"Attribute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Pronunciation, and that we know to be very largely a social convention dependent on fashion and education, and inasmuch as it is a product of fashion and education it is not bound by the theoretical laws which Mr. Jones would attribute to it; while for the same reason it is unfortunately susceptible of being affected by them, if they should be taught with authority. These phoneticians would abuse a false position which they have unwarrantably created. ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... of mountain which we are now considering, is that of the eruptive kind. But there is much of this eruptive matter in the bowels of the earth, which, so far as we know, never has produced a volcano. It is to this species of eruption that I am now to attribute the formation of many insulated mountains, which rise in what may be termed low countries, in opposition to the highlands or alpine situations. Such is Wrekin in Shropshire, which some people have supposed to have been a volcano. Such are the hundred little mountains in the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... decreases. What is there among the actions of beasts so illogical and repugnant to reason? When they do anything which seems to proceed from that which we call reason, we disdain to allow them that perfection, and attribute it only to a natural instinct. If we could but learn to number our days (as we are taught to pray that we might) we should adjust much better our other accounts, but whilst we never consider an end of them, it is no wonder if our cares ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... ministerial crisis, and his own views and measures. He attributed the cause which led to the dissolution of the cabinet, to that great and mysterious calamity—the failure of the potato crop. At the same time he confessed, that it would be uncandid to attribute undue importance to that one cause. "That particular cause," he continued, "appeared to me to preclude any further delay, and to require immediate decision—decision, not only upon the measures which it was necessary at the time to adopt, but as to the course to be ultimately taken with regard to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... most wonderful concession, one that Tyndal made when he said, "There is a place in man's psychological nature for religion." Is there a place in man's physical nature for bread and meat, for food of every variety that man's soul desires? Do we attribute all the mercies of physical life to a supreme intelligence? Has that intelligence created us and left us endowed with "Inexhaustible hope," to be disappointed forever, and the only result, the "imaginary" creation ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... consequences. Frictions with the surrounding world, which a normal individual meets in an ordinary manner with a view towards an efficient adaptation to existing conditions, were reacted to by them in a distinctly antisocial manner, with methods entirely void of consideration of the rights of others, an attribute so essential for a proper concourse with man. Thrown finally upon their own resources, when they had to rely for their existence upon some industrial pursuit, we find them lacking the most essential prerequisite for the efficient struggle for ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... been crossed from within. No change of substance, no modification of environment, no chemistry, no electricity, nor any form of energy, nor any evolution can endow any single atom of the mineral world with the attribute of life. Only by bending down into this dead world of some living form can these dead atoms be gifted with the properties of vitality, without this preliminary contact with life they remain fixed in the inorganic sphere forever. It is a very mysterious Law which guards in this way the ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... for several years to grow out of the grave; and after a while, perhaps a century ago, it was transplanted into the garden of —— Hall, and preserved with great care, and is so still. And as the family attribute a kind of sacredness, or cursedness, to the flower, they can hardly be prevailed upon to give any of the seeds, or allow it to be propagated elsewhere, though the king should send to ask it. It is said, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... something else—or that there is nothing beautiful in our experience: only appearances that are intermediate to beauty and ugliness—that only universality is complete: that only the complete is the beautiful: that every attempt to achieve beauty is an attempt to give to the local the attribute ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... action, his suspicion of Carmina passed beyond all limits. There could be no reason but a bad reason for that barefaced attempt to entrap him into a reconciliation. Every evil motive which it was possible to attribute to a girl of her age, no matter how monstrously improbable it might be, occurred to him when he recalled her words, her look, and her manner at their meeting on the stairs. His paltry little mind, at other times preoccupied in contemplating himself and his ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... further from the intention of Stoker than a truce. Savages usually attribute forbearance to cowardice. War to the knife was in his heart, and he rushed at Charlie with a shower of slogging blows, which were meant to end the fight at once. But they failed to do so. Our hero nimbly ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... of thy sex, adieu! By what parting attribute may I salute thee?—last and best of the Titanesses!—Ogress, fed with milk instead of blood!—not least, or least handsome, among Oxford's stately structures!—Oxford, who, in its deadest time of vacation, can never properly be said to be empty, having thee ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... said in a loud whisper, "come here! take care! keep on the grass!—don't step where the cows have been!" he added, pointing to a peninsula of dry grass, with trodden mud on each side of it; for Tom's contemptuous conception of a girl included the attribute of being unfit to walk in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... be ridiculous, of course, to attribute this cure to such follies, but at the same time I think it would be wrong to assert that they did not in any way contribute to it. As far as the apparition of the beautiful queen is concerned, I have always deemed it to be a dream, unless it should have been some masquerade ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... famous impresario, who gained some valuable experience by marrying a prima donna, and therefore should know, that whim is purely a feminine attribute. This, though, is surely a mistake, for there have lived men, as well as women, who had such an exaggerated sense of their own worth, that they lost sight, entirely, of the rights and feelings of everybody else. All through life they kept the stage ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Baruch, but expanded. Both the Hebrew and the shorter Greek offer in parts an uncertain text, and add this problem that their story begins with a covenant to proclaim a Liberty(581) for the Hebrew slaves in general, while the words which they attribute to Jeremiah limit it to the emancipation, in terms of a particular law, of those slaves who had completed six years of service (verse 14).(582) But neither this nor the other and smaller uncertainties touch the substance of the story.(583) As the siege ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... manufactured paper, gunpowder, pottery and other articles in common use. This knowledge which he claimed to possess was tested by actual demonstration during the trial for his life. His superior skill in planning was universally admitted by his fellow workmen. He did not, however, attribute this superior influence to sorcery, conjuration or such like agencies, for he had the utmost contempt for ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... to Chretien, so far as we can see, is due the considerable honour of having constituted Arthur's court as a literary centre and rallying-point for an innumerable company of knights and ladies engaged in a never-ending series of amorous adventures and dangerous quests. Rather than unqualifiedly attribute to Chretien this important literary convention, one should bear in mind that all his poems imply familiarity on the part of his readers with the heroes of the court of which he speaks. One would suppose that other stories, told before his versions, were ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... pleased to attribute to her every poetical excellence. Speaking of the purity and chastity of her compositions, he ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... are raised, that low, choking sound comes back to me in a strangely persistent way, and I seem to see a well-remembered form in the stooping figure of this beggar. Oh, I hope the good God will forgive me if I attribute to this disappointed man a wickedness ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... must always be remembered that vaudeville audiences come to laugh and not to smile. Some of the biggest laughs in every one of my many acts I put in after the acts had been playing some weeks. And I attribute whatever success they have had later in the best vaudeville theatres to the improvements I have made ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... to your lord. I sympathize In his good fortune; and if you have seen me Deficient in the expressions of that joy Which such a victory might well demand, Attribute it to no lack of good will, 5 For henceforth are our fortunes one. Farewell, And for your trouble take my thanks. To-morrow The citadel shall be surrendered to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... glowing with the richest tints of rose and saffron, which were reflected below on the bosom of the river; and then came forth the stars, in the soft blue ether, more brilliant than ever I saw them at home, and this, I suppose, I may attribute to the superior purity of the atmosphere. My husband said this evening resembled the sunsets ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... I object to this, for I feel nay good sense implicated. You can hardly attribute to me opinions so utterly unreasonable, so unworthy of a gentleman—so unfounded, in short! Am I not incurring all the risks and hardships of a long sea-voyage, expressly to visit your great country, and, I trust, to improve by its example ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Letters, Essays, Arts, Sciences, Novels and Adventures, with Poetic and Dramatic Entertainment, by the most celebrated ancient and modern Authors, who have explored, investigated, and attempted to illuminate the human Understanding with the god-like Attribute of knowledge, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... show the character of Emerson's intellect better than anything else he has written. His insight into nature, like that of the primitive mind as we find it in the Greek poetry, the instinctive investment of the great mother with the presence and attribute of personality, the re-creation from his own resources of Pan and the nature-powers, the groping about in that darkness of the primeval forest for the spiritual causes of the things he felt,—all this is to me evident in the poem; and ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... him. What pennies I have I'm obliged to count with a provident eye. I've added to 'em from time to time along the road. So far I've been intermittently a rotten ploughman, a fair fence-mender and a skillful whitewasher. My amazing facility there I attribute to an apprenticeship in sunsets. Once, during a period of rain, I lived in a corncrib for three days at an average of seven cents a day. I've reduced my need of kitchen equipment to a can-opener. A can ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... Robert his last stand. As we know, ever since that passionate submission of the wife which had thrown her morally at her husband's feet, there had lingered at the bottom of her heart one last supreme hope. All persons of the older Christian type attribute a special importance to the moment of death. While the man of science looks forward to his last hour as a moment of certain intellectual weakness, and calmly warns his friends beforehand that he is to be judged by the utterances of health ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a few of the external differences between the Chinese customs and ours. But the most essential peculiarity of this nation is the high value which they attribute to knowledge, and the distinctions and rewards which they bestow on scholarship. All the civil offices in the Empire are given as rewards of literary merit. The government, indeed, is called a complete despotism, and the emperor is said ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... often heard it said that there was a disproportionate number of crimes committed by the colored people in this State. The same thing is true of the first generation of Irish emigrants; but we universally attribute it to their ignorance, and agree that the only remedy is to give their children as good an education as possible. If the policy is wise in one instance, why would it not ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... starting to cross, for fear of being run over; in going out in the cold we put on our overcoats, for fear of catching cold. In fact, we hardly do anything in life without taking a precaution of some kind. These are all examples of reasonable fear, which, within bounds is a perfectly legitimate attribute of a soldier in common with other human beings. For example, we teach the men to take advantage of cover when attacking, and we dig trenches when on the defense, in both cases for fear of being shot by the enemy. It is the unreasoning type of fear that plays havoc in war, and the ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... 'No—I attribute no sort of supernaturalism to my fancy about the thing that was really about to take place. By a law of the association of ideas—contraries come into the mind as often as similarities—and the peace and solitude readily called up the notion of what would most jar with them. I have often ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... duties. Trade at the Bay of Islands had, by this time, greatly fallen away. Whalers and timber vessels no longer resorted there as in the good old Alsatian days. Both natives and settlers grumbled at the change, which they chose to attribute to the Government Customs duties. To conciliate them, the Governor abolished Customs duties at Kororareka. Naturally a cry at once went up from other parts of the Colony for a similar concession. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... desirable. She is known to be rich, her will is paramount to all others. When she sets her heart on a thing she leaves no stone unturned until she procures it. And, countess, do they not say of her that she possesses something—an attribute—more dangerous than beauty—fascination?" ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... herself about the room for a few moments, straightening things, adjusting the window shades. Allie had the knack of silence, blessed attribute in man or woman, and to Gray's surprise he found that her mere presence was comforting. She startled ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... movement of the head—a distinct idea of a personality. The bird's proceedings suggested extreme sentimentality combined with that sort of weak determination which is often the most persistent. Such weak determination is a very common attribute of persons who are partially idiotic. Father Murchison was moved to think of these poor creatures who will often, so strangely and unreasonably, attach themselves with persistence to those who love them ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... dread of it on that first day caused me to throw many an anxious glance on my husband and my child. I had been very ill during the three weeks that our vessel was becalmed upon the Banks of Newfoundland, and to this circumstance I attribute my deliverance from the pestilence. I was weak and nervous when the vessel arrived at Quebec, but the voyage up the St. Lawrence, the fresh air and beautiful scenery were rapidly restoring ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... unconsciousness of our wishes. The usual reason is merely that wishes are all, to begin with, unconscious, and only become known when they are actively noticed. Usually, from laziness, people do not notice, but accept the theory of human nature which they find current, and attribute to themselves whatever wishes this theory would lead them to expect. We used to be full of virtuous wishes, but since Freud our wishes have become, in the words of the Prophet Jeremiah, "deceitful above all things and desperately wicked." Both these ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... kind and charitable to the poor, punctual in his services, forbearing with the farmers around him, mild with his brother clergymen, and indifferent to aught that bishop or archdeacon might think or say of him. I do not name this latter attribute as a virtue, but as a fact. But all these points were as nothing in the known character of Mr. Woolsworthy, of Oxney Colne. He was the antiquarian of Dartmoor. That was his line of life. It was in that capacity that he was known ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... photographed itself. Acts are unquestionably more significative than words; yet if we wish to inquire into his poetry, not by way of appreciating his genius (with which at present we have nothing to do), but the nature of the man, let us do so loyally. Let us not attribute to him the character which he lends to his heroes, nor the customs which he attributes to them, simply because here and there he has given to the one something of his manner, to the other some of his sentiments; or because he has harbored them, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Montanelli. But positively to forbid a harmless botanizing tour with an elderly professor of theology would seem to Arthur, who knew nothing of the reason for the prohibition, absurdly tyrannical. He would immediately attribute it to religious or racial prejudice; and the Burtons prided themselves on their enlightened tolerance. The whole family had been staunch Protestants and Conservatives ever since Burton & Sons, ship-owners, of London and Leghorn, had first set up in business, more than ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... was one of those vivacious men who have strong faith in their good luck, and yet attribute to their merits whatever turns out well. In the present matter he had done as yet nothing at all ingenious, or even to be called sagacious. The discovery of "Monument Joe," or "Peg-leg Joe," as he was called at Flamborough, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... subject, and Sir Percival spoke next, in the most unselfish terms, of his engagement with Laura. He said he had observed that she was out of spirits, and he was willing, if not informed to the contrary, to attribute to that cause the alteration in her manner towards him during his present visit. If, however, there was any more serious reason for the change, he would entreat that no constraint might be placed on her inclinations either by Mr. Fairlie or by me. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... this. It holds that all men are not born free and equal; that men have not an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and that men are not in their very constitution fitted for liberty, and benefited by it. They hold that liberty is an attribute of power; that it is a blossom which belongs to races, and not to mankind; that a part were born to rule, and a part were ordained to serve; that liberty is dangerous to the many; that servitude, the most rigorous, is a blessing; that it accords with the creative intent ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... views entertained of it by the North, whether physically or morally considered; views however that, on both these points, I have decided are singularly overcharged, even by persons one would conceive possessed of the information likely to lead to a correct judgment. This I attribute partly to the habit we are in of taking reports of places for granted, and repeating them from father to son without much personal examination, or rather comparison, and partly to the changes constantly operating upon society here, with a rapidity at least equal to ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... new Governor of Mansoul, was not a native of the town; he came down with his Prince from the court above.' 'He was not a native'—let that attribute of his be written in letters of gold on every gate and door and wall within his jurisdiction. When you need the governor and would seek him at any time or in any place in all the town and cannot find him, recollect yourself where he came from: he may have returned thither again. John Bunyan has couched ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... can neither trace satisfactorily the exact period of its introduction, or even that of its final extinction, (for it appears to have merged gradually into the pure and unmixed pointed style of the thirteenth century,) we have perhaps no remains of this kind to which we can attribute an earlier date than that included between the years 1130 and 1140, unless we except the intersecting arches at St. Botulph's, Priory Church, Colchester, which may be a few years earlier; and it appears ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... natural disorder (which he uses as a banner) into his intellectual life; and the attribute is not misleading. His talent is very much that of the poor girls who go about in bourgeois families to work by the day. He was first a critic, and a great critic; but he felt himself cheated in that vocation. ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... Kilima N'jaro. The one redeeming feature of the neighbourhood was the river from which Tsavo takes its name. This is a swiftly-flowing stream, always cool and always running, the latter being an exceptional attribute in this part of East Africa; and the fringe of lofty green trees along its banks formed a welcome relief to the general monotony of ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... to go and finish their vast undertaking at Berlin. Catherine II. made the same offers, asking D'Alembert, besides, to take charge of the education of her son. "I know your honesty too well," she wrote, "to attribute your refusals to vanity; I know that the cause is merely love of repose in order to cultivate literature and friendship. But what is to prevent your coming with all your friends? I promise you and them too all the comforts and every facility that may depend upon me; and perchance you ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... at some idea of the relation there exists between the spiritual and the natural, and of the place of the spiritual and the natural in man. The spiritual is neither the product nor an attribute of the natural. Man is the border creature of the two worlds; he represents the ultimate possibility of the one, and possesses potentialities in regard to the other. The great object of his life must be to develop, through making ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... satisfaction from their change in life. I don't at all doubt the truth of these statements, for their evident improvement and individual circumstances fully bear them out; and I believe them to be really serious in all they say, and truly anxious to become honest and respectable. I attribute, in a great measure, this salutary change to the effects arising in many respects from the establishment of reformatory schools; but I have more particularly found that greater advantages have emanated from those institutions since ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... in Physical Education, Chicago, have proved that track men can far surpass their best previous times under hypnosis. Their tests, incidentally, proved that there is no danger of an athlete going beyond his physiologic limit while bettering his former marks. They attribute the superior performances to the removal of inhibitions, which psychologically prevent an athlete from doing his best. This report was made before the International Congress on Health and Fitness in the Modern World held in Rome during ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... of India were good enough to sanction the allotment of a separate room in each soldiers' Institute for the exclusive use of the Association, where alcohol in any shape was not admitted, and to the grant of this room I attribute, in a great measure, the success of the undertaking. The success was proved by the fact that, when I left India, nearly one third of the 70,000 British soldiers in that country were members or honorary members of ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... be a familiar fact to many that we are very prone to mistake or confuse the sources of our pleasure and the causes of such contentment as we achieve. We attribute to our surroundings in general what is due to one especial part of them; for the sake of one feature the landscape's whole aspect seems pleasant; we rob Peter with intent to pay Paul, and then in the end give the money to somebody else. It is not difficult to see how Elsa and I came ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... expressed their opinions openly in the plainest words. The case under consideration (so far as they were concerned) was the scandalous case of a man who had passed them over entirely without notice. Mrs. Mayor could only attribute such an outrage to the native ferocity of a savage. Mrs. Doctor took a stronger view still, and considered it as proceeding from the inbred brutality ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Johnson held in scorn, multitudes perished at Whitechapel of the plague which it was one of the poor compensations of life in New England to escape. They would all have been dead by now, whether they went or whether they stayed, though it was hard not to attribute their present decease solely to their staying, as we turned over the leaves of the old register in St. Mary Matfelon's, Whitechapel. The church has been more than once rebuilt out of recollection of its original self, and there were workman ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... occur to a man to wonder what a woman is thinking. During courtship very young men attribute intellect and qualities of mystery and awe to the woman they love. But after men get an insight into the mind of woman and discover how trivial are the matters that of necessity usually engage it, they become skeptical about feminine mentality; they would ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... heard of all my grievances. Suwarora's hongo was turned out of court, and, if I desired it, I might bring my own chair with me, for he was very anxious to show me great respect—although such a seat was exclusively the attribute of the king, no one else in Uganda daring to sit on ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... sects, the prophet of the "New Sion" was at first surrounded by those despairing invalids and cripples who try all kinds of remedies, until at last they find one to which they attribute the relief of their sufferings, whether real or fancied. Such as these will do all that is required of them; they will give all their worldly goods to be saved; and they paid gladly the tenth part which Dowie immediately demanded from all who ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... among people whose manners in general struck one as so good and, in particular, as so cultivated. The office of the saint—of which the festa is but the annual reaffirmation—involves not the faintest attribute of remoteness or mystery. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Ati is known only from the Hammamat, inscription dated in the first year of his reign. He was identified by Brugsch with the Othoes of Manetho, and this identification has been generally adopted. M. de Rouge is inclined to attribute to him as praenomen the cartouche Usirkeri, which is given in the Table of Abydos between those of Teti III. and Papi I. Mariette prefers to recognize in Urikeri an independent Pharaoh of short reign. Several blocks of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd; It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... increased in subsequent generations by natural selection. That it may be thus increased, the individuals not possessing more than average endowments of it, must be more frequently killed off than individuals highly endowed with it; and this can happen only when the attribute is one of greater importance, for the time being, than most of the other attributes. If those members of the species which have but ordinary shares of it, nevertheless survive by virtue of other superiorities ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Collier Pratt ejaculated slowly and disagreeably, as is any man's wont before he has had his draught of breakfast coffee, "am I to attribute the pleasure ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... than thirty-five years since my days on the football gridiron," writes Harding. "What little elementary training I got in football, I attribute to the old game of 'theory,' which for two years on spring and summer evenings, after supper, we used to play at St. Paul's School in Concord, N. H., on the athletic grounds near the Middle School. One fellow ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... students, and shall consider the education which, by virtue of this principle, a University will give them; and thus I shall be introduced, Gentlemen, to the second question, which I proposed to discuss, viz, whether and in what sense its teaching, viewed relatively to the taught, carries the attribute of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... there may have been some positive losses from a certain narrowing of the higher tastes and sensations which it entailed. But limitation of the capacity is never recognized as a loss by the loser therefrom: in this attribute moral or aesthetic poverty contrasts plausibly with material, since those who suffer do not mind it, whilst those who mind it soon cease to suffer. It is not a denial of anything to have been always without it, and what Troy had never enjoyed ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... same kind of ability, superhumanly keen insight, and wonderful power of expression, both with tongue and pen; the same intensity of feeling, thoroughness, and courage to look the ugliest truths full in the face; in both, these high qualities were marred by a tendency to attribute the worst motives to almost every one. Their joint contempt for all whom they called "fools," i.e. the immense majority of mankind, was a serious drawback to the pleasure of their company. It is indeed obvious that, whether or not it be correct to say that "his nature was ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... about half-past twelve, and he had entered upon the last section of his two hours, when Kennedy distinctly heard footsteps in the wood. He had heard so many mysterious sounds since his patrol began at eleven o'clock that at first he was inclined to attribute this to imagination. But a crackle of dead branches and the sound of soft breathing convinced him that this was the real thing for once, and that, as a sentry of the Public Schools' Camp on duty, it behoved him to ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... phenomena included in the past eighty years has demonstrated a continuing retrogression in ink manufacture and a consequent deterioration of necessary ink qualities. When the attention of some ink makers are addressed to these sad facts, they attribute them, either to the demand of the public for an agreeable color and a free flowing ink, or to an inability to compete with inferior substitutes, which have flooded the market since the discovery of ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... attribute the rare tract entitled Lauacrum conscientie omnium sacerdotum, which consists of fifty-eight leaves, and was printed in Gothic letter at Cologne, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... humanity of the present generation; and were these the days when I sermonized, I could propose that it should afford me an illustration for the pulpit. For my part, when doors are closed I try not their locks; and I attribute my perfect equanimity, health even, to an uninquiring acceptation of the fact that they are closed to me. I read my page by the light I have. On the contrary, the world of this day, if I may presume to quote you for my purpose, is heard knocking at those two locked doors of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... granular and fatty degeneration of the heart and other structures of the body. Hence non-alcoholic physicians urge that alcohol and such other drugs, as have like action in hindering full oxidation of the blood, and causing fatty degenerations should be studiously avoided. These physicians attribute many of the deaths from heart-failure in such diseases to the combined action of the disease and the alcohol in exhausting the ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... animals, possess them to a more or less marked degree, and organised structure is the sole condition necessary to their exercise. The combined functions of the second class form the 'animal' life, so named because it is the exclusive attribute of ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... are met by a further difficulty in identifying the surviving statues from the fact that the contracts given to sculptors by the Chapter do not always specify the personage to be represented. Moreover, in many cases the statues have no symbol attribute or legend, which usually guide our interpretation of mediaeval art. Thus Donatello is paid pro parte solutionis unius figure marmoree;[3] or for figuram marmoream.[4] Even when an obvious and familiar explanation could be given, such as Abraham and ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... clearly perceive not an instant of time could be lost. The frequent communications he had with his admirals and captains put them in possession of all his plans, so that his mode of attack was well known to every officer of the fleet. Some will not fail to attribute rashness to the conduct of Lord Nelson. But he well considered the importance of a decisive naval victory at this time, and has frequently said since we left England that, should he be so fortunate as to fall in with the enemy, a total defeat should ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... aggressive nose, mouth drooping at the corners, had not lost its mobility. He was restless and fault-finding in this presence as in any other. The Duke of Wellington's Roman nose lent something of the eagle to his aspect. It was a more patrician attribute than Sir Robert Peel's long upper lip, with its shy, nervous compression, which men mistook for impassive coldness, just as the wits blundered in calling his strong, serviceable capacity, noble uprightness, and patient labour ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... were eight different manifestations of their god, called Rudras; and that these had their types in the eight visible forms enumerated here. The Hindus reckon five elements. The most subtle is Ether (akasa), supposed to convey sound, which is its peculiar attribute or property (guna). The next element—Air, has for its properties sound and feeling. The third—Fire, has sound, feeling, and colour. The fourth—Water, has sound, feeling, colour, and taste. The fifth—Earth, has ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... out of our wedding presents by a girl who is not going to have a wedding at all. I miss my brooch. My throat feels naked without it. Last week I had a hoarseness. I attribute it to the loss of ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... of the language to make myself understood. I volunteered to aid in the defence. The chief gave me his rifle, and I picked off a few of the leading assailants, and aided in the defence of the village. The enemy were beaten off with very heavy loss, and the chief was pleased to attribute their defeat to ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... house under at least a month from the commencement of the illness; I, therefore, beg to refer you to that Conversation, and hope that you will give it your best and earnest consideration! During the last twenty years I have never had dropsy from scarlet fever, and I attribute it entirely to the plan I have just recommended, and in not allowing my patients to leave the house under the month—until, in fact, the skin that had peeled ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... with some infinite source without. Like a mariner's compass, we are restless until we find repose in this one direction. In moments of beauty (for beauty is, strictly speaking, a state of mind rather than an attribute of certain objects, although certain things have the power of inducing it more than others) we seem to get a glimpse of this deeper truth behind the things of sense. And who can say but that this sense, dull enough in most of us, is ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... degree difficult for us to appreciate, a State product. It is a national possession deliberately handed on by the State from generation to generation, hall-marked and guaranteed, as it were, for the use of its citizens. When we use the word "culture" we speak of it as an attribute of individual men and women. Germans, on the other hand, think of it as belonging to nations as a whole, in virtue of their system of national education. That is why they are so sure that all Germans possess culture. They have all had ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... Tsung's reign, 683, came the first of the wars of liberation of the northern Turks, known until then as the western Turks, against the Chinese. And with the end of Kao Tsung's reign began the decline of the T'ang regime. Most of the historians attribute it to a woman, the later empress Wu. She had been a concubine of T'ai Tsung, and after his death had become a Buddhist nun—a frequent custom of the time—until Kao Tsung fell in love with her and made her a concubine of his own. In the end he actually divorced the empress and ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... the chairs round the hearth where their children once were, but never shall be again—then, truly, can they not escape some part of the sorrow that comes, overwhelming, to those whose suffering no noble thought chastens. For it were wrong to attribute to beautiful feeling and thought a virtue they do not possess. There are, external tears that they cannot restrain; there are holy hours when wisdom cannot yet console. But, for the last time let us say it, suffering we cannot avoid for suffering there ever must be; still does ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... intense desire of our destruction? Certainly those who have shown themselves so much our enemies, never received any private wrong from us; for, had we wished to injure them, they would not have had an opportunity of injuring us. If they attribute public grievances to ourselves (supposing any had been done to them), they do the greater injustices to you, to this palace, to the majesty of this government, by assuming that on our account you would act unfairly to any of your citizens; and ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... lad had told him, he said: "I suppose there are no windows in your cottage; you had better go to Rhodesia, where you will find space, and where you won't get cramped ideas." Then he rode on, leaving the boy staring at him with open eyes. An attractive attribute was his love of his early associations, his father especially being often the theme of his conversation. He used freely to express his admiration for the type the latter represented, now almost extinct, of the old-fashioned country clergyman-squire. He held with tenacity ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... an attribute of Infinite Wisdom to proportion powers to results, to adapt instruments to ends with exact fitness. But if we are utterly to die with the ceasing breath, then there is an amazing want of symmetry between ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... given indeed because of the quality, but really the name of the thing, and no more the name of the quality than are names generally, since every one of them, if it signifies anything at all, must imply an attribute. ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... eyes flashed fire! With what disdain she treated me! 'What do you mean by "of a kind?" My dear Sydney, are you not aware that it is an attribute of small minds to attempt to belittle those which are greater? Even if you are conscious of inferiority, it's unwise to show it. Mr Lessingham's was a great speech, of any kind; your incapacity to recognise the fact simply reveals your lack of the ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... base of the rocks, I appreciated the wisdom of Sergius and Herrmann that led them to pick out this bit of privileged summer, which seems to have wandered into the North from a region ten degrees nearer the sun. It is not strange if the people attribute miraculous powers to them; naturally mistaking the cause of their settlement on Valaam ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... the evening Joel Rae confided the truth of his miracle to that good man, taking care not to utter the words with any delight or pride in himself. He considered that Brigham was unduly surprised by the occurrence; almost displeased in fact; showing a tendency to attribute the day's good fortune to phenomena wholly natural. Although the miracle had seemed to him a small, simple thing, he now felt a little ashamed of his performance. He was pleased to note, however, that Brigham became more ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... borderland of psychological and traditional influences. Witches and giants certainly belong to tradition, but on the other hand they are the common factors of the natural mind which readily attributes personal origins to impersonal objects. I am inclined on the whole to attribute the beliefs attachable to the unexplained boulders or unknown monoliths to the eternal questionings in the minds of the uncultured peasants of uncivilised countries similar to those of the unadvanced savage. That the peasant of ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... We cannot properly attribute to him any one temperament. He was neither sanguine, like Peter, nor choleric, like Paul, nor melancholy, like John, nor phlegmatic, as James is sometimes, though incorrectly, represented to have been; but he combined the vivacity without the levity of the sanguine, the vigor without ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... across snowy divides; shallow shafts cave in, rude dams are swept away. A man worked to exhaustion on the trail runs out of provisions and goes on, starving; he lames himself among the rocks, sets his teeth and limps ahead. I've thought the capacity to do so is humanity's greatest attribute, but after all it's not shown in its finest light battling with material things. When the moral stress comes, the man who would face ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... As he beholds the passionate people, eager for the blood of one man, and he innocent, and sees, standing in their midst, the meek and lowly Jesus, calm as an evening zephyr over Judea's plains, from whose eye flows the gentle love of an infinite divinity,—his face beaming in sympathy with every attribute of goodness, faith and humanity,—all this, too, before his mad, unjust accusers, from whose eyes flash in mingled rays the venom of scorn and hate,—his mind grows strong with a sense of right. His feelings ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... for we talked about it at the time, and admired the military ingenuity of the device; but when I was out West three years ago I was told by Mr. A. G. Fuqua, a member of our company, that the horse was his, that the leaving him tied at the door was a matter of mere forgetfulness, and that to attribute it to intelligent invention was to give him quite too much credit. In support of his position, he called my attention to the suggestive fact that the artifice was not employed again. I had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Frankland were heard with these surroundings, one felt that it would be wrong to attribute to ambitious motives her desire for such an environment. She might rather be said to have been drawn here by an inspiration for artistic harmony. The resonant periods of Bossuet would hardly have echoed ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... which we have selected for extract. In our affection for the Stage, we have paid some attention to its history, as well as to its recent state, and readily do we subscribe to a few of the Reviewer's opinions of the cause of its neglect. But to attribute this falling off to "taxes innumerable" is rather too broad: perhaps the highly-taxed wax lights around the box circles suggested this new light. We need not go so far to detect the rottenness of the dramatic state; still, as the question ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... assist her to escape. Although she was aware of the hardships and perils that would attend her flight, yet the thought of again meeting her friends was enough to nerve her for the undertaking, and she waited with anxious impatience the coming of her rescuer. But he came not. She could attribute no other design in his conduct but that of effecting her escape, and yet he neither came for her, nor beckoned her away. She had reposed confidence in his promise, for she knew that the Indian, savage as he was, rarely forfeited his word; but when gratitude inspired a pledge, she could ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... connection with this Boer ammunition which shows once more how very easy it is to attribute all kinds of sins to one's enemy. Someone came running up to a little group of us with several packets of cartridges, one with ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... coefficiency[obs3]. concomitant, accessory, coefficient; companion, buddy, attendant, fellow, associate, friend, colleague; consort, spouse, mate; partner, co- partner; satellite, hanger on, fellow-traveller, shadow; escort, cortege; attribute. V. accompany, coexist, attend; hang on, wait on; go hand in hand with; synchronize &c. 120; bear company, keep company; row in the same boat; bring in its train; associate with, couple with. Adj. accompanying &c. v.; concomitant, fellow, twin, joint; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... side-whiskers no longer obtains even in light literature, and the most imaginative of us is frankly aware of the fact that a detective is just a common man earning (or pretending to earn) a common living by common and obvious means. Yet in spite of ourselves we are accustomed to attribute superhuman acuteness and a lightning-like rapidity of intellect to this vague and romantic class of fellow-citizens. The ordinary work of a detective, however, requires neither of these qualities. Honesty and obedience are his chief requirements, and if he have intelligence ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... simple-minded man, and it never struck him to attribute her grief to any other cause than anxiety at the state of affairs and at her incarceration for an indefinite period in a besieged town that ran the daily risk of being taken vi et armis. Still he was a little hurt at the manner ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... wrong and put her in condition to give such exhibition as chance might tempt of that ugliness of disposition which appears from time to time in all of us not of the meek and worm-like class, and which we usually attribute to any cause under the sun but the vulgar right one. "The impertinence!" muttered Jane, with a second glance at the note which conveyed; among other humiliating things, an impression of her own absolute lack of importance to Selma Gordon. "Serves me ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... "Shiloh," "Almighty," "David," "Prophet," "Son of God," and "Son of Man," and so on. All these names are names of the one God, who is the Lord; and yet where they occur in the Word they signify some universal Divine attribute or quality distinct from other Divine attributes or qualities. So, too, where He is called "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," three are not meant, but one God; that is, there are not three Divines, but one; and this trine which is one is ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... almost see in their surfaces as in a mirror. Between those hung bunches of herbs and strings of bright-hued peppers, and in and out on the walls, and above, from the rafters, were Christmas greens, all arranged by the servants themselves, with that unerring eye for grace and color which is an attribute of the colored race. Aunt Dinah, the presiding genius of the kitchen, stood at one end of the room. Her large and portly person was clothed in a gay cotton print of many colors; and upon her head was twisted a bright silk handkerchief, with a most rakish-looking bow which reposed over her left ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... stepping-stone to the high and prosperous marriage which was to restore the ancient fortunes of the Hamley family. But now that Osborne had barely obtained his degree; that all the boastings of his father had proved vain; that the fastidiousness had led to unexpected expenses (to attribute the most innocent cause to Osborne's debts), the poor young man's ways and manners became a subject of irritation to his father. Osborne was still occupied with his books and his writings when he was at home; and this mode of passing the greater part of the day gave him but few subjects in common ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... had begun to tell her story with reluctance, dreading lest Thresk should attribute it to a woman's nerves and laugh. But he did not. He listened gravely, seriously; and, as she continued, that nightmare of an evening so lived again in her recollections that she could not but make it vivid ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... countrysides pervades these stories and a certain poignant sensual disillusionment is insistently stressed by the characters who flit through the shadowy foreground. It is the definitely realized and concrete sense of landscape that Mr. Lawrence has achieved which is his finest artistic attribute, and the sensitive response to light which is so characteristic an element in his vision bathes all the pictures he presents in a rich glow, whose gradations of light and shadow respond finely to the emotional reactions ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... exemption from outward punishment, and we are not obliged to attribute to these terrified bondmen any higher thoughts. But clearly their obedience to the command implied a measure of belief in the divine voice; and the command embodied, though in application to a transient judgment, the broad principles of sacrificial substitution, of expiation by blood, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... in the way of reassuring the men, who were rendered uneasy by the violent motions of the unwieldy vessel, and by the very harsh straining noises which rose out of the hold, which latter they would naturally attribute to the craziness of the fabric, though the true cause of it lay in the number of loose, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... Once we rub out the distinction between God and man, we rub out all moral distinctions as well. If we are not other than He is, how can we act other than He wills? If we hold that the soul is only "a finite mode of God's infinite attribute of thought," part of "the necessary expression of the infinite attributes of eternal Being," the sense of sin can be no more than ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... that we are again playing with words. In the one sense it is stark idolatry, in the other the loftiest spiritual worship. The former asserts the existence of many personal gods, the latter shrinks even from the attribute of personality as too human a conception of the Highest Spirit. The former makes the priest a kind of god on earth, the latter proclaims the priesthood of all men; the former is guided by scriptures which man calls sacred, the latter knows of no sacred oracles but the still small voice ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... are unanimous in affirming that the horizontal transference of the body of the bird is due to the perpendicular vibration of the wings, and to the yielding of the posterior or flexible margins of the wings in an upward direction, as the wings descend. I" (Dr. Pettigrew) "am, however, disposed to attribute it to the fact (1st), that the wings, both when elevated and depressed, leap forwards in curves, those curves uniting to form a continuous waved track; (2d), to the tendency which the body of the bird has to swing forwards, in a more or less horizontal direction, when once set in motion; ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... vitality and courage, have cut him off from their denominational fellowship. He was a sincere, earnest believer in the cardinal point of Quakerism, the Divine presence in the human soul—this furnishes the key to his action through life. This divine attribute he regarded not as the birth-right of Friends alone, not of one race, sex or class, but of all mankind. Therefore was he an abolitionist; therefore was he interested in the cause of the Indians; therefore was he enlisted in the cause of equal rights for women; therefore was he a friend ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... destroy us. A true soldier of freedom will not hesitate to strike vigorously and strike home, knowing that on his resolution will depend the restoration and defence of liberty. But he will always remember that restraint is the great attribute that separates man from beast, that retaliation is the vicious resource of the tyrant and the slave; that magnanimity is the splendour of manhood; and he will remember that he strikes not at his enemy's life, but at his misdeed, that ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... could, therefore, much wish your Lordship to believe, that if, in the desire you have to be relieved, your wishes are not met by me to the utmost, that you will not attribute it to any want of a due exertion to remove the difficulties which obstruct my compliance therewith, or the desire of staying here myself a week longer; but that if I am enabled to overcome them sooner, ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... to spin then. For at night, when the Laumes come, as they are accustomed to do between Thursday evening and Friday morning, they seize any spinning which has been begun, work away at it till cock-crow, and then carry it off. In modern Greece the women attribute all nightly meddling with their spinning to the Neraides (the representatives of the Hellenic Nereids. See Bernhard Schmidt's "Volksleben der Neugriechen," p. 111). In some respects the Neraida closely resemble the Lamia, and both of them have ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... sea. We were in the heart of peace in the midmost centre of the storm. Margaret was in high spirits, and her laughter vied with the clang of the jiggermast. Mr. Pike was gloomy, but I knew him well enough to attribute his gloom, not to the elements, but to the inefficients futilely freezing on the yard. As for me, I looked about at the four of us—blue-eyed, gray-eyed, all fair-skinned and royal blond—and somehow ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... irritability to which he was subject, and his extreme sensitiveness to insult or contradiction. By these means they sought to prepare the judges to interpret every thing in favor of the Count, and, even if it should prove that he had inflicted the mortal blow on the usurer, to attribute it to access of ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... not contradict the lie in sudden and direct terms, but laughed as taking the question put to him for a banter, till, by iteration, he was brought to it. For some lords came, and because they seemed to attribute somewhat to the avowed positiveness of the reporters, he rather chose to send for his brother to attest than to impose his bare denial, and so it passed; and the noble earl (of Sunderland), with Jeffries, and others of that crew, made merry, and never blushed at the lie ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... years before the schism of Photius. If the confession contained in this submission does not exhibit the mind of the Church, what form of words, what consent of will, can ever be shown to convey it? If those who subscribed this confession subscribed a falsehood, why pretend any longer to attribute authority to the Church? But it must be added, if their confession was the truth, why ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... upon them. And perceiving that the Ardeatians wanted not men, but rather enterprise, through the inexperience and timidity of their officers, he began to speak with the young men, first to the effect that they ought not to ascribe the misfortune of the Romans to the courage of their enemy, nor attribute the losses they sustained by rash counsel to the conduct of men who had no title to victory: the event had been only an evidence of the power of fortune. When he found the young men embraced the thing, he went to the magistrates and council ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... heart but the unfeeling Shylock's; saying, that it dropped as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath; and how mercy was a double blessing, it blessed him that gave, and him that received it; and how it became monarchs better than their crowns, being an attribute of God himself; and that earthly power came nearest to God's, in proportion as mercy tempered justice: and she bid Shylock remember that as we all pray for mercy, that same prayer should teach us to show mercy. Shylock only answered her by desiring ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... insurgents were almost in sight of Peking, and at any moment might arrive. Rebellion threatened in the city itself. If he went out boldly to attack the oncoming rebels his own troops might go over to the enemy, or deliver him into their hands; if he stayed in the city the people would naturally attribute it to pusillanimity, and probably open the gates ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... and constitution of individual and private property, the traditions themselves attribute this to the second king of Rome, the real founder of Roman society, who divided the territory among the citizens, marking off the limits of individual shares and placing them under the protection of religion. In this way a religious charter was granted ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... was the sound of a footfall—far away, indeed, inside the house, but still a footfall—a heavy tread, as of some one in pursuit, and its sound was loud and menacing to her excited senses. There was only one to whom she could attribute it—Leon! ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... to do with it!" cried the Duchess. "The Princess's accident may have the most unfortunate results for you and for me. People will not fail to attribute it to the incapacity of the Ministers, and possibly to their malevolence. Can one tell how far calumny may reach? You are already accused of niggardliness. According to what is being said, you refused, on my advice, to pay for warders for the young and unfortunate Princess. Worse than that, ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France
... this tendency in the parents of men of genius, leading to a convergent heredity, that we must probably attribute the undue tendency of the men of genius themselves to manifest insanity. Each of the parents separately may have displayed but a minor degree of neuropathic abnormality, but the two strains were fortified by union and the tendency to insanity became more manifest. ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... cause of this development. They were unable to believe that fire, or earth, or any such principle was adequate to account for the order and beauty visible in the frame of things; nor did they think it possible to attribute these to mere innate necessity or chance. One (Anaxagoras) observing how in living creatures Mind is the ordering force, declared that in nature also this must be the cause of order and beauty, and in so declaring he seemed, when compared with those before him, as one sober ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... secret door several times, could hear the sound of instruments and the voice of the favourite, who was singing those sweet melodies which have come down to our time, and which Edinburgh people still attribute to him. These songs were for Mary a reminder of her stay in France, where the artists in the train of the Medicis had already brought echoes from Italy; but for Darnley they were an insult, and each time he had withdrawn ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... comfort of Emily's visits, and to secure an opportunity of privately dispatching her, should any new circumstances occur to confirm the present suggestions of his suspecting mind. His consciousness of the hatred he deserved it was natural enough should at first led him to attribute to her the attempt that had been made upon his life; and, though there was no other reason to believe that she was concerned in that atrocious design, his suspicions remained; he continued to confine her in the turret, under a strict guard; and, without pity or remorse, had suffered ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... and capture it by the sudden impact of a lusty blow, after the manner of the minute-men catching a red-coat at Lexington; if we observe in their writing old world expressions that woo us subtly, like the odor of lavender from a long-closed linen chest, we may attribute it to the fact that aristocratic old Charleston, though the first to assert her independence of the political yoke, yet clung tenaciously to the literary ideals ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... better than accept the statements of collectors that all are buried in like ways and in similar tombs, different varieties in many cases occurring in the same tomb. There are, however, in a few minor groups such marked distinctions in workmanship and style that we are compelled to attribute them to different periods or to distinct communities. The groups separated most completely from others are the scarified pottery presented first in the series of painted wares, the maroon group, which follows, and other varieties represented ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... a bad old sort when you come to consider," he said with that patronage, also an attribute of extreme youth or unsubdued snobbishness, and when compared, snobbishness and youth have ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... room adjoining, opened an album of portraits that lay on the table, and selected one of a young man quite unknown to him, whose age was somewhat akin to Dare's, but who in no other attribute resembled him. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... wizardries are less potent than fancy itself. Macbeth was a murderer, not because the witches predicted, but because their prediction aroused the thoughts of murder. And this principle of action the prophetess knew well: she appealed to that attribute common to us all, the foolish and the wise, and on that fruitful ground she sowed ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Each seemed to attribute the success of the "ghost" to his own particular talent in that line, and when finally Mrs. White insisted that every one go to bed, echoes of laughter would peal out from behind closed doors, and the girls promised to get even, if they had to do so out in Tanglewood Park, ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... to come, the first to go. I have seen it go from a man in an hour, nay, on the instant. Our culture is nothing more than the accumulated wisdom of the race. It is not part of us, not a thing or attribute handed down from father to son. It is a something acquired in varying degree by each individual for himself. Yes, I do well to hark back to the primitive. It tells me where I am to-day and describes to ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... something else to say. If he had not been who he was Susannah might have perceived that he was somewhat perplexed, even embarrassed. Just as a child does not easily attribute to the adult such hindering emotions, so she supposed him to be upon a ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... attribute to mammon-marriages all the terrible evils of our disordered love-life of to-day. It is, therefore, well to remember that such conditions are not really a new thing, and cannot be regarded as the result ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... was weeping now, her whole figure shaken with sobs. "Your goodness, your sweetness overwhelms me. It is more than I can bear. But, Bobby, you mustn't believe the worst things of me. I didn't take them from the motives you may attribute ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... corporeal limits—lives beyond his mere body, and participates in the existence of all nature. He reproduces within himself the external. Such being the nature of the activity of feeling, which forms the distinguishing attribute that divides animals from plants, the question meets us at the outset, "Why is not the animal capable of education? Why can he not realize within himself his entire species or race, ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... future. For in a few days after recovering his passion for food, the effect of his former abstemiousness would begin to reach his stomach; but of course all he could then devour would work no immediate relief. This he would naturally attribute to the quality of his fare, and would change his diet a dozen times a day, his menu in the twelve working hours comprising an astonishing range of articles, from a wood-saw to a kettle of soft soap—edibles as widely dissimilar as the ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... later, when something like lucid coherence had become an attribute of their conversation, as they sat together upon the old sofa, the man drew a ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... blindness, this people will wag their poor heads, and attribute their diseases not to ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... their neglect of the warnings of the goddess they attribute all the reverses which have of late years befallen their sect. It is expressly forbidden, in the creed of the old Thugs, to murder women or cripples. The modern Thugs have become unscrupulous upon this point, murdering women, and even children, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Prince of the second branch, seeing his mother's disgrace since the great affair of the poison, hated me mortally. He carried his treachery so far as to attribute to me the misfortunes of Olympe, saying, and publishing all over Paris, that I had incited accusers in order to be able to deprive her forcibly of her superintendence. This post, which had been sold to me for four ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... they attribute to these rifts? That is a question difficult to solve. They are certainly anterior to the formation of craters and circles, for several have introduced themselves by breaking through their circular ramparts. Thus it may be that, ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... of the characters are exaggerated, and therefore at every step the possibility of artistic impression is interfered with. Whatever people may say, however they may be enraptured by Shakespeare's works, whatever merits they may attribute to them, it is perfectly certain that he was not an artist and that his works are not artistic productions. Without the sense of measure, there never was nor can be an artist, as without the feeling of rhythm there can not be a musician. Shakespeare might ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... of a long series of services which, for centuries, it has rendered to its members, the zeal and success with which it discharges its functions, the feelings of gratitude they entertain for it, the importance they attribute to its offices, the need they have of it, and their attachment to it, the conviction imprinted in their minds that without it they would be deprived of a benefit upon which they set more store than upon any ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... mood, amused myself with analyzing this odor. I have resolved it into the following elements: lobsters, gunpowder, trampled-grass, wheel-grease, and cigars. It is mainly to these ingredients, grafted upon the other ordinary city smells, that I attribute the Fourth of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... idiots, and infinite swarms of people that are seduced by them. In the other extreme or in defect, march those impious epicures, libertines, atheists, hypocrites, infidels, worldly, secure, impenitent, unthankful, and carnal-minded men, that attribute all to natural causes, that will acknowledge no supreme power; that have cauterised consciences, or live in a reprobate sense; or such desperate persons as are too distrustful of his mercies. Of these there ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior |
