"Acquirement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the actual want of cultivation," said Mrs. Evelyn, warming;—"time taken up with other things, you know,—usefully and properly, but still taken up,—so as to make much intellectual acquirement and accomplishments impossible; it can't be otherwise, you know,—neither opportunity nor instructors; and I don't think anything can supply the want in after life—it isn't the mere things themselves which may be acquired—the mind should grow up in the atmosphere ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... could boldly draw upon a large fund of acquired knowledge for supplying the expenditure of far-fetched and extravagant images, which their compositions required. The book of Nature is before all men; but when her limits are to be overstepped, the acquirement of adventitious knowledge becomes of paramount necessity; and it was but natural that Cambridge and Oxford should prize a style of poetry, to which depth of learning ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... it in the kitchen, where she is making bread, with the volume of her choice propped up before her; and by the style of the novel jotted down in the rough, almost simultaneously with her reading, we know that to her the study of German was not—like French and music—the mere necessary acquirement of a governess, but an influence that entered her mind and helped to shape the ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... property, but the majority of the Senate Committee on Interoceanic Canals disagreed, and it is only to the courage and rare ability of the late Senator Hanna and his associates, as minority members of the committee, that the nation owes the abandonment of the Nicaraguan project, the acquirement of the Panama Canal rights at a reasonable price and the making of the ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... a true knowledge of the art of painting is by no means an easy acquirement; it is not a natural gift, but demands much reading and study. Many there are, no doubt, who may be able to descant speciously enough, perhaps, on the perfections and defects of a picture; but, on that account alone, they ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... in republics become the origin of the most forceful aristocracies. As a rule commerce enriches the cities and their inhabitants, and increases the laboring and mechanical classes, in opening more opportunities for the acquirement of riches. To an extent it fortifies the democratic element in giving the people of the cities greater influence in the government. It arrives at nearly the same result by impoverishing the peasant and land owner, by the many new pleasures offered him and by displaying ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... place, isn't it, father?" Fred asked, following his father's look and thought from the Morris chair to the student's lamp, and all those other things which nowadays seem an inevitable part of the acquirement of learning. ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... love will be opened in your hearts or what exquisite delight your minds will receive when the secrets of the world will be unfolded to you and ye shall become acquainted with the beauty of the universe—Your souls now growing eager for the acquirement of knowledge will then rest in its possession disengaged from every particle of evil and knowing all things ye will as it were be mingled in the universe & ye will become a part of that celestial ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... private instruction; and it is probable, that inattention to this circumstance is the reason why so few people have distinct notions of natural philosophy. Learning by rote, or even reading repeatedly, definitions of the technical terms of any science, must undoubtedly facilitate its acquirement; but conversation, with the habit of explaining the meaning of words, and the structure of common domestic implements, to children, is the sure and effectual method of preparing the mind for the ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... steadiness of direction. The destruction of the enemy's fleet is the means to obtain naval control; but naval control in itself is only a means, not an object. The object of the campaign, set by the Government, was the acquirement of mastery upon the Niagara peninsula, to the accomplishment of which Brown's army was destined. Naval control would minister thereto, partly by facilitating the re-enforcement and supply of the American army, and, conversely, by ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... at Manassas, and a trained soldier of unusual acquirement, was so hounded and worried by ignorant, impatient politicians and newspapers as to be scarcely responsible for his acts. This may be said of all the commanders in the beginning of the war, and notably of Albert Sidney Johnston, whose early fall on the field of Shiloh was irreparable, and ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... for the adversary to disentangle at a quick rate. These qualities make Mr. Bird one of the most dangerous opponents in "skittle play," or in matches regulated by a fast time limit; but they prove almost antagonistic to the acquirement of excellency as an author on the game. For the first-class analyst is not merely expected to record results, but to judge the causes of success or failure from the strictly scientific point of view, and he has often to supplement with ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... sell their services in the best theatrical markets of the world, which seems to me to be a pretty "useful" sort of a property for one to have in their permanent possession. If I here repeat that frequent practice on the part of the student is necessary for the correct acquirement of Musical Comedy dancing, I am merely stating what is right and necessary that all should understand who desire to make their services in this line of endeavor available for public approval and a corresponding cash return. And this applies to every ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... has its faults of style, to be sure,—principal among which is a tendency to make too much of the scientific investigation and the acquirement of the writer, extending sometimes almost to pedantry in the use of long words and large phrases; but it contains much information that is important and can be found nowhere else except by troublesome comparison of extended treatises, and a deal of plain common-sense that should commend it to attention ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... degree called the "Forest of Pencils," which is open only to members of the Royal Academy, the Hanlin. The acquirement of this degree is the greatest honor to be attained; its possessor is highly esteemed, and may hold the ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... of Sallust, he had obtained the degree of Bachelor of Arts, he travelled abroad, whether at his own charges, or in the company of a son of one of his patrons is not recorded, principally in Germany, Italy, and France, where he applied himself, with an unusual assiduity and success, to the acquirement of the languages spoken in those countries and to the study of their best authors. In the chapter "Of unprofytable Stody," above mentioned, which contains proof how well he at least had profited by study, he cites certain continental ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... suggests the many advantages that accrue from attrition and propinquity. Everybody is stirred to increased endeavor; everybody knows the scheme which will not work, for elimination is a great factor in success; the knowledge that one has is the acquirement of all. Strong men must match themselves against strong men: good wrestlers will need only good wrestlers. And so in a match of wit rivals outclassed go unnoticed, and there is always an effort to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... of some bad translations of Bossuet's admirable works, these establishments put forth nothing of the smallest value. It was indeed impossible for any intelligent and candid Roman Catholic to deny that the champions of his Church were, in every talent and acquirement, completely over-matched. The ablest of them would not, on the other side, have been considered as of the third rate. Many of them, even when they had something to say, knew not how to say it. They had been excluded by their religion from English ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hereditary transmission. Neither of these theories, however, is sufficient to explain the inequalities that we meet with in our everyday life. Those who believe in the one-birth theory, that we have come here for the first and last time, do not understand that the acquirement of wisdom and experience is the purpose of human life; nor can they explain why children who die young should come into existence and pass away without getting the opportunity to learn anything or what purpose is served by their coming thus for a few days, remaining in utter ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... you would forgive obvious evil. One could well pardon his unpleasant features, his strange voice, even his very foppery and grimace, if one found these disadvantages connected with living talent and any spark of genuine goodness. If there is nothing more than acquirement, smartness, and the affectation of philanthropy, Chorley ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... is not to a want of taste or of desire or of disposition to learn that we have to ascribe the rareness of good scholars, so much as to the want of patient perseverance. Grammar is a branch of knowledge; like all other things of high value, it is of difficult acquirement: the study is dry; the subject is intricate; it engages not the passions; and, if the great end be not kept constantly in view; if you lose, for a moment, sight of the ample reward, indifference ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... another, and he says, 'I am Culture, and intellectual acquirement; or my name is Education, and I am going to make the tree good in the most scientific fashion, because what makes men bad is that they do not know, and if they only knew they would do the right.' Now, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the holdings, the value of which has been created by their own intelligent work. In England farmers of this type would assuredly have a lease, and their Irish brethren hold that schemes for the gradual acquirement of land by tenants should be accompanied by the "Three F's," and extended over fifty instead of thirty-five years. The latter plan would, they think, be of little use to the present tenant, as it would practically raise his rent too far, and thus prevent ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... But finding this right of property unprotected and undetermined, the State by its criminal law protects property against robbers, and by its civil as distinguished from criminal law, it defines numerous open questions between possessors as to manner of acquirement and conditions of tenure. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... after life, is here pre-eminent. Adjoining the upper end is another room, called "the library," in which there is not a book, but there is "the block," which speaks volumes; and as a library may, by a little forcing, be defined to be a chamber set apart for the acquirement of learning, this ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... experience concurs in supporting it. We see the mental powers of feeling and of thought unfolding themselves in infancy and youth in exact accordance with the progress of the organization. We see them perverted or suspended by the sudden inroad of disease. We sometimes observe every previous acquirement obliterated from the adult mind by fever or by accident, leaving education to be commenced anew, as if it had never been; and yet, with all these evidences of the organic influence, the proposition that the established laws of physiology, as applied to the brain, should ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... has said that "promptness is a contagious inspiration." Whether it be an inspiration, or an acquirement, it is one of the practical ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... The presence of his friend Brewster in the Wampanoge village, also gave it increased attractions in the eyes of Henrich. The good man was still his friend and preceptor; and with his assistance, he made considerable progress in the acquirement of the native language, as well as in every other kind of knowledge that Brewster was able to impart. But all the elder's instructions were made subservient to that best of all knowledge—the knowledge of God, ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... the eternal Inner. In the simple life, external possessions unnecessary and recognized as vain, the soul would turn within and seek Reality. Only a tiny section of humanity has time to do it now. There is no leisure. Civilization means acquirement for the body: it ought to mean development for the soul. Once sweep aside the trash and rubbish men seek outside themselves today, and the wings of their smothered souls would stir again. Consciousness would expand. Nature ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... the physical. But my history will afford you more instruction than mere advice. Sagestus concurred in opinion with her, observing that the senses of children should be the first object of improvement; then their passions worked on; and judgment the fruit, must be the acquirement of the being itself, when out of leading-strings. The spirit bowed assent, and, without any further prelude, entered ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... which Mynie Boltwood could not understand. He was not ambitious in the acquirement of knowledge, however, and merely did as he was told—and let it ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... history? What if you and I, from the very fact that we are living now, have in the dim groundwork of our nature something that would not have been there had we lived one, three, twelve hundred years ago? What if there be such a thing as cumulative acquirement for the race of men, so that a new generation starts with an available capital of associations and ideas of which the generation last preceding it owned but a part? Take such words as "feudalism," "the Crusades," "the Renaissance," "the printing press," consider how much they mean to us, ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... than any one else, what he wanted to do, and he knows, better than any one else, how nearly he has done it. In judging his own technical skill in the accomplishment of his aim, it is easy for him to be absolutely unbiased, technique being a thing wholly apart from one's self, an acquirement. But, in a poem, the way it is done is by no means everything; something else, the vital element in it, the quality of inspiration, as we rightly call it, has to be determined. Of this the poet is rarely a judge. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... It seemed years instead of weeks at last, and yet as if he had only been truly alive and free since love had made him captive. He could not fasten himself down to his work without great difficulty, though he built many a castle in Spain with his imagined wealth, and laid deep plans of study and acquirement which should be made evident as ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... an only son, born and reared in the midst of that ostentatious greatness which he looked on as his own by divine right; whereas his father remembered that it had chiefly become his by fortuitous acquirement, and much of it by means not likely to look well in the sight of Heaven. This son was Charles, count of Charolois, afterward celebrated under the name of Charles the Rash. He gave, even in the lifetime of his father, a striking specimen of despotism ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... rudiments of the physical and psychological sciences, and a fair knowledge of elementary arithmetic and geometry. He should have obtained an acquaintance with logic rather by example than by precept; while the acquirement of the elements of music and drawing should have been a ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... Lardner of his day,—a man of general scientific acquirement, an indefatigable worker, venturing hazardous predictions, writing some fifteen or twenty volumes upon subjects connected with agriculture, foisting himself into the chair of Botany at Cambridge by noisy reclamation, selling his name to the booksellers for attachment to other ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... practice at the bar are thus ably summed up: "He did not make a specialty of criminal cases, but was engaged frequently in them. He could not be called a great lawyer, measured by the extent of his acquirement of legal knowledge; he was not an encyclopaedia of cases; but in the clear perception of legal principles, with natural capacity to apply them, he had great ability. He was not a case lawyer, but a lawyer who dealt in the deep philosophy of the ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... begets love. I did love and delight in them, and when they died I mourned their loss. Every day brought me new information, which my parents perfected. At length the alphabet was mastered, and afterwards spelling, reading, and so forth. My mind being thus previously filled with ideas, the acquirement of words and abstract terms became less irksome, and I cannot remember that thus far it cost me any trouble, much less pain. Information of every kind fit for childhood then really gave me pleasure. No doubt I am greatly indebted to my parents for their judicious management. My ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... The gradual acquirement of the erect position by the human infant admirably repeats this long phylogenetic evolution.[4] At first the limbs are of almost no use in locomotion, but the fundamental trunk muscles with those that move the large joints are more or less spasmodically ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... No! Common sense, the acquirement of forty years, supervened, and informed her wild heart, with all the cold arrogance of sagacity, that these imaginings were vain. She felt that she must write a brief and firm letter to Arthur and tell him to desist. She saw with extraordinary ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... I high: from me descend The Philips and the Louis, of whom France Newly is govern'd; born of one, who ply'd The slaughterer's trade at Paris. When the race Of ancient kings had vanish'd (all save one Wrapt up in sable weeds) within my gripe I found the reins of empire, and such powers Of new acquirement, with full store of friends, That soon the widow'd circlet of the crown Was girt upon the temples of my son, He, from whose bones th' anointed race begins. Till the great dower of Provence had remov'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Such studies of ivied rocks and twisted roots! A little stream tinkled lonely through the hollow. Poor Milly! In her odd way she made herself companionable. I have sometimes fancied an enjoyment of natural scenery not so much a faculty as an acquirement. It is so exquisite in the instructed, so strangely absent in uneducated humanity. But certainly with Milly it was inborn and hearty; and so she could enter into my ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... greatest works. For by a strange yet not unprecedented contradiction, David's fame to-day rests, not upon the great classical pictures which were the admiration of his time and by which he thought to be remembered, but on the portraits which, with his mastery of technical acquirement, he painted with surprising ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... are informed that during the course of his attendance at the University, he gave ample evidence of both genius and industry, by the rapid growth and development of mental power, and the equally rapid acquirement of extensive learning, in both of which respects he surpassed his fellow-students. That this must have been the case, his future eminence, so early achieved, sufficiently proves; but nothing of a very definite nature, relating to that period, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... quickness of mastery as the Maid showed, both in her acquirement of horsemanship and in the use of arms, in both of which arts we instructed her day by day. I had noted her strength and suppleness of limb the very first day I had seen her; and she gave marvellous proof of it now. She possessed also that power ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... kept by Captain Glazier during his horseback ride from ocean to ocean, we shall gather most of the incidents of his journey—a journey, so far as we are aware, without any precedent, and having for its sole object the acquirement of knowledge. His intention was to lecture in the leading cities and villages through which he passed, in the interest of the relief fund of the "Grand Army of the Republic," to which order he was ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... dogmatism, and Hodder's own opinions on such matters were now in a strange and unsettled state. Mr. Parr liked best to talk of his treasures, and of the circumstances during his trips abroad that had led to their acquirement. Once the banker had asked him ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Europe. A fine person,—the accomplishments of his time in literature and the arts,—the display of gorgeous prodigality,—raised him to a sort of chivalrous rivalry with Francis I. In mental culture he excelled George IV., who owes much of his reputation for capacity and acquirement to an imposing manner, and the eagerness to applaud a prince: stripped of this charm, his ideas and language appeared worse than common when he put them on paper. Both had the same dominant ambition to be distinguished ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... only a random thought; I didn't expect you to understand it. How did you get your English; is it an acquirement, or just ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Beaubocage gave her nieces much valuable advice against the time when they should be old enough to assume the management of their father's house. The sweet unselfish lady of Beaubocage had indeed undergone hard experience in the acquirement of the domestic art. Heaven and her own memory alone recorded those scrapings and pinchings and nice calculations of morsels by which she had contrived to save a few pounds for her outcast brother. Such sordid economics show but poorly on earth; but it is probable ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Tibetan Buddhism, already spread to some extent among them, the readiest means of civilising his countrymen. But he may have been quite sincere in saying what is here ascribed to him in this sense, viz.: that if the Latin Church, with its superiority of character and acquirement, had come to his aid as he had once requested, he would gladly have used its missionaries as his civilising instruments instead of the Lamas and their trumpery. (Rubr. 313; Assemani, III. pt. ii. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... acutely observant of the things that interested him, but reluctant to proceed with studies which, in his eyes, seemed to have nothing to recommend them. Books possessed no attraction for him, although he knew his alphabet and could even read imperfectly. The acquirement of book-learning he found a dull and dolorous business, to which he was driven only by the threats or entreaties of his parents, who showed some concern lest he should become ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... acquirement of this horizontal speed, even in commencing flight, that most heavy birds, when possible, rise against the wind, and even run at the top of their speed to make their wings available, as in the example of the eagle, mentioned ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... cycles, it is true, taking the Red Branch heroes for contemporaries of the Fianna, which is much as if one should make Heracles meet Odysseus or Achilles in battle; but he had these earlier legends by heart, a rare acquirement ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... experience of the actual ideas, feelings, and intellectual and moral tendencies of his own country and of his own age. The true practical statesman is he who combines this experience with a profound knowledge of abstract political philosophy. Either acquirement, without the other, leaves him lame and impotent if he is sensible of the deficiency; renders him obstinate and presumptuous if, as is more probable, he is ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... once said of Longfellow: "Mr. Longfellow is not a scholar in the German sense of the word—that is to say, he is no pedant, but he certainly is a scholar in another and perhaps a higher sense. I mean in range of acquirement and the flavor that comes with it." Those words might have been written of himself. It is sixty-five years since Lowell was appointed to his professorship at Harvard, and during this long period erudition has not been idle here. It is quite possible that the ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... suppose that the ordinary boy of the upper classes went to school, under the care of a paedagogus, after the Greek fashion, rising before daylight, and submitting to severe discipline, which, together with the absolute necessity for a free Roman of attaining a certain level of acquirement, effectually compelled him to learn to read, write, and cipher.[274] This elementary work must have been done well; we hear little or nothing of gross ignorance or ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic. Of all these varied cases, however, I cannot recall any which presented more singular ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... strength and energy, with none but natural grace, and heartfelt unobtrusive delicacy. They were not at all sophisticated. The mind of their country was great in them, and it prevailed. With their learning and unexampled acquirement, they did not forget that they were men: with all their endeavours after excellence, they did not lay aside the strong original bent and character of their minds. What they performed was chiefly nature's handy-work; and time has claimed it for his own.—To these, however, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... name of fleeting, dreaming, vaporing imagery. Yet it is nothing. We exist in eternity. Dissolve the body and the night is gone; the stars are extinguished, and we measure duration by the number of our thoughts, by the activity of reason, the discovery of truths, the acquirement of virtue, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in the food crops, which are more evidently their own. I let them go ahead very much as they choose; I make regulations for the good of all, as in the matter of carts, oxen, etc., but the minutiae I do not meddle with, except as a matter of curiosity and acquirement of knowledge. They work well, some of them harder than in the old time; the lazy ones are stimulated to exertion for their own benefit, the ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... with a judiciousness which proved the existence of a deliberate purpose, of some duty which awaited him on the other side of the water, a duty which would explain his long exile from his only parent and for which he must fit himself by study and the acquirement of such accomplishments as render a young man a positive power in society, whether that society be of the Old World or the New. He showed his shrewdness in thus dealing with this pliable and deeply affectionate nature. From this ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... is not true that such advance necessarily accrues to the benefit of every individual, or equally to all individuals. In its lowest stages, developing communalism lifts all its individual members to about the same level of mental and moral acquirement. In its middle stages it develops all individuals to a certain degree, and certain individuals to a high degree. In its highest stages it develops among all its members a uniformly high grade of ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... necessary, I will allow," replied Mustapha; "but I trust I can soon prove to your highness that writing is as dangerous as it is useless. More men have been ruined by that unfortunate acquirement, than by any other; and dangerous as it is to all, it is still more dangerous to men in high power. For instance, your sublime highness sends a message in writing, which is ill-received, and it is produced against ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... her earliest childhood she had the scholar's instinct and love of learning; she read fluently French, German, and Italian; she was well grounded in Latin, and for the Greek she had that impassioned love that made its literature to her an assimilation rather than an acquirement. Its rich intellectual treasure entered into her inmost life. She also read Hebrew, and all her life kept with her a little Hebrew Bible, as well as a Greek Testament, the margins of both of which are filled with her ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... who were to have private audiences, and superintended all the arrangements of the household. The rest of the day was devoted to the enormous correspondence and affairs of administration which devolved upon him as first minister of state and treasury. He was very ignorant. He had no experience or acquirement in the arts either of war or peace, and his early education had been limited. Like his master, he spoke no tongue but Spanish, and he had no literature. He had prepossessing manners, a fluent tongue, a winning and benevolent disposition. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... formed by natural selection, is more than enough to stagger any one; yet in the case of any organ, if we know of a long series of gradations in complexity, each good for its possessor, then, under changing conditions of life there is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection. In the cases in which we know of no intermediate or transitional states, we should be very cautious in concluding that none could have ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... the English language is spoken from the throat, and, in general, also with the mouth nearly closed. The Italian singer finds no difficulty in bringing out his voice; but the Englishman has first to conquer the habit of his life, and to overcome the obstacles his native tongue opposes to his acquirement of this new but necessary, mode of using the voice. The difficulty, of laying this only foundation of real sterling excellence in the vocal art, is very great, and much care and study is indispensable. Those who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... embodied Aristotle's ideas of Reason. Here it is: "Logic is often called the art of reasoning, and many people study it with a view to mastering an art of correct thinking, hoping thereby to get an instrument useful in the acquirement of truth. It may be doubted, however, whether the mind gets much aid in the pursuit of truth by studying logic." There is no doubt at all about it,—not one rational individual out of a hundred thousand collegians will confess that he ever got any benefit in reasoning ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... bungler in his speech, but he was not fluent. He hesitated, and was at a loss for words, but whatever he wrote had a wonderful flow of harmony. The right word was always in the right place. Doubtless had he devoted as much attention to the acquirement of conversational ease, as he did to skill in writing, he would have been as successful in the one art as in the other. From early life it was his great ambition to be not merely a fine but a forcible ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... whom, Sept. 19, 1836, formed a club that met at one another's houses and discussed all the important social and religious topics of the day. They were mostly young people, college-bred, learned, artistic and thoughtful, and of high ideals in intellectual acquirement, religion and social life. They were all agreed that there were many evils to be eradicated from society; in what way—individualistic, governmental or socialistic, or by a combination of ways—few ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... that with the larger acquirement of facts the vivisection method would gradually become obsolete. ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... clumsy and heavy. But what Lescott noticed was not so much the things that went on canvas as the mixing of colors on the palette, for he knew that the palette is the painter's heart, and its colors are the elements of his soul. What a man paints on canvas is the sum of his acquirement; but the colors he mixes are the declarations of what his soul can see, and no man can paint whose eyes are not touched with the sublime. At that moment, Lescott knew ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... of the proposition and the relation alleged between them; and there must be such definite and deliberate mental representation of these terms as makes possible a clear consciousness of this relation.... Along with acquirement of more complex faculty and more vivid imagination, there comes a power of perceiving to be necessary truths, what were before not recognized as truths at all.... All this which holds of logical and mathematical truths, holds, with change of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... the reasoning powers interesting to mankind, spreading the knowledge of sentiments both humane and social, checking wicked inclinations, standing up for oppressed and suffering virtue against all wrong, promoting the advancement of men of merit, and in every way facilitating the acquirement of knowledge and science;"—of this honest silly man, and his attempts to carry out all his fine projects by calling himself Spartacus, Bavaria Achaia, Austria Egypt, Vienna Rome, and so forth;—of Knigge, who picked his ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... must beg to differ from you," said Ah Ben. "There is a law for the acquirement of this soul-power which is as fixed and certain as the law of gravitation; and when a man has once gained it, he has no more use for worldly wealth than he has for the ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... the giving of many tests, such as those in the upper years of the Binet system, could be regarded as most unfair. However, the simpler language tests she did fairly well, especially those where she could understand the commonsense questions. In regard to her acquirement of English, she has done better than her relatives, who continue to live in a neighborhood where their own Slavic dialect is spoken. When it came to dealing reasoningly with concrete situations, such as those presented by our performance tests, this young woman did ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... large, and can afford a remuneration sufficient to attract a class of candidates superior to the common average, it is possible to select for the general management, and for all the skilled employments of a subordinate kind, persons of a degree of acquirement and cultivated intelligence which more than compensates for their inferior interest in the result. It must be further remarked that it is not a necessary consequence of joint-stock management that the persons employed, whether ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... imagine the number of years of patient toil which must have preceded his first request for food, and I contemplated with astonishment the indefatigable perseverance which has borne him triumphant through the acquirement of such a language. If the simple request for something to eat presented such apparently insurmountable obstacles to pronunciation, what must the language be in its dealings with the more abstruse questions of theological and metaphysical science? Imagination ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... lifts his hoofs high in air as he parades before the eyes of his fellows.... Many children clearly exhibit this instinct of self-display; before they can walk or talk the impulse finds its satisfaction in the admiring gaze or plaudits of the family circle as each new acquirement is practiced; a little later it is still more clearly expressed by the frequently repeated command, "See me do this," or "See how well I can do so and so"; and for many a child more than half the delight of riding on a pony, of wearing a new coat, consists in the satisfaction of this instinct, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... life. Part of this, to be sure, is expressive merely of some transient mood of the popular mind. The enthusiasm, happily passing, for the plays of Brieux or the craze for Algerian landscapes in France after the acquirement of the colony, are examples. Such preferences, being superficially motivated, correct themselves with ease, giving way to some new fashion in taste. The preference for works of art that reflect the ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... wit, such rumours but fixed public attention upon him and made him the topic of the hour. He was not of the build or stateliness of Lord Roxholm, and much younger, but was as much older than his years in sin as the other was in unusual acquirement. He was a slender and exquisitely built youth, with perfect features, melting blue eyes, and rich fair hair which, being so beautiful, he disdained to conceal with any periwig, however elaborate and fashionable. When Roxholm returned to England, this male ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the ways in which elementary or minor species must have originated from their common ancestor must be quite different from the mode of origin of the varieties. We have assumed that the first come into existence by the production of something new, by the acquirement of a character hitherto unnoticed in the line of their ancestors. On the contrary, varieties, in most cases, evidently owe their origin to the loss of an already existing character, or in other less frequent cases, to the re-assumption of a quality [248] ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... at length fully turned his thoughts in this new channel. He seems to have disdained the acquirement of the English language. Perhaps he suspected first what he was bound to know before he completed his task, that the Cherokee language has certain necessities and peculiarities of its own. It is almost impossible to write Indian words and names correctly in English. ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... she was then not sixteen years old,—so entirely was her mind bent upon the crown of Russia. Partly to attain her end, and partly because it suited her intriguing, managing nature, she set herself immediately to the acquirement of the favor of the Empress on the one hand, and popularity on the other. The first she sought by an absolute submission of her will to that of Elizabeth, giving her self-negation an air of grateful deference; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... as possible the comforts of life. We claim no credit for preferring these lines of investment. We make no sacrifices. These are the lines of largest and surest return. In this particular, namely, in cheapness, ease of acquirement, and universality of means of subsistence, our country easily surpasses that of any other in the world, though we are behind other countries, perhaps, ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... the proud and splendid modernization, derive a yearning and a craving towards the unknown simple antique. Unknown to us, in our first studies, as we read upward from our own day into the past glories of our vernacular literature; but which, when, with gradually mounting courage, endeavour, and acquirement, we have made our way up so far, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... education, it is training to do tricks. The worker does not take over what can be called experience from one task to another. He forms certain motor habits, called skill. But under the efficient methods of scientific management the acquirement of this skill is robbed even of the educational value that it had under the unscientific method of factory work, which within its limited field, left the worker to discover by trial and error what were the best methods of getting results. Moreover, the standards ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... Lasswade, where he died; is characterised by Stopford Brooke as "owing to the overlapping and involved melody of his style one of our best, as he is one of our most various miscellaneous writers"; he was a writer of very miscellaneous ability and acquirement (1785-1859). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... superhuman stature; and an undefinable curiosity for all that is connected with the Danish race began to pervade me; and if, long after, when I became a student I devoted myself with peculiar zest to Danish lore and the acquirement of the old Norse tongue and its dialects, I can only explain the matter by the early impression received at Hythe from the tale of the old sexton, beneath the pent-house, and the sight of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... cannot exist, certainly not manifest itself, without talents, I would advise every scholar, who feels the genial power working within him, so far to make a division between the two, as that he should devote his talents to the acquirement of competence in some known trade or profession, and his genius to objects of his tranquil and unbiassed choice; while the consciousness of being actuated in both alike by the sincere desire to perform his duty, will alike ennoble both. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Lacedemonians and many other nations of antiquity, a useful art consisted chiefly in the exploits of war,—in being able to undergo privations and hardships, and in wielding successfully the heavy instruments of bloodshed,—such an education as would conduce to the acquirement of that art must be estimated on different grounds from that system whose object is to develop the moral and ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews
... become out of date, may be rejected, and that that which has proved itself inimitable may be appropriated; in general, so that it may be kept up to the requirements of the times. And, finally, the school must, by examinations and reports, aid the pupil in the acquirement of a knowledge of his real standing. The examination lets him know what he has really learned, and what he is able to do: the report gives him an account of his culture, exhibits to him in what he has made improvement and in what he has fallen behind, what defects he has shown, what talents ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... road to learning, no short cut to the acquirement of any valuable art. Let photographers and daguerreotypers do what they will, and improve as they may with further skill on that which skill has already done, they will never achieve a portrait of the human face divine. Let biographers, novelists, and the rest of us groan as we may ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... back to England on a matter of business, I cut short my stay in Paris, and arrived at Hollins without having advanced much as an artist, but with an important linguistic acquirement. The value of French to me from a professional point of view is quite incalculable. The best French criticism on the fine arts is the most discriminating and the most accurate in the world, at least when it is not turned aside from truth by the national jealousy ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... was a capitalistic acquirement, and some of his fellow-townsmen described it as "cast-iron." But for his daughter it was ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... the number of the primary and secondary feathers of the wings. Again, the length of the feet and of the beak,—although they have no relation to each other, yet appear to go together,—that is, you have a long beak wherever you have long feet. There are differences also in the periods of the acquirement of the perfect plumage,—the size and shape of the eggs,—the nature of flight, and the powers of flight,—so-called "homing" birds having enormous flying powers; [1] while, on the other hand, the little Tumbler is so called because of its extraordinary faculty of turning head over heels ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley
... Herbert Spencer states that "acquirement of every kind has two values—value as knowledge and value as discipline. Besides its use for guidance in conduct, the acquisition of each order of facts has also its use as mental exercise." Many students of education would assert that one very important ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... that his child should be instructed in such elegant arts as those in which the ladies of France and England excelled—not remembering that, in a young, forward, and ill-educated woman, the dangerous desire of display succeeds the acquirement of accomplishments as surely and as regularly ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure. This definition is useful; but as it would include novels and other works of fiction, which yet we do not call poems, there must ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... progress of general education had been great and remarkable. Music [223], from the earliest time, was an essential part of instruction; and it had now become so common an acquirement, that Aristotle [224] observes, that at the close of the Persian war there was scarcely a single freeborn Athenian unacquainted with the flute. The use of this instrument was afterward discontinued, and indeed proscribed in the education of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... leeward of Martinique, with an inferior force, more and more did it become impossible to him to assure conditions sufficiently favorable. With the highest personal courage, he did not have eminent professional daring; nor, with considerable tactical acquirement, was he gifted with that illuminative originality which characterized Hood and Nelson. He therefore needed either a reasonable probability of success, or the spur of imminent emergency, to elicit the kind of action needed to save the British cause. The chances to windward of Martinique would ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... haste to her own task, as saith the Prophet, 'Like as the hart desireth the water brooks, so longeth my soul after the strong, the living God.' Wherefore from all these proofs it is evident that the acquirement of virtue is within our reach, and that we are lords over it, whether we will embrace or else the rather choose sin. They then, that are in the thraldom of wickedness, can hardly be torn away therefrom, as I have ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... of traders; of arbitrary imprisonment of citizens; of difficulties originating from outbreak of war or insurrection; and of reclamations already committed to diplomatic treatment, but requiring a speedy acquirement ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... believe, sir, the winged word in daily use to mark those of us who may still cling to the effete and obsolete belief that music remains a science, difficult of acquirement and not either a toy art, or a mere nerve titillater. We are not, sir, by any means ashamed to bear the stigma of being academic; on the contrary, we feel it a genuine compliment—gratifying because, although perhaps unintentionally it implies that we have acquired the possession of "that one ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... natural gifts (and they were many) could be raised into talents; his life, in fact, could have been made a success by one influence—the love of a woman—the one influence that was forbidden: the single human acquirement that must for ever be beyond the priest's reach. This Christian Vellacott felt in a vague, uncertain way. He did not know very much about love and its influence upon a man's character, these questions never having come under his journalistic field of inquiry; but he had lately begun to wonder ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... encouraged to acquire a knowledge of this, or any other branch of physical science? What is the use, it is said, of attempting to make physical science a branch of primary education? Is it not probable that teachers, in pursuing such studies, will be led astray from the acquirement of more important but less attractive knowledge? And, even if they can learn something of science without prejudice to their usefulness, what is the good of their attempting to instil that knowledge into boys whose real ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... and settlement of the broad plains (pampas) and the frozen region of the south, a new world was created, much as in the United States of America a new world was created by the acquirement and settlement of the western plains, ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... the seal was broken—but the contents still a secret. Poor Agnes had learned to write as some youths learn Latin: so short a time had been allowed for the acquirement, and so little expert had been her master, that it took her generally a week to write a letter of ten lines, and a month to read one of twenty. But this being a letter on which her mind was deeply engaged, her whole imagination aided her slender literature, and at the ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... public schools, and is very generally spoken by the intelligent people. Education is more general, and culture is of a higher grade in Sweden than is common with the people of Southern Europe, while music is nearly as universal an acquirement here as it is in Italy. The population is frugal, honest, self-helping, and in many respects resembles that ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... the mind of the normal child as thoughts of fear and cowardice. A child should never have suggested to him that he is afraid. He should be constantly assured that he is brave, loyal, and fearless. The daily repetition of these suggestions will contribute much to the actual acquirement of the very traits of character that are thus suggested. This does not mean that a child should not be ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... be taken as admitted that self-control is a noble acquirement for a man. (1) If so, let us turn and consider whether by language like the following he was likely to lead his listeners onwards (2) to the attainment of this virtue. "Sirs," he would say, "if a war came upon us and we wished to choose a man who would best help us to save ourselves and to subdue ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... practical—adapting himself to circumstances—he had never learned. It belongs to the department of Common Sense, in which, unfortunately, there has never been a professor at West Point. His after life does not seem to have been favorable to its acquirement. Withal, the hauteur characteristic to Cadets clung to him, and on many occasions rendered him unfortunate in his intercourse with volunteer officers. Politeness with him, assumed the airs and grimaces of ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... the message of December 1, 1884, by which I transmitted to the Senate, with a view to ratification, a treaty negotiated with Belgium touching the succession to and acquirement of real property, etc., by the citizens or subjects of the one Government in the domain of the other, I now address you in order to recall the treaty thus ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... as could be bought for a song. The two men were in a position to choose their opportunities; none that were good escaped them, and they shared the profits of mortgage-usury, which retards, though it does not prevent, the acquirement of the soil by the peasantry. So Dionis took a lively interest in the doctor's inheritance, not so much for the post master and the collector as for his friend the clerk of the court; sooner or later Massin's share in the doctor's money would swell the ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... of the Dark Wood dwelt for a time a Wizard, whose life had been spent in the acquirement of many wonderful arts. As a young man he had wandered over Europe from university to university, until one day he became aware of the true secret of education and burnt ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... But Cyrus' acquirement of the chunk of hair was his last triumph. His downfall was near; and, although it involved Cecily in a most humiliating experience, over which she cried half the following night, in the end she confessed it was worth undergoing just to get ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Miss Fotheringay, though silent in general, and by no means brilliant as a conversationist, where poetry, literature, or the fine arts were concerned, could talk freely, and with good sense, too, in her own family circle. She cannot justly be called a romantic person: nor were her literary acquirement great: she never opened a Shakspeare from the day she left the stage, nor, indeed, understood it during all the time she adorned the boards: but about a pudding, a piece of needle-work, or her own domestic affairs, she was as good a judge as could be found; and not being misled ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with the dry chronicles of a law office. The acquirement of learning is a slow process in life, and perchance a slower one in the telling. I lacked not application during the three years of my stay in Richmond, and to earn my living I worked at such odd tasks as came ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... importance of the idea as behind, distinct from, and manifested through, the technical means. The vocal machinery must necessarily be in first-class order, but the influence of the mind upon the body is so intimate and so extraordinary that even technical acquirement hangs to no small extent upon ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... Professor Henslow, whose lectures on botany he attended. He joined in the class excursions and found them delightful. But still more profitable to him were the long and almost daily walks which he enjoyed with his teacher, during the latter half of his time at Cambridge. Henslow's wide range of acquirement, modesty, unselfishness, courtesy, gentleness, and piety, fascinated him and exerted on him an influence which, more than anything else, tended to shape his whole future life. The love of travel which had been kindled ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... rest on the imitation of accepted models. Many students in all schools of journalism come from immigrant families and are both inconceivably ignorant of English and inconceivably satisfied with their acquirement of English, as we all are with a strange tongue we have learned to speak. Even in families with two or more generations of American life, the vocabulary is limited, construction careless, and the daily contact with any literature, now that family prayers and Bible reading are gone; almost nil. ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper |
