and eternal, and no less apparent to the eye of enlightened criticism, than are the mighty physical influences which guide the planets in their course, to the abstract reason ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... speak of some one but of some thing? Our neighbours, the English, have well succeeded in making of it a special division of literature under the modest title of "Essays." It is true that in writing of such subjects, always slightly abstract and moral, it is advisable to speak of them in a season of quiet, to make sure of our own attention and of that of others, to seize one of those moments of calm moderation and leisure seldom granted our amiable France; even when she is desirous of being ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... short but energetic. At intervals the combatants would cling affectionately to one another, and on these occasions the red-jerseyed man, still chewing gum and still wearing the same air of being lost in abstract thought, would split up the mass by the simple method of ploughing his way between the pair. Toward the end of the first round Thomas, eluding a left swing, put Patrick neatly to the floor, where the latter remained ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... Praise her who list, yet he shall be a debtor For Art ne're feigned, nor Nature fram'd a better. Her virtues were so great, that they do raise A work to trouble fame, astonish praise. When as her Name doth but salute the ear, Men think that they perfections abstract hear. Her breast was a brave Pallace, a Broad-street, Where all heroick ample thoughts did meet, Where nature such a Tenement had tane, That others Souls, to hers, dwelt in a lane. Beneath her feet, pale envy bites her chain, And poison Malice, whetts her sting in vain. Let every ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... not allow this little preliminary apology to stray into the field of abstract aesthetics. The subject proposed to me, the correlation of the progress of specifically musical thought during the last generation with the progress of European thought in general, is so extensive that I cannot within the necessary limits attempt to deal with ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... she, when, from things particular, She doth abstract the universal kinds, Which bodiless and immaterial are, And can be only lodged ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... sometimes irresistible appeals to the feelings, with unexceptionable sentiments. Though the present work may not equal his former efforts, many of the poems possess a native elegance, natural and unaffected, totally devoid of the tinsel embellishments and abstract hyperboles of several contemporary sonneteers. The last sonnet in the first volume, p. 152, is perhaps the best, without any novelty in the sentiments, which we hope are common to every Briton at the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... soldiers liked her; and there was little trouble in her wards. The war moved her in simple ways; for she was patriotic in the direct fashion of her class. Her father had been a sailor, her husbands an official and a soldier; the issue for her was uncomplicated by any abstract meditation. The Country before everything! And though she had tended during those two years so many young wrecked bodies, she had taken it as all in the a day's work, lavishing her sympathy on the individual, without much general sense of pity and waste. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... that fanatical spirit by which it appears the reformers were frequently actuated. Perhaps the people were not disposed to relish a jest on that side: perhaps the greater simplicity and the more spiritual abstract worship of the Protestants gave less hold to ridicule, which is commonly founded on sensible representations. It was, therefore, a very agreeable concession which the king made to the Catholic party, to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... reason given for this is, that if the warriors eat the flesh of deer, they become as faint-hearted as that animal. These may be called their superstitions, but religion they have none; and though they know a name for God, and entertain some faint notion of a future state, yet it is only in the abstract, for practically the belief seems to be a dead letter. At their marriage they kill fowls, as I have narrated; but this is a ceremony, not a sacrifice. They have no priests or idols, say no prayers, make ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... dressing-table, and such baggage as we had imagined necessary for our comfort, piled around the tent-pole,—this by way of precaution, lest some misguided hand should be tempted to slip under the canvas at night and abstract an unconsidered trifle lying near the edge ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... order in which you will proceed—do not shift backward and forward from near to far, remote to close in time, general to particular, large to small, important to unimportant, concrete to abstract, physical to mental; but follow your chosen order. Scattered and shifting observations produce hazy impressions just as a moving camera ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... necessary to state these particulars, in order to show how thoroughly he lived uninfluenced by the high motives which are at once the inspiration and the happiness of all good men—how madly he rested on the conviction that religion is an abstract matter, and has nothing more to do with life and conduct than any other abstruse branch of metaphysics. But in spite of this unsound state of things, the gentleman possessed all the showy surface-virtues that go so very far towards eliciting the favourable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... and government of the United States. As the whole force of the people in each of the Rebel communities was engaged in this work, the whole of the people were rebels and public enemies. Nothing was left, in each case, but an abstract State, without any external body, and as destitute of people having a right to enjoy the privileges of the Constitution as if the territory had been swept clean of population by a pestilence. It is, then, only this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands To some God of Abstract ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... the ninth, the tenth centuries, when only the brief age of Charlemagne offered any chance of an independent and progressive Catholic Empire in the west, the Arabs became recognised along with the Byzantines as the main successors of Greek culture. The science, the metaphysic, the abstract ideas of these centuries came into Germany, France, and Italy from Cordova and from Bagdad, as much as from Byzantium. And on questions like the South Atlantic or Indian Ocean, or the shape of Africa,—where Islam had all the field to itself, and there was ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... omnipotence of God. But power even of the supremest kind necessarily implies an object—that is to say, resistance. Without an object which resists it, it would be a blank, and what, then, is the meaning of omnipotence? It is not that it is merely inconceivable; it is nonsense, and so are all these abstract, illimitable, self-annihilative attributes of ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... their application in the commoner problems of gardening. Every paragraph is short, terse and to the point, giving perfect clearness to the discussions at all points. In spite of the natural difficulty of presenting abstract principles the whole matter is made entirely plain even to the inexperienced reader. ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones

... about 1 inch in height, shortly before the protrusion of the leaves, were first traced. They were illuminated exclusively from above; for, as will hereafter be shown, they are excessively sensitive to the * We are indebted to the Rev. G. Henslow for an abstract of the views which have been held on this subject, together with ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... creed. True to yesterday, it will be faithful of to-morrow; for, in the evolution of humanity, not necessarily the turn of a wheel upward, certain qualities have remained at the center, undisturbed. And, of these, none is more fixed than an abstract love. ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... you what is Latin for Constitution, will not make you a particle the wiser; I will, therefore, explain it in the vernacular tongue.—Constitution then, in its primary, abstract, and true signification, is a concatenation or coacervation of simple, distinct parts, of various qualities or properties, united, compounded, or constituted in such a manner, as to form or compose a system ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low

... review of diseases discussed in the Compendium by an abstract of Gilbert's views on vesical calculus and its treatment, which cover more than fifteen pages of ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... gallery of the church on Commencement Day, and heard the speeches. It was very hot, and the speeches were not exactly interesting, being on such subjects as "The Influence of a Republic on Men of Letters," and "The Abstract Law of Justice, as applied to Human Affairs;" but the music, and the crowd, and the spectacle of six hundred ladies all fanning themselves at once, were entertaining, and the girls would not have missed them for the world. Later in the day another diversion was ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge

... latter applied it to political science and jurisprudence. The numerous Works of Gioja are distinguished for their practical value and clearness of style, though they lack eloquence and purity; those of Romagnosi are more abstract, and couched in obscure arid often incorrect language, but they are monuments of vast erudition, acute and profound judgment, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... of importance not cleared up was that which related to the opening of the casket,—the disappearance of the contents; the lock had been unquestionably forced. No one, however, could suppose that some third person had discovered the hiding-place and forced open the casket to abstract its contents and then rebury it. The only probable supposition was that the man himself had forced it open, and, deeming the contents of no value, had thrown them away before he had hidden the casket and purse, and, in the chaos of his reason, had forgotten that he had so done. Who could ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... light and elegant country-house in the half-timbered Gothic style of the late revival, apparently only a few years old. Surprised at finding himself so near, Christopher's heart fluttered unmanageably till he had taken an abstract view of his position, and, in impatience at his want of nerve, adopted a sombre train of reasoning to convince himself that, far from indulgence in the passion of love bringing bliss, it was a folly, leading to grief and disquiet—certainly one which would do him no good. Cooled ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... being presented with the freedom of the Worshipful Company of Turners, gave an address from which the following is an abstract:— ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe

... is: Towards whom are you to cultivate goodwill? Naturally, one would answer: Towards the whole of humanity. But the whole of humanity, as far as you are concerned, amounts to naught but a magnificent abstract conception. And it is very difficult to cultivate goodwill towards a magnificent abstract conception. The object of goodwill ought to be clearly defined, and very visible to the physical eye, especially in ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett

... friend, Helen Walder, ideally beautiful and day dreaming of the emancipation of woman, she had parted. Helen went to Paris to study science. Janina had no desire to go, for she didn't feel the need of any knowledge of an abstract nature. She yearned for something that would exert a more potent influence upon her temperament something that would absorb her ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... instruments is, secondarily, in their aid to abstract sciences. The degree in which the multiplication of such instruments should be encouraged, so as to make them, if large, easy of access to numbers (as costly telescopes), or so cheap as that they might, in a serviceable form, become a common part of the furniture of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Passive Participle in combination with a noun is sometimes equivalent to an abstract noun with ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett

... because he was able to give his narrative the reality of a travel-book instead of the insubstantial quality of a dream. He leaves the reader with the feeling that he is moving among real places and real people. As for the people, Bunyan can give even an abstract virtue—still more, an abstract vice—the skin and bones of a man. A recent critic has said disparagingly that Bunyan would have called Hamlet Mr. Facing-both-ways. As a matter of fact, Bunyan's secret ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... directions. One branch of it, without the masters, 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 all time ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various

... his best imitators; but when his works are compared with those of the great master, or with the masterpieces of the fifteenth century, we see a decline in them. In religious subjects Giovanni was not at home; his most successful works were those which represented sentiment or abstract ideas, because on them he could lavish his skill in execution, and use ornaments that did not suit the simplicity of religious subjects. In the Loggia de' Lanzi, at Florence, there are two groups by him, the Rape of the Sabines and Hercules and Nessus. ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... in order to establish herself securely in her argument, for, though she could by no stretch of the imagination regard her mind as of a meditative cast, there are hours when even to the most flippant experience wears the borrowed mantle of philosophy. Abstract theories of conduct diverted her but little; what she wanted was some practical explanation of the mental weariness she felt. What she wanted, she repeated, as if to drive in the matter with a final ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... to give this petition and the answers in full, but as all the subsequent troubles between Charles and the people of England arose out of this difficulty of his young wife's bringing in so strong a Catholic influence with her to the realm, it may be well to give an abstract of some of the principal petitions, ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... Parliamentary and the Party arena; and, if I may say so, it brings them into the most unpleasant part of Parliamentary and political work—that part which is concerned with raising the taxation for each year. It is very easy to talk about preference in the abstract and in general terms, and very many pleasant things can be said about mutual profits and the good feeling which accrues from commercial intercourse. But in regard to preference, as in regard to all other tariff questions, the discussion cannot possibly ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... high-school students, college students, and specialists in psychology averaging middle age. Almost without exception it was found that clear and vivid images played a smaller part in the thinking of the older group than of the younger. More or less abstract ideas and concepts seemed to have taken the place of the concrete imagery ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... really remarkable development of freedom of thought. The proposition was regarded by some with horror and by others with contempt. One of the most enlightened statesmen in Spain once said to me, "The provision for freedom of worship in the constitution is a mere abstract proposition,—it can never have any practical value except for foreigners. I cannot conceive of a Spaniard being anything but a Catholic." And so powerful was this impression in the minds of the deputies that the article ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... adequate to that strife. Had he been a Papist he might have turned with hope, even with pious confidence, to the Holy Stoup, the Bell and Book and Candle, to the Relics, and hundred Exorcisms of his Church. But the colder and more abstract faith of Calvin, while it admitted the possibility of such possessions, supplied no weapons ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... 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 he disguised the fact, he had a strong distaste; ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... mentioned five times to where they are once. And I would not criticize this if Mrs. Eddy had but regarded Jesus as simply a great man in history and "God" as an abstract term referring to the Supreme Intelligence in Nature. But to her, God and Jesus were persons who dictated books, and very frequently she was careful to explain that her method of healing was exactly the same as that practised by Jesus. Side by ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... in Christian countries. The lowest servant of the establishment may be trusted with money, which will be faithfully appropriated to the purpose for which it was intended, but certainly they entertain little or no respect for abstract truth. ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... enough. Unfortunately the subjects were generally either hopelessly threadbare or possessed no bearing upon real life. "We are learning," says Seneca, "not for life, but for the school." The only novelty which could be given to the treatment of old abstract themes or puerile questions was novelty of phrase, and the one great mark of the literature of this time is therefore the pursuit of the striking expression, of something epigrammatic or glittering. A speech was judged by its purple patches of rhetoric, not by the soundness of its thoughts. ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... open door, watching the movements of Thor (the raven), whose depredatory proclivities were well known to the dog. Thor, perfectly aware that a detective's eye was upon him, did not venture to abstract any of the wreckage, but assumed an air of careless curiosity as he hopped about ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... formation of a cell, the germination of a seed, the coming true of a plant, whether from a fruit or from a cutting: in a word, for any and all those hourly and momentary miracles which were attributed of old to some Vis Formatrix of nature; and are now attributed to some other abstract formula, as they will be to some fresh one, and to a dozen more, before the century is out; because the more accurately and deeply they are investigated, the more ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... hereafter;... will render it necessary for Congress to give me the authority to run the line as we claim it, by our own people, without any further regard to the attitude of England and Canada. If I paid attention to mere abstract rights, that is the position I ought to take anyhow. I have not taken it because I wish to exhaust every effort to have the affair settled peacefully and with ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister

... justice" of the claim that Germany pay the entire cost of the war; Italians were convinced that he would sanction their "just" demand for the annexation of Fiume. So long as Justice remained something abstract his popularity remained secure. Could he retain it when concrete issues arose? As early as the beginning of January ebullitions of approval became less frequent. Discordant voices were audible suggesting ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... exposition we have seen of the rise and history of the abstract Darwinian theories, combined with a critical explanation of their practical ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

... savagely. Not that the abstract fact of the bells ringing was of any moment to him, but he was in a mood to be angry with everything. "Here, you!" continued he, seizing hold of a boy who was running by, "what be ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... universal Church. The defenders of the French kingship formed a better estimate than was formed at Rome of the effect which would be produced by such doctrine on France, in the existing condition of the French mind; they entered upon no theological and abstract polemics; they confined themselves entirely to setting in a vivid light the pope's pretensions and their consequences, feeling sure that, by confining themselves to this question, they would enlist in their opposition not only all laymen, nobles, and commoners, but the greater part of the French ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... too bad, Crow," said Anne. "You take it for granted that Hector has the most dishonorable intentions towards Mrs. Brown. He may worship her quite in the abstract." ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... the meadows down the stream were empty of human beings; and as for the wood, there would be no one but his own keeper in the wood. Doubtless that keeper would, from the abstract point of view, regard poaching with abhorrence. But he would perceive that his master was doing a real kindness to the Glazebrook trout by giving them that chance of making a sportsman-like end. At any rate the keeper would ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... Why sing of these? Nor would I rank with Sam that man who went Down into Aetna's womb—Empedocles, I think he called himself. Themselves to please, Or else unwillingly, they made their springs; For glory in the abstract, Sam made his, To prove to all men, commons, lords, and kings, That "some things may be done, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... the tropics. The bag burst and spilled the priceless brown mass of the ground berries among the dense vines and weeds of the swampy land. Mala suerte! When you take away from an Esperandan his coffee, you abstract his patriotism and 50 per cent. of his value as a soldier. The men began to rake up the precious stuff; but I beckoned Kearny back along the trail where they would not hear. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... it is all one steady rush of work from March to November; unceasing, uncomplaining activity for the barest support, followed by three months of hibernation and caring for the cattle. Horace Greeley said: "If our most energetic farmers would abstract ten hours each per week from their incessant drudgery and devote them to reading and reflection in regard to their noble calling, they would live to a better purpose and bequeath ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn

... lower mental and astral worlds. When he wishes to descend he draws around himself a veil of the matter of the lower mental world, which we call his mental body. This is the instrument by means of which he thinks all his concrete thoughts—abstract thought being a power of the ego himself ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater

... class and of a type that awoke his disapproval. To a youth of his training and of his worldly experience the genus woman is divided into two species—old women and young women. The former are interesting only in a motherly way, and demand nothing more than abstract courtesy. They do not matter. The latter, on the contrary, separate themselves again into two families or suborders—viz., good women and bad women. The demarcation between the two branches of the suborder is distinct; there is nothing common to the two. Good women are good through ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... ("Seven Lamps," iv. 13). All I can say is I have enjoyed studying it. Mr. Edward Bell also sends me the following: "We have a familiar instance in the flower-work of St. Paul's, which is probably, in the abstract, as perfect flower sculpture as could be produced at the time; and which is just as rational an ornament of the building as so many valuable Van Huysums, framed and glazed, and hung up over each window" ("Stones of Venice," I., xxi. 3). In my humble opinion ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock

... "It is abstract commerce," said Claparon,—"commerce which won't be developed for ten years to come, according to Nucingen, the Napoleon of finance; commerce by which a man can grasp the totality of fractions, and skim the profits before there are any. Gigantic idea! one way of pouring hope into pint cups,—in ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... In the Word "little children" signify innocence (n. 5608); likewise "sucklings" (n. 3183). An "old man" signifies one who is wise, and in an abstract sense wisdom (n. 3183, 6524). Man is so created that in proportion as he verges towards old age he may become like a little child, and that innocence may then be in his wisdom, and in that state he may pass into heaven and become an ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... no abstract hatred to monarchy that I have dwelt with emphasis upon the crimes of this king, and upon the vices of the despotic system, as illustrated during his lifetime. It is not probable that the military, monarchical system—founded upon conquests ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... either to his own or any 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 educes good ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur

... but marvelously enough to his inexperienced hearers, the impulse given to Nature by the Almighty. Supported by many texts from the Sacred Scriptures, which he used as a commentary on his own statements to express by concrete images the abstract arguments he felt to be wanting, he flourished the Spirit of God like a torch over the deep secrets of creation, with an eloquence peculiar to himself, and accents that urged conviction on his audience. As he unfolded his ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac

... of abstract volition. I could not take them off. They were held by some terrible fascination; and I felt, or fancied, that the moment this should be broken, the animal ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... Roman tribune, being composed of heterogeneous scraps of ancient marble, patched up with barbarous brick pilasters of his own age; affording an apt exemplification of his own character, in which piecemeal fragments of Roman virtue, and attachment to feudal state—abstract love of liberty, and practice of tyranny—formed as incongruous ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various

... and perjury, that were ever witnessed in this or any other country on a similar occasion. The whole number of votes polled was forty-one thousand three hundred. It is a notorious fact, that there are not forty thousand legal voters residing in the city. In the abstract this election is but of little importance. Its moral influence on other sections of the country remains to be seen. Generally, the effect of such a triumph is unfavourable to the defeated party in other places; and it would be so in the present instance, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... I knew him and liked him, and because he had shown himself no partisan of either side in the civil war, though he was known to be inclined, in the way of abstract opinion, toward a form of government that was not monarchy, the commissioners appointed in 1646 to bring Charles from Newcastle named Harrington as one of the King's attendants. The King was pleased, and Harrington was appointed a groom of the bedchamber at Holmby. He followed faithfully ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... out of print. It has been more recently edited by Dr. Bugge, together with Voelsunga and others. Petersen (Copenhagen, 1847) edited it with a Danish translation. Munch's Nordmuendenes Gudelaere (out of print) contains a short abstract. ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday

... in a place where he was in the habit of concealing precious documents, instead of laying it upon the table. Rex was determined to have the chief hand in the examination of what was found, and to abstract and destroy unopened anything which looked like a letter to Greif. He cared little for any justification in pursuing such a course; from what he had learned of old Greifenstein he believed that he would have been capable of telling the plain truth to his son and of enjoining ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... has little conception of duty in the abstract, but old Judd belonged to the better class—and there are many of them—that does. He looked into ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... the abstract doctrine of latent heat, the ingenuity of man has discovered a certain measure for the quantity of those commutable effects which are perceived; and though this be a progress of science far above the apprehension of the vulgar, yet still, that solid bodies are changed into fluids, by ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... one doubts that the speculative movement affects the social and political—I think that less attention has been given to the reciprocal influence. The philosophy of a period is often treated as though it were the product of impartial and abstract investigation—something worked out by the great thinker in his study and developed by simple logical deductions from the positions established by his predecessors. To my mind, though I cannot now dwell upon the point, the philosophy of an age is in itself determined to a very great extent ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... seemed to find 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 justice might be expected. ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... shrieking and caterwauling from embryonic tenori and virtuosi, such as, within a month, would have cured all but the most persistent music-lovers of any further desire for the expression of that abstract art. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... Infinite, and the Absolute, as conveying more exalted notions of the Divine Being. What the exact meaning of those terms is philosophers find it difficult to declare, and the common people are almost wholly unable to understand. Certainly such highly abstract terms convey little distinct meaning. It will be found upon examination, that the word "Infinite," to stir in any degree the depths of our nature, must be combined with some quality with which we are familiar. Infinite ...
— Thoughts on a Revelation • Samuel John Jerram

... purpose is to convey an abstract truth, a something bigger and broader than the mere interesting events described, the illustrations add much to the meaning and purpose of the text. Here the artist shows not only the physical attributes of the real animal, but in a subtle way goes a step further ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... 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 ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... that the vote given at the poll should be effective for some one. My brother David inherited all the Conservatism of the Brodies for generations back. Greatly interested in all abstruse problems and abstract questions he had various schemes for the regeneration of mankind. Two opposing theories concerning the working of bi-cameral Legislatures supplied me with material for a Review article. One theory was ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... you're alive, and twice that the ship works!" he exclaimed. "You've been gone four hours, eleven minutes, and forty-one seconds, but never mind about abstract theorizing. Get back here, to Pittsburgh, as fast as you can drive. That Nevian vessel or another like her is mopping up the city, and has destroyed half the ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... at bottom, regards himself as a Louis XIV, and expressly invites the Jacobins to imitate the haughty ways of the Great Monarch.[2352]—To the tactlessness of the intruder, and the touchiness of the parvenu, we can add the rigidity of the sectarian. The Jacobins, in the name of abstract rights, deny historic rights; they impose from above, and by force, that truth of which they are the apostles, and allow themselves every provocation which they ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... not hope to be entirely exempt from such attempts on our peace and safety. The United States are becoming too important in population and resources not to attract the observation of other nations. It therefore may in the progress of time occur that opinions entirely abstract in the States which they may prevail and in no degree affecting their domestic institutions may be artfully but secretly encouraged with a view to undermine the Union. Such opinions may become the foundation of political parties, until at last the conflict of opinion, producing an alienation of friendly ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler

... hair may end in a murder, after a year's forcing by the law. The mere fact that it is impossible to get reliable evidence in the island—not because the people are dishonest, but because they think the claim of kinship more sacred than the claims of abstract truth—turns the whole system of sworn evidence into a demoralising farce, and it is easy to believe that law dealings on this false basis must lead to ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... saved them—abstract music. His voice is wonderful. His hearing is quick. Rayel knows words but not speech. His mind has command of my knowledge. He has never seen the world, but he knows about it. I tried to begin my life anew and to forget the past. But I could not wholly cleanse my mind of it. ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller

... give prominence to the feeling. Andersen's tales reflect what is elementary in human nature, childlike fancy, and emotion. His speech is characterized by the simplest words and conceptions, an avoidance of the abstract, the use of direct language, and a naive poetic expression adapted to general comprehension. He is not to be equaled in child conversations. The world of the fairy tale must be simple like the world Andersen has given us. It must ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready

... the reverse. The novels and poems come unwatched out of one's pen. And then the absolute need which one has for some sort of satisfactory mental attitude towards oneself and things in general makes one try to abstract some definite conclusions from one's experiences as a writer and as a man. The novels and poems are pure passionate experience. These "pollyanalytics" are inferences made ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... Boswell's attention to the old man smoothed all difficulties,—'looking on the tour as a co-partnership between Dr Johnson and myself,' he did his part faithfully, dancing reels, singing songs, and airing the scraps of Gaelic he picked up, thinking all this better than 'to play the abstract scholar.' ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... heart-burnings were at the highest, there flourished in the city of London an ingenious but whimsical and self opinioned mechanic, much devoted to abstract studies, David Ramsay by name, who, whether recommended by his great skill in his profession, as the courtiers alleged, or, as was murmured among the neighbours, by his birthplace, in the good town of Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, held in James's household the post ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... Him, is no cold or remote Being, no abstract Principle-of-All-Things, reposing aloof and impersonal in the stillness of an eternal calm. He is rather the boundless energy of an eternal Life—"no motionless eternity of perfection, but an overflowing vitality, an inexhaustible fecundity, the everlasting well-spring ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... in your Lordship's presence and hearing, should deliver their opinions whether it be doubtful and disputable or not." Accordingly the Judges delivered their opinion, and each argued it (though they were all agreed) seriatim and in open court. Another abstract point of law was also proposed from the bar, on the same trial, concerning the legal sentence in high treason; and in the same manner the Judges on reference delivered their opinion in open court; and no objection, was taken to it as anything new ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... they have gone over for a week, and then instructing them to prepare answers written out at length, and to bring them in at the next exercise. This method may be made more formal still by requiring a class to write a full and regular abstract of all they have learned during a specified time. The practice of thus reducing to writing what has been learned will be attended with many advantages so obvious that they need ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... prayer, the churches once more roofed in and again made gorgeous by the stately ceremonial of the Catholic rite. In other ways, too, Alaric showed himself anxious to conciliate the favour of his Roman subjects. He ordered an abstract of the Imperial Code to be prepared, and this abstract, under the name of the Breviarium Alaricianum[92] is to this day one of our most valuable sources of information as to Roman Law. He is also said to have directed the construction of the ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... hundred acres of land, with every comfort about him, paying no taxes but those for the improvement of his property, feeling the government rein only as a salutary check to lawlessness, and looking stedfastly abroad, is not very likely, for abstract notions of right and equality, to sacrifice reality, or to suppose that Mr. Baldwin, amiable as he is, is infallible: whilst Mr. Baldwin himself, the ostensible, but not the real leader of the out-and-out reformers, will pause before he even dreams of alienating the country in which he, from ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... to all exciting discussions, and to popular movements generally, while the younger ones could not smother a natural interest in the great reforms of the day; it followed that, although all were opposed to slavery in the abstract, there was no fixed principle of action among them. In their ranks were all sorts: gradualists and immediatists, advocates of unconditional emancipation, and colonizationists, thus making it impossible to discuss the main question without excitement. Therefore all ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... here—commit, as you may perhaps think, an unpardonable insolence. Hindoo thought and Greek thought alike impress me as being overmuch obsessed by an objective treatment of certain necessary preliminary conditions of human thought—number and definition and class and abstract form. But these things, number, definition, class and abstract form, I hold, are merely unavoidable conditions of mental activity—regrettable conditions rather than essential facts. The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... to you once, some time ago, on the abstract grounds of the question we have under discussion. These, being only a wild lily, you did not comprehend. You do not love me, or you would give me my promise fast enough on other grounds. You leave me a very difficult way. You leave me no way but to take measures ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... equal, vertical bands 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, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... of all later forms of the story and is doubtless the one which (as well as the puppet-play on the subject) Goethe used as the ground-plan for his poem, I perhaps cannot do better than give a brief abstract of ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... the thorns of life far more keenly than most people, she was one of those who will never yield; though pricked and wounded by outward events, she would never be conquered by circumstances. At present her capabilities for adoration, which were very great, were lavished in two directions; in the abstract she worshipped intellect, in the concrete she ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... of the Captain made a deep impression upon the men. The desperation of our case, depressed finances, heavy hospital lists, and many other causes, independently of abstract justice, are fast removing that question beyond the ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

... though the furniture was of a humble sort and not over abundant, and the knickknacks and things that go to adorn a living-room not plenty and not costly. But there were natural flowers, and there was an abstract and unclassifiable something about the place which betrayed the presence in the house of somebody with a happy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... mathematicians of modern times. His mother was a French lady, of Huguenot descent, and biographers have been fond of tracing in his character the various qualities of his parents. To the shrewdness and persistence, the administrative ability, and the taste for abstract reasoning which we are wont to find associated in the highest type of Scottish mind he joined a truly French vivacity and grace. His earnestness, sincerity, and moral courage were characteristic alike of Puritan and of Huguenot. In the course of his short life he exhibited a remarkable many-sidedness. ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... give the ideas of St. John, but that it represents a mixture of Greek philosophy with Jewish theology, and that its final form, which one of the most eminent among recent Christian scholars has characterized as "an unhistorical product of abstract reflection," is mainly due to some gifted representative or representatives of the Alexandrian school. Bitter as the resistance to this view has been, it has during the last years of the nineteenth century ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... a volume with incidents attending two other efforts to escape, but I will not weary the reader's patience with too much repetition. I shall merely give an abstract of both. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... as he mentioned the name of Cardinal Wolsey, that he had got the very speech. Not a look or an offer of help had Fanny given; not a syllable for or against. All her attention was for her work. She seemed determined to be interested by nothing else. But taste was too strong in her. She could not abstract her mind five minutes: she was forced to listen; his reading was capital, and her pleasure in good reading extreme. To good reading, however, she had been long used: her uncle read well, her cousins all, Edmund very well, but in Mr. Crawford's reading there was ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... helps you have been pleased to afford me. I find it necessary to consider such very abstruse questions at different times and in different dispositions; and have found particular use of this method upon that abstract subject of Necessity: for tho' I did not see the force of your argument for the unity of the Divine Nature when I had done writing to you upon that subject, I am now fully satisfied that it is conclusive. I will only ...
— Some Remains (hitherto unpublished) of Joseph Butler, LL.D. • Joseph Butler

... way through unknown seas and traces for him in the heavens an unerring path to his appointed haven. And had not mathematicians toiled for so long, and, to uninstructed observers, apparently so fruitlessly, over the abstract relations of lines and surfaces, it is probably that but few of our mechanical inventions would have ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... not the question of actuality in Italy that it is in England," his Eminence replied; "but in the abstract, and other things equal, my attitude would of course be one ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... shirking, more gossip than in the middle of the week. Most of the girls have been to dances on Saturday night, to church on Sunday evening with some young man. Their conversation is vulgar and prosaic; there is nothing in the language they use that suggests an ideal or any conception of the abstract. They make jokes, state facts about the work, tease each other, but in all they say there is not a word of value—nothing that would interest if repeated out of its class. They have none of the sagaciousness ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... an essayist. His critical faculty was pronounced, and he had carefully developed it; and it was possible that when the world had completely palled upon him, he would shut himself up at Crumford Hall and give the public the benefit of his accumulated opinions, abstract and biographical. But he was not ready for that yet; he needed several years more of experience, observation, and assiduous cultivation of the habit of analysis; and in the meantime he was in a condition ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton



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