"Minuteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with all the phenomena of life in the bygone ages. We are brought in contact with actual flesh-and-blood men and women, not the ghostly outline figures which pass for such, in what is called History. The horn lantern of the biographer, by the aid of which, with painful minuteness, he chronicled, from day to day, his own outgoings and incomings, making visible to us his pitiful wants, labors, trials, and tribulations of the stomach and of the conscience, sheds, at times, a strong clear light upon contemporaneous ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... telling me all that? there is half an hour that we have lost." This storm[36] disconcerted me. He perceived my confusion, and resumed his discourse with mildness.—"Come, make yourself easy, and repeat to me, with the greatest minuteness, all that has passed between you and X****." I then related the circumstances which had induced me to have an interview with Monsieur X****. I repeated our conversation word for word. I gave him a complete account of all the faults and excesses ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... that the substance of some real conversations may have been reported to the historian. But events which, if they ever happened, happened in ages and nations so remote that the particulars could never have been known to him, are related with the greatest minuteness of detail. We have all that Candaules said to Gyges, and all that passed between Astyages and Harpagus. We are, therefore, unable to judge whether, in the account which he gives of transactions respecting which he might possibly have been well informed, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... more anxious, Till last night when together we sat in Piazza San Marco (Then, when the morrow must bring us parting—forever, it might be), Taking our ices al fresco. Some strolling minstrels were singing Airs from the Trovatore. I noted with painful observance, With the unwilling minuteness at such times absolute torture, All that brilliant scene, for which I cared nothing, before me: Dark-eyed Venetian leoni regarding the forestieri With those compassionate looks of gentle and curious wonder Home-keeping Italy's nations bend on the voyaging races,— ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... told, as if she were listening to him, all the facts without forgetting a single detail, mentioning the most trivial matters with the minuteness of a countryman. And the child still kept assailing him, making ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... civil liberty. In conclusion, we can hardly recommend the book before us, further than to say, that its gossip, though often prosy to the verge of twaddle, is also sometimes droll and amusing from its graphic minuteness. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... Cawnpore, but that beyond that indiscretion they had acted, as reported by Mr. Warrener, with great courage, coolness, and good discipline. Then the Warreners went back to their tent, and had to go through their yarn again with great minuteness and detail. ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... murder he had decoyed the unhappy young lady to the fatal spot, and then and there effected his purpose. The prosecuting attorney made this statement, not with the brevity with which it is here reported, but with a minuteness of detail and warmth of coloring that harrowed up the hearts of all who heard it. He finished by saying that he should call the witnesses in the order of time corresponding with the facts they ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... vivid: they are projected with enormous energy, in actions whose violence affords scope for the most vehement self-expression; but are they not, in reality, colossally simple rather than complex? It is true that in Lear the phenomena of insanity are reproduced with astonishing minuteness and truth; but this does not imply any elaborate analysis or demand any great space. Hamlet is complex; and were I "talking for victory," I should point out that Hamlet is, of all the tragedies, precisely the one which does not come within the frame of ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... times of fierce and overpowering delirium, when my name was uttered in the transport of the most passionate enthusiasm—when my features as absent, though not present, were recalled and dwelt upon with all the minuteness of the most faithful detail; and I knelt by her in all those moments, when no other human being was near, and clasped her wan hand, and wiped the dew from her forehead, and gazed upon her convulsed ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of his talk had been devoted to other people, but they were all of them the people whom he saw in his own private mirror. I have no doubt that for the time being I was a figure in his dreams, and that I shall be described with the same minuteness to the unhappy recipients of his confidences who are now awaiting him at dinner,—at which I may mention ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... The minuteness of his record of the gaieties shows how amused and interested Boz was in all that he saw. Nothing escaped him of the routine, day, hour, and place; all is given, even the different rooms at the Assembly House. "In the ball-room, the long card-room, the octagon card-room, the staircases, the passages, ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... large, noble, melancholy landscapes of Philippe de Champagne; and the two magnificent Italian pictures of Leopold Robert: they are, perhaps, the very finest pictures that the French school has produced,—as deep as Poussin, of a better color, and of a wonderful minuteness and veracity ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... deny, the Hebraic [14:3] character of the Fourth Gospel, does he wholly ignore the investigations of Luthardt and others, which (as 'apologists' venture to think) show that the whole texture of the language in the Fourth Gospel is Hebraic? Why again, when he alludes to 'the minuteness of details' [14:4] in this Gospel as alleged in defence of its authenticity, is he satisfied with this mere caricature of the 'apologetic' argument? Having set up a man of straw, he has no difficulty in knocking him down. He has only to declare ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... productions of an earlier age, and in the tombs of the Assaseef, at Thebes, are many admirable specimens of Egyptian art. To those, however, who understand the true feeling of this peculiar school, it is evident, that though in minuteness and finish they are deserving of the highest commendation, yet in grandeur of conception and in boldness of execution they fall far short of the sculptures of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... with great diligence and minuteness, was altogether ineffectual; they could obtain no intelligence of the runaway. Mr. Trunnion was well distracted at the news of his flight; he raved with great fury at the imprudence of Peregrine, whom ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... baron visited his lands, his tenants were not only obliged to give him and his followers shelter, but also provisions and food, the nature and quality of which were all arranged beforehand with the most extraordinary minuteness. The lesser nobles took advantage sometimes of the power they possessed to repurchase this obligation; but the rich, on the contrary, were most anxious to seize the occasion of proudly displaying before their sovereign all the pomp in their power, at the risk even of mortgaging their ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... at last, "that I do not remember with sufficient minuteness the details you have given me, to be able to advise. I can only suggest that Lord Donal met the Princess herself at the Duchess of Chiselhurst's ball. The Princess, naturally, would wish to mislead him regarding her identity; and so, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... is fond of the place," she added in conclusion, after setting out all the merits of the villa with feminine minuteness; "at least I know he used to like it, and I think it would please him to get well there. I can only say that it would make me very happy; so do arrange it, dear Mr. Fenton, if possible, and oblige yours ever ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... and then with minuteness, with much learning and eloquence, discoursed successively upon the histories, or emblematic devices, of this the chief work of his hands. All were sorry when ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... they have arrived, I may be pardoned for expressing my belief that this kind of investigation is often pursued with an exaggerated confidence. Plausible conjecture is too frequently mistaken for positive proof. Undue significance is attached to what may be mere casual coincidences, and a minuteness of accuracy is professed in discriminating between the different elements in a narrative which cannot be attained by mere internal evidence. In all writings, but especially in the writings of an age when criticism was ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... (more especially of Flemish and German) design down to the latest times, giving a great superiority to the French and Flemish illuminated work, and causing a proportionate inferiority in their large pictorial efforts. Even Rubens and Vandyke cannot free themselves from a certain meanness and minuteness in disposition of drapery. ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... wore on, diversified with occasional encounters, which Caesar details with the minuteness of a scientific general writing for his profession, and with those admiring mentions of each individual act of courage which so intensely endeared him to his troops. Once an accidental opportunity offered ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... books and talking with the people, I became convinced that the aboriginal tracker's performances evince a craft, a penetration, a luminous sagacity, and a minuteness and accuracy of observation in the matter of detective-work not found in nearly so remarkable a degree in any other people, white or colored. In an official account of the blacks of Australia published by the government ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which there are innumerable villages (and scarcely a hill), are marked as "unknown mountainous region." General Fraser, after the devotion of a lifetime to the labour, has produced a survey which, in extent and minuteness of detail, stands unrivalled. In this great work he had the co-operation of Major Skinner and of Captain Gallwey, and to these two gentlemen the public are indebted for the greater portion of the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... smaller animals. But even if their relative susceptibility be assumed to be the same, the lethal dose given the rabbit is equivalent to giving a 140-pound man one dose containing the furane-alcohol content of over 5,000 cups of coffee. Thus, in view of the very apparent minuteness of the quantity of this compound present in one cup of coffee, together with the fact that it is not cumulative in its physiological action, the importance of its toxic properties becomes very inconsequential to even the most profuse ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... for printing from glass or paper negatives, giving a minuteness of detail unattained by any other method, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... anxiety was felt by all for the ills of the one; and for days the "I" would be forgotten if any member of the home-circle was "sick." And the concerns of the patient, whether suffering from a cold, sore eyes, a sprained ankle, or "had her tonsils out," were discussed with minuteness of detail worthy an International Conference. How the patient slept, what the doctor said, the effect of the new medicine, how the heart was standing the strain, what the visiting neighbors thought of the case, in fact the whole subject of sickness held a morbid ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... previous knowledge the material for theoretic images. He had only to change the magnitude of conceptions already in his mind to arrive at the Emission Theory of Light. Newton supposed light to consist of elastic particles of inconceivable minuteness, shot out with inconceivable rapidity by luminous bodies. Optical reflection certainly occurred as if light consisted of such particles, and this was ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... fishes, and insects with considerable minuteness, although it is obvious that he had no special training in, or great gift for, natural history. Wafer eventually reached Philadelphia, where he availed himself of King James's ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... my dear Grandison. I know you love I should be so. From this minuteness, you will judge of the workings of her mind. They are resolved to take your advice, (it was very seasonable,) and treat her with indulgence. The count is earnest to ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... and even the most innocent ones, must come to his knowledge. He is not content with the spontaneous declaration that the penitent feels disposed to make of all infractions of duty; but he insists on examining the case with the most scrupulous minuteness, and takes as much pains as would a clever, cunning lawyer to extract every particle of evidence from the witnesses for or against a culprit on his trial. Under this last point of view, auricular confession may ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... owing to relations between the sexes.] Nearly the same is the case with all the religions obligations of Islam, prayer, lustration, etc. But although the minuteness of detail with which these are enjoined tends toward that jejune and formal worship which we witness every-where in Moslem lands, still there is nothing in these observances themselves which (religion apart) should lower ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... any minuteness the course of Mr. Tazewell through more than three of the most anxious months of his life would far exceed my present limits, and as I have already treated this topic in a separate work, and have been required to treat it again, I shall ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... this Poem, as well as in others, speaks openly of his tastes and passions: his own fortunes are dwelt on with painful minuteness, and his errors are recorded with the accuracy, but not the seriousness of the confessional. He seems to have been fond of taking himself to task. It was written when "Hungry ruin had him in the wind," and emigration to the West Indies was the only refuge which he could think ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... his picture, and the events of the time when he lived gave the scenes for the painting, his colours would fail, and his outlines become unsteady. In other words, there could not be the scrupulous minuteness and the perfect freedom which make history live and breathe, unless, like Tacitus, he registered facts in which he took the deepest interest, from feeling their influence directly and powerfully exerted over himself, and the living ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... tell, and no doubt, if she thought it would flatter, would tell, a beautiful young girl that her destiny was to be a queen; but there is in this prediction a minuteness of detail, that cannot be accounted for on the ground of accidental coincidence. It is a brief history of her life. Unless we are prepared to believe that an ignorant old mulatto woman was gifted by divine Providence with supernatural power, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... meaning and a charm; that the open record of its immemorial past tells us at every turn that all agencies have conspired for loveliness and ruin itself has been benign. A passage of Wordsworth's describing the character of the lake-shores illustrates this fact with loving minuteness. ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... Perouse made the south coast of New Holland on Dec. 5, 1792, about twenty-eight leagues to the north-west of Cape Chatham.* The coast, from the South-west Cape to the longitude of Termination Island, was explored by the admiral, with all the minuteness that the state of the weather could permit; and he was, generally, able to keep the shore closer abord than captain Vancouver had done, and to supply the deficiencies in his chart. The broken land to the north of Termination Island was found ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... microscope reveals innumerable animalcules in the hundredth part of a drop of water. They all eat, digest, move and from all appearances of their frolics, they are endowed with sensation and ability of enjoyment. What then shall we say of the minuteness of the food they eat; of the blood that surges through their veins; of their nervous system that thrills and guides them? Their minutest organs must be composed of molecules, atoms, ions and electrons inconceivably smaller than ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... "Priestly Narrative" and of the "Jehovistic Narrative" have, for the sake of distinctness, been applied to them. The former is so called because the chapters in Exodus and the two following books, which treat with particular minuteness of the various ceremonial institutions of Israel, are considered to be by the same writer. The latter has received its name from the preference shown by the writer for the use, as the Divine name, of the word Jehovah,—so spelt ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... presented the golden cup to the baron, with a low bow, that nobleman could not find sufficient words to express his admiration. He sighed with rapture, and examined the cup from every side with the utmost minuteness. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Cazvin calls the Spirit of the Earth) was the tutelar genius of good and virtuous women, etc. For all this the reader may consult the 19th and 20th chapters of Hyde, "de Religione Veterum Persarum," where the names and attributes of these daily and monthly angels are with much minuteness and erudition explained. It appears from the Zend-avesta that the Persians had a certain office or prayer for every day of the month (addressed to the particular angel who presided over it), which they ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... to Anthony's Seat is the fifth plate. Here we scarcely know which to admire most, the beautiful work and etchy spirit of the mountainous foreground, the minuteness and delicacy of the distant city, or the actual brightness of the Firth of Forth broken by the "noble breast-work of Salisbury Crags and the point of the Cat's nick." The Crags, it will be recollected, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... specify, with a little minuteness, two or three points of service. Nature never spares the opium or nepenthe; but wherever she mars her creature with some deformity or defect, lays her poppies plentifully on the bruise, and the sufferer goes joyfully through life, ignorant of the ruin, and incapable of seeing ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... not allowable to lay down that the society in which they are united was originally organised on the patriarchal model. The chief lineaments of such a society, as collected from the early chapters in Genesis, I need not attempt to depict with any minuteness, both because they are familiar to most of us from our earliest childhood, and because, from the interest once attaching to the controversy which takes its name from the debate between Locke and Filmer, they fill a whole chapter, though not a very profitable one, in ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... kept in the very highest order, the trees and flowers are watched and inspected with the greatest minuteness. An old invalid soldier commands his 500 or 600 men as gardeners and overseers. Every leaf that falls in pond or canal is carefully fished up. They trim and polish the trees and paths in the gardens to the greatest nicety, and the grass ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... things by halves, gave to the paintings of the Hollanders another distinctive trait—finish. This they carried to the last possible degree of perfection. Critics say truthfully that in Dutch paintings one may discover the first quality of the nation—patience. Everything is portrayed with the minuteness of a daguerreotype: the furniture with all the graining of the wood, the leaf with all its veins, a thread in a bit of cloth, the patch with all the stitches showing, the animal with every hair distinct, the face with all its wrinkles,—everything is finished ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... But of all these branches the most important are the inlaying and mosaic of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, represented in a central manner by these mosaics of St. Mark's. Missal-painting could not, from its minuteness, produce the same sublime impressions, and frequently merged itself in mere ornamentation of the page. Modern book-illustration has been so little skillful as hardly to be worth naming. Sculpture, though in some positions it becomes ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... (540/2. This refers to the distortion of shells in cleaved rocks.) of the mechanical action in cleaved rocks. The great curvature would be, I think, a grand discovery of Sharpe's, but I confess there is some want of minuteness in the statement of Sharpe which makes me wish to see his facts confirmed. That the foliation and cleavage are parts of curves I am quite prepared, from what I have seen, to believe; but the simplicity ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... weary the reader to describe this Crown-Prince Mansion; which, by desperate study of our abstruse materials, it is possible to do with auctioneer minuteness. There are engraved VIEWS of Reinsberg and its Environs; which used to lie conspicuous in the portfolios of collectors,—-which I have not seen. [See Hennert, just cited, for the titles of them.] Of the House itself, engraved Frontages (FACADES), Ground-plans, are ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... began to ask themselves if this Ayrton's word was to be absolutely believed. There was something suspicious about this unexpected meeting. Certainly the man had mentioned facts and dates which corresponded, and the minuteness of his details was most striking. Still exactness of details was no positive proof. Indeed, it has been noticed that a falsehood has sometimes gained ground by being exceedingly particular in minutiae. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... of the Periplus did not enter the Gulf of Persia, he certainly stretched over, with the monsoon, either to Karmania, or directly to Scindi, or to the Gulf of Cambay; for at these places the minuteness of information which distinguishes the ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... made the most effective use. One could wish that Boldrewood had made himself as far as possible an exception to the rule—that he had aimed at a praiseworthy provinciality by matching with the elaborate minuteness of his local colour some finished and memorable studies of ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... they are works of imagination and not true stories. "The little art he is truly master of, is of forging a story and imposing it upon the world as truth." So wrote one of his contemporaries. Charles Lamb, in criticizing Defoe, notices this minuteness of detail and remarks that he is, therefore, an author suited only for "servants" (meaning that this method can appeal only to comparatively uneducated minds). Really as every boy and girl knows, ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... discussed the intimacies of domesticity with a frankness and a minuteness which dismayed Carol. Juanita Haydock communicated Harry's method of shaving, and his interest in deer-shooting. Mrs. Gougerling reported fully, and with some irritation, her husband's inappreciation of liver and bacon. Maud Dyer chronicled Dave's digestive disorders; quoted a recent ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... after the birth of Isaac and when Sarah had attained the age of one hundred and twenty-seven, we come to the conclusion of her "mortal story." Her death, and the respect paid to her memory, are related with a circumstantial minuteness which is truly honourable to her character. This affecting event occurred at Kirjah-Arba, or Hebron, in the plain of Mamre, where Abraham came to bemoan his loss. Venerable man! thine was no common mourning! Thou didst not merely sit ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... the square rose the mediaeval front of the cathedral, where the imagination of a Gothic architect had long ago flowered out indestructibly, in the first place, a grand design, and then covering it with such abundant detail of ornament, that the magnitude of the work seemed less a miracle than its minuteness. You would suppose that he must have softened the stone into wax, until his most delicate fancies were modelled in the pliant material, and then had hardened it into stone again. The whole was a vast, black-letter page of the richest and quaintest poetry. In fit keeping with all this old ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... matters. Being an artist, he could not merely say all men were his brothers; he must show them as such. If their weakness and sins are his also, he must not flinch when it comes to the test; he must make his words good. We may be shocked at the fullness and minuteness of the specification, but that is no concern of his; he deals with the concrete and not with the abstract,—fraternity and equality as a reality, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... and minuteness of such descriptive character sketches, but even the shortest and most general is necessary to the proper appreciation of every play, even if it is being merely read. When a student is assimilating a role for rehearsing or acting, these additions of the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... women. His gentlemen, whether young or old, are apt to be stiff, priggish, and commonplace; and his ladies, especially his young ladies, are as deficient in individuality as the figures and faces of a fashion-print. Their personal and mental charms are set forth with all the minuteness of a passport; but, after all, we cannot but think that these fine creatures, with hair, brow, eyes, and lips of the most orthodox and approved pattern, would do very little towards helping one through a rainy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... level of poetry, to harness mules to a wagon, particularizing every article of their furniture, straps, rings, staples, and even the tying of the knots that kept all together. HOMER, who writes always to the eye, with all his sublimity and grandeur, has the minuteness ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... camp, the court, the boudoir, the low faubourg, or the country chateau are ranged in order, and catalogued. This is done with relentless audacity, often with a touch of grotesque exaggeration, but always with almost wearying minuteness. Sometimes this great writer finds that a description of actuality fails to give the true spiritual key to a situation, and he overflows into allegory, or Swendenborgian mysticism, just as Bastien-Lepage resorts to a coating of actual gilt, in depicting that ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... old times. Once an Indian went forth to hunt. And he departed from the east branch of the Penobscot, and came to the head of another branch that leads into the east branch, and this he followed even to the foot of Mount Katahdin. [Footnote: This minuteness of needless detail is very characteristic of Indian tales. I do not think that it is introduced for the sake of local color, or to give an air of truthful seeming, because the Indian simply believes the whole, as it is. I think the reason may be that, owing to their love of adventure, they enjoy ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... poem, which consists of a series of narratives told by a party of travellers gathered in Sudbury Inn, and each suited, either by its scene or its sentiment, to the speaker who recites it. In this also there is a natural reminiscence of Chaucer; and if we miss the rich minuteness of his Van Eyck painting, or the depth of his thoughtful humor, we find the same airy grace, tenderness, simple strength, and exquisite felicities of description. Nor are twinkles of sly humor wanting. The Interludes, and above all the Prelude, are masterly examples ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... one character give a description, over a hundred pages long, repeating at length, word for word, long conversations which he has never heard, marking the changes of colour which he has not seen—and all this with a minuteness which even the firmest memory and the most loquacious tongue could not recall? Does not this give an unreality to the style incompatible with art, which ought to be the mainspring of all imaginative work? This, however, is not Mrs. Shelley's error alone, but is ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... has of private life a very deep and fine sentiment which goes even to minuteness of detail and of superstition. He knows how to move you and make you palpitate from the first, simply in depicting a garden-walk, a dining-room, a piece of furniture. He divines the mysteries of provincial life; sometimes he makes them. Most often he does not recognize and therefore isolates ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... every portion of the brain with care and minuteness by the psychometric method, even tracing the convolutions and their anfractuosities, and observing from point to point how beautifully and harmoniously the innumerable functions blend with each ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... were the thoughts that floated through the mind of this child of twelve years old. And from these precocious yearnings after the infinite, Olive's fancy turned to earthly, childish things. She pictured with curious minuteness how she would feel when she awoke next morning, and found that Elspie was dead;—how there would be a funeral; how strange the house would seem afterward; even what would be done with the black bonnet and shawl which, two days since, Elspie had hung up against the nursery-door ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... employed than in shedding them), to see her rake out a bed of fresh and glowing coals, and proceed to broil the mackerel. Her usually pale cheeks were all ablaze with heat and hurry. She watched the fish with as much tender care and minuteness of attention as if,—we know not how to express it otherwise,—as if her own heart were on the gridiron, and her immortal happiness were involved in its being done precisely to ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shawls, household utensils, crockery, everything the contadino needs and loves. Gaspare, having money to lay out, considered it his serious duty to examine everything that was to be bought with slow minuteness. It did not matter whether the goods were suited to a masculine taste or not. He went into the mysteries of feminine attire with almost as much assiduity as a mother displays when buying a daughter's trousseau, ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Pope, you will find described with rather a malicious minuteness some of the personal habits and infirmities of the great little Pope. His body was crooked, he was so short that it was necessary to raise his chair in order to place him on a level with other people at table.(140) ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... its own environment; and his logical starting-point is an analysis of wealth-production as it exists to-day. He begins by insisting on the fact that labour in the modern world is divided with such a general and such an increasing minuteness that each labour produces one kind of product only, of which he himself can consume but a small fraction, and often consumes nothing. His own product, therefore, has for him the character of wealth only because he is able to exchange it for ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... recommended by their novelty, listened, with a degree of patience and attention, which his guest mistook for the humility of wonder. The latter, indeed, described the few festivities which the turbulence of that period permitted to the court of Henry the Third, with a minuteness, that somewhat recompensed for his ostentation; but, when he came to speak of the character of the Duke de Joyeuse, of a secret treaty, which he knew to be negotiating with the Porte, and of the light in which Henry of Navarre was ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... procession that has gone seeking the place of sepulchre three hundred years and more in wind and rain—are daubed in forcibly against the glowing ferns and heather. Every tassel of their rusty foliage is defined with pre-Raphaelite minuteness. And a sorry figure they make out there in the sun, like misbegotten yew-trees! The scene is all pitched in a key of colour so peculiar, and lit up with such a discharge of violent sunlight, as a man might live fifty years in England and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been amply verified by experience; the extraordinary minuteness and accuracy of Mr. Darwin's observations, combined with the charm and simplicity of his descriptions, have ensured the popularity of this book with all classes of readers—and that popularity has even increased in recent years. No attempt, however, has ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... check; whereas, in the course of centuries, art—and especially literary creation—becomes, as we have already said, a decadent and rationalized mythology. This form of invention consists neither of idealizing the external world, nor reproducing it with the minuteness of realism, but remaking the universe to suit oneself, without taking into account natural laws, and despising the impossible: it is a liberated realism. Often, in an environment of pure fancy, where only caprice reigns, the characters appear clear, well-fashioned, living. The ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... found in large and expensive works, with a host of annotations from the journals of recent travellers and other volumes which bear upon the main subject. This part of the series, describing vegetable substances used for the food of man, is executed with considerable minuteness. A Pythagorean would gloat over its accuracy, and a vegetable diet man would become inflated with its success in establishing his eccentricities. The contents are the Corn-plants, Esculent Roots, Herbs, Spices, Tea, Coffee, &c. &c. In such a multiplicity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... ceases. Perhaps, although deficient in minuteness of detail, this pot pourri of gossip, history, description, anecdote, suggestion, and opinion, may not only amuse the traveller by railway, but assist him in choosing routes leading to those scenes or those pursuits in ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... precepts he is safe from the Daevas, under the immediate protection of Ormazd. The substance of the law is the command, "THINK PURELY, SPEAK PURELY, ACT PURELY." All that comes from Ormazd is pure, from Ahriman impure; and bodily purity has a like worth with moral purity. Hence the multitude and minuteness of precepts concerning bodily cleanliness. In fact the whole liturgic worship ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Rev. Nathl. Rogers, there was a portrait of that worthy, about a third of the size of life, carved in relief, with his cloak, band, and wig, in excellent preservation, all the buttons of his waistcoat being cut with great minuteness,—the minister's nose being on a level with his cheeks. It was an upright gravestone. Returning home, I held a colloquy with a young girl about the right road. She had come out to feed a pig, and was a little suspicious that we were making fun of her, yet answered us with a shy laugh ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... England and Scotland when his popularity in Germany has departed, and he, like the philosophers whom he criticizes, is of the past. No other thinker has ever dissected the human mind with equal patience and minuteness. He has lightened the burden of thought because he has shown us that the chains which we wear are of our own forging. To be able to place ourselves not only above the opinions of men but above their modes of thinking, is a great ...
— Sophist • Plato
... thought you heard some gormandizer dilating upon the roasting a savory goose at Michaelmas as he described the roasting of some Spanish Don to make him discover his treasure—a detail given with a minuteness that made every rich old burgher present turn uncomfortably in his chair. All this would be told with infinite glee, as if he considered it an excellent joke; and then he would give such a tyrannical leer in the face ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... of future punishment reached its most repulsive and abnormal developments in the hands of the monks. A vast literature was produced by them, portraying, with vivid minuteness, the pangs of hell. Volcanoes were said to be the portals of the lower world, that heaved and sighed as human souls were plunged into the awful depths. God was held up as a fearful judge, and the saving mercy of Christ himself paled before the ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... very many instances the morality of the moralist has outshone the righteousness of the Christian. Yes! and I have seen canoe-paddles carved by South Sea Islanders with no better tools than an oyster-shell and a sharp fish-bone, which in the minuteness and delicacy of their work, as well as in the truth and taste of their pattern, might put to shame the work of carvers with better tools. But that is not the fault of the tools; it is the fault of the carvers. And so, whilst we acknowledge ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Mr Quiverful might be, he would not allow himself to be talked out of his opinion on this occasion; and proceeded with much minuteness to explain to his wife the tone in which Mr Slope had spoken of Mrs Proudie's interference in diocesan matters. As he did so, a new idea gradually instilled itself into the matron's head, and a new course of action presented itself to her judgement. What if, after all, Mrs Proudie ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... author's general narrative of the Doctor's life in Mr. Croker's edition of 1831 - and not the least interesting circumstance connected with it is, that Johnson himself read, from time to time, Boswell's record of his sayings and doings; and, so far from being displeased with its minuteness, expressed great admiration of its accuracy, and encouraged the chronicler to proceed with his grand ulterior proceeding. See Life, vol. i. P. viii. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... magazine acceptances, and then revamping the manuscripts to make them presentable. When the young aspirant got a start at last, he rode into sudden fame by describing the celebrated author's private life with such a caustic humor and such minuteness of blistering detail that the book sold a prodigious edition, and broke the celebrated author's heart with mortification. With his latest gasp he said, "Alas, the books deceived me; they do not tell the whole story. Beware of the struggling ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... finish. This is probably the position of most of his readers, who cannot very logically account for either preference. We can only make sure that we have here an annalist, or analyst, as we choose, who fascinates us from his first page to his last, whose narrative or whose comment may enter into any minuteness of detail without fatiguing us, and can only truly ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... had been providentially delayed until the last half of the nineteenth century with its steam and electricity, annihilators of space and time, in order that her evolution might be studied with a minuteness impossible in any previous age, or by any previous generation. It is almost as if one were conducting an experiment in human evolution in his own laboratory, imposing the ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... little foreseen, have unfolded themselves, in all their grandeur, to the eyes of the present age. It is a common amusement of speculative minds to contrast the magnitude of the most important events with the minuteness of their primeval causes, and the records of mankind are full of examples for such contemplations. It is, however, a more profitable employment to trace the constituent principles of future greatness in their kernel; to detect in the acorn at our feet the germ of that majestic oak, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... manuscripts, as well as treatises in ten other Oriental languages, which only made me deplore my ignorance, since I was unable to read a word of any of them. The illuminations, though, struck me as fully equal to the finest fourteenth-century European work in their extreme minuteness and wonderful delicacy of detail. The young priest, whom I should suspect of being what is termed in ecclesiastical circles "a spike," was evidently very familiar with the Liturgy of the Church of England, but it came with somewhat of a shock to hear him apply to Buddha terms which ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... philosopher, as you are good enough to call me, elaborating theories by the aid of cases sought out by himself, and by him watched and scrutinised with more time at command, and consequently infinitely more minuteness than the ordinary practitioner can afford, falls insensibly into habits of observation, which accompany him everywhere, and are exercised, as some people would say, impertinently, upon every subject that presents itself with the least likelihood ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... impossible for the annalist to be profound and interesting, authentic and animated, at the same time, that a large class of the learned repudiate as spurious the renown of Macaulay,—although his research and his minuteness cannot be questioned, and only in a few instances has his accuracy been successfully impugned. They distrust him chiefly because he is agreeable, doubt his correctness for the reason that his style fascinates, and deem admiration ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... submitted to the House of Representatives a report, signed only by himself and Mr. Watmough, of Pennsylvania, in which he declared his dissent from the report of the committee on that subject. After examining their proceedings with minuteness and searching severity, he asserted that they were without authority, and in flagrant violation of the rights of the bank, and of the principles on which the freedom of this ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... the circumstantial minuteness with which you have related the youthful adventures of Mr. H. I am surprised at your not mentioning one which I know to be a fact. On the first night's performance of the company after his arrival at Bristol, his passionate love of the stage made him imprudent ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... traditional lore of a still more remote period. The same may be said of certain works on cautery and acupuncture, both of which are still practised by Chinese doctors; and also of works on the pulse, the variations of which have been classified and allocated with a minuteness hardly credible. Special treatises on fevers, skin-diseases, diseases of the feet, eyes, heart, &c., are to be found in great quantities, as well as veterinary treatises on the treatment of diseases of the horse and the domestic buffalo. But in the whole range of Chinese medical literature ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... were all those harmonizing wrinkles which become old age—upon canvas—while, below her chin, communicating with a small and shrunken neck, was that sort of concavity, or dewlap, which painters delight to express with a minuteness of touch, and mellowness of tint, that contribute largely to picturesque effect! This good old woman received us with perfect elasticity of spirits and of action. It should seem that we were the first Englishmen who had visited her solitude this year. Her husband approached, but she ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... it be said that this was a greater and more grievous loss to the mind's eye of posterity than to the bodily organs of Pepys himself. It makes me restless and discontented to think what a Diary equal in minuteness and truth of portraiture to the preceding from 1669 to 1688 or 1690 would have been for the true causes, process and character ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... individuality in the Icelandic historian's description of King Olaf that wins one's interest—at first as in an acquaintance—and rivets it at last as in a personal friend. The old Chronicle lingers with such loving minuteness over his attaching qualities, his social, generous nature, his gaiety and "frolicsomeness;" even his finical taste in dress, and his evident proneness to fall too hastily in love, have a value in the ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... being careful to let the cause of humanity and the spread of civil liberty be his watchword, go out with his sword sharpened, and after cutting down the existing powers, snatch up the diadem and place it upon his own head. Glanmoregain explained his various plans with such minuteness that they all became cloud and mist in the general's mind; indeed, he began to debate within himself as to the means by which he could serve two masters whose interests seemed to run in directly opposite channels. Minister Potter had, however, a ready facility for ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... clergyman. This union of the three creeds in homage to their sovereign did not displease the Emperor, strange as it was. Count Beugnot's Memoirs must be consulted for a full account of the activity, the interest in details, the minuteness of the administrative investigations which, at Dsseldorf as everywhere else, characterized Napoleon in these laborious journeys, on which, under pretext of seeking distraction, he kept himself in almost as active movement as if he were at war. The Count who once played whist ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... were mildly Liberal, more warmly Home Rulers, but they put above all the interests of the Church. They were, too, fierce partisans on the controversies about Church music, and had a zeal for the beauty and order of their respective churches that was admirable in its minuteness and its perseverance. They both had a large circle of friends with whom they rejoiced at annual festivities at their Colleges, and with whom they habitually and freely censured their immediate authorities. Those who were warmest ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... brothers, who welcomed our friend and his three companions with grave Italian courtesy. Understanding the curiosity the four felt to see their premises, they did the honors of their place, with a minuteness as politely considerate towards the strangers as it was gratifying to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... the rather that, after an interval of more than twenty years, Schiller himself, on meeting with his early comrade (the late Dr. Elwert of Kantstadt) for the first time since their boyhood, reminded him of the adventure, recounting the circumstances with great minuteness and glee. It is as follows: Once in 1768, Elwert and he had to repeat their catechism together on a certain day publicly in the church. Their teacher, an ill-conditioned, narrow-minded pietist, had previously threatened them with a thorough flogging if they missed even a single word. To make ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... visible some markings still smaller than the last; and in like manner has every increase in the power of the telescope developed more worlds and suns far away from our system and beyond our Milky Way. An approach to the infinite in minuteness and to the infinite in magnitude and distance is thus furnished to us by ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... forms, afforded great amusement and satisfaction. There he united in his person, for some time, the priest and the ruler: he experienced during his residence, most of the anxieties and difficulties incident to such stations, and detailed them with curious minuteness. As a cultivator he was energetic and persevering; but the rats devoured his seed, or torrents washed it away: or a tropical hurricane, which tore up huge trees, overthrew the frail buildings he reared. His people conspired ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... being no movement beyond this wave, though there will be in the space which it encloses, namely in parts of the particular waves, those parts which do not touch the sphere DCF. And all this ought not to seem fraught with too much minuteness or subtlety, since we shall see in the sequel that all the properties of Light, and everything pertaining to its reflexion and its refraction, can be explained in principle by this means. This is a matter which has been quite unknown to those who hitherto have ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... these books. . . . The events are described with minuteness and care. The result is a very ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... have sometimes descended from that elevation of style, which the reader might expect in a quarto volume; we have frequently been obliged to record facts concerning children which may seem trifling, and to enter into a minuteness of detail which may appear unnecessary. No anecdotes, however, have been admitted without due deliberation; nothing has been introduced to gratify the idle curiosity of others, or to indulge our own feelings ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... painting was not one to attract Meissonier, who was ambitious to paint like the old Dutch artists, Terburg, Metzu, Mieris, and others, who have the charm that their pictures are finished with the most exquisite minuteness, and yet treated in such a large way that, after awhile, we forget the microscopic wonder of the performance and think only of the skill the artist has shown in painting character. Meissonier was the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... I found that she did not see the blemishes—that she appreciated nothing I had said, comprehended nothing. Such unaccountable obtuseness puzzled me. I began again, going over the whole with even greater minuteness and care. I worked hard: the perspiration stood in beads upon my forehead as I struggled with her—what shall I call it—obstinacy? But it was not exactly obstinacy. She simply could not see the faults of her own work, any more than a blind man can see the smoke that dims ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... be of no less importance than the outward act is to be gathered from the praises of kindliness already cited and the cry of "I am pure," which is repeated by the soul on trial. Moreover, there is a minuteness of detail in the confession which shows no little delicacy of moral appreciation—"I have not privily done evil against mankind," "I have not afflicted men," "I have not withheld milk from the mouths of sucklings," "I have not been idle," "I have not played the hypocrite," "I have not told falsehoods," ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... consciousness of his own rectitude. In that lay his only comfort, his only hope, his one, strong-built fabric of defence. If that was undermined, if that was eaten away, what was there left for him? Carefully, painfully, and with such minuteness as he could command, he went over the whole affair from beginning to end, forcing his unwilling mind—so unaccustomed to such work—to weigh each chance, to gauge each opportunity. If this were so, if that had been ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... Rome, then, greatly favoured and recommended by the Marquis, who made him a Chevalier in order to honour him the more, he was received lovingly by that Pontiff and straightway commissioned to paint a little chapel that is in the said place. This he executed with diligence and love, and with such minuteness that the vaulting and the walls appear rather illuminated than painted; and the largest figures that are therein, which he painted in fresco like the others, are over the altar, representing the Baptism ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... horseback, and others in gigs drawn by a pair of horses driven tandem-fashion. They all smoked incessantly, and nearly all of them, on reaching the square, proceeded at once to the shed, and, walking up and down its entire length, examined with the utmost minuteness every individual beneath its roof, frequently stopping to make some inquiry of those who had the ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... robust manhood with artless and unconscious truth. Its freedom, its voluble minuteness of delineation, its rapid changes of construction, its breaks, pauses, significant and sudden transitions, its easy irregularities, exhibit the intellectual play of national youth; while in boldness and splendor it meets the demands ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... observe. I do not care how slowly you do it, or with how many alterations, junctions, or re-touchings; the one thing I ask of you is, that the line shall be right, and right by measurement, to the same minuteness which you would have to give in a Government chart to the map of a ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... window to window, and Godfrey examined each of them with a minuteness that astonished me, for I had no idea what he expected to find. But we completed the circuit of the ground floor without his apparently discovering ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... characteristic audacity he disdained to seek the services of some German Professor, an order of men which, rarely dining out and caring little for "Society," can devote itself entirely to letters, perhaps he hearkened to the silly charge against the Teuton of minuteness and futility of research as opposed to "good old English breadth and suggestiveness of treatment." And the consequence has been a "continuation" which serves as a standard whereby to measure the excellence of the original work and the woful falling- off ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... my music studies. I am teaching here summers to get pin money. It is so quiet here one grows to think all the world very far away, and the wild things among which you have lived and worked are almost unimaginable even when the newspapers describe them with the greatest minuteness. ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... whom I had seen on the previous day, caressing their infants, struck me with the more force that I had learned from my masters that law which had hitherto ruled uncontested, and now underwent a refutation which demonstrated the falsity of its applications with a clearness and minuteness which ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... shams of society to the realities of war, and sets before us with a graphic power and minuteness the inner life of that great struggle in which Count Tolstoi took part.... A thrilling tale of besieged Sebastopol. All is intensely real, intensely life-like, and doubly striking from its very simplicity. We have before our eyes war ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... manner, and sometimes of their refusing supply when disgusted with any circumstance of public conduct. It is, however, certain, that this power, though essential to parliaments, may easily be abused, as well by the frequency and minuteness of their remonstrances, as by their intrusion into every part of the king's counsels and determinations. Under color of advice, they may give disguised orders; and in complaining of grievances, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... Midhurst over the border into Hampshire, the village of Selborne is reached, one of the smallest but best known places in England from the care and minuteness with which Rev. Gilbert White has described it in his Natural History of Selborne. It is a short distance south-east of Alton and about fifty miles south-west of London, while beyond the village the chalk-hills rise to a height of three hundred feet, having a long ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... ample scope for the exuberant fancy of ancient commentators; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that Bishop Taylor may have had the remarks of one of these writers running in his mind, when he quoted St. James as reprobating, with such minuteness of detail, the folly of consulting oracles, spirits, sorcerers, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... word of this story, although she was quite without proof to the contrary. Jem's letters had not been frequent, nor had they been remarkable for minuteness of detail respecting his own life. Mrs. Agar had done her best to put a stop to this correspondence altogether, and had succeeded in bringing about a subtle reserve on both sides. She had persistently told Jem that Dora was evidently attached to Arthur, and that their marriage ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... in the East is generally known to the reader of travels, so as to render acceptable the following details. They are extracted from Mr. Buckingham's Travels,[1] and bear all the graphic minuteness of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... (which is a curious parallel to this) altogether imaginary, since the writer was at Naples during the whole period of the pestilence,—but also that it was a part indispensable of the entire scheme, and described with all its ghastly minuteness simply to enhance the value of his sunshine and merriment. He was in Naples from 1345 until 1350, without any other indication of a visit to Florence than a chronological table of his life, in which occurs ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the sermon out of his mind," and went out to his sports with the Elstow lads on the village green, with as "great delight" as ever. But in the midst of his game of tip-cat or "sly," just as he had struck the "cat" from its hole, and was going to give it a second blow—the minuteness of the detail shows the unforgetable reality of the crisis—he seemed to hear a voice from heaven asking him whether "he would leave his sins and go to heaven, or keep his sins and go to hell." He thought also that he saw Jesus Christ looking down on him with threatening ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... the point of view of a twelve-year-old boy, and it might be worth doing; but I have delayed attempting it somewhat too long; the moving pictures in my mind have become too faded and confused. And yet I am surprised at the minuteness of some of my recollections; they have, no doubt, been kept alive by the numerous photographs of Rome which one carries about, and also by the occasional perusal of The Marble Faun and other Roman literature. But much is also due to the wonderful separateness which Rome retains in the mind. It ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... have actually, committed. I cannot but suspect, that, if I had employed the language of exclusive eulogy,—such language as is employed at and concerning the Commencement dinners and the Alumni dinners, I might have described the celebration of Class-Day with much more minuteness than I have attempted to do, and should have heard no complaints of violated hospitality. This I would gladly have done, had it been possible. As it was not, I have pointed out those features which seemed to me objectionable,—certainly ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... curling and fringe-like cirrhi, by the agitation of which it attracts and collects its food. These cirrhi so much resemble feathers, as to have suggested the leading idea of a bird's tail: and hence the construction of the remainder of the fable, which is thus given with grave minuteness in The Herbal, or General Historie of Plants, gathered by John Gerarde, Master ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... accuracy at least as can leave no doubt as to its character. The wonder is that we are able to do so, and that the statements of the Fathers should stand the test so well as they do. Epiphanius especially often shows the most painstaking care and minuteness of detail. He has reproduced the manuscript of Marcion's Gospel that he had before him, even to its clerical errors [Endnote 210:1]. He and Tertullian are writing quite independently, and yet they confirm each other in a remarkable ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... in the midst of another race, it is evident that once you get rid of autocratic or military or class-government of any kind, and return to democratic forms, this difficulty will be much reduced or disappear. Small democratic communes are perfectly simple to form in groups of any magnitude or minuteness which may be desirable; and such groups would easily federate or ally themselves with surrounding democracies of alien race, whereas if lorded over by alien conquerors they would be in a state of chronic ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... Christians under Diocletian and Galerius, which was aimed at the entire uprooting of the new religion, ended with the edict of toleration of 311 and the tragical ruin of the persecutors. Galerius died soon after of a disgusting and terrible disease (morbus pedicularis), described with great minuteness by Eusebius and Lactantius. 'His body,' says Gibbon, 'swelled by an intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with ulcers and devoured by innumerable swarms of those insects which have given their name to a most ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... preparation in the leaf. It is believed that the passage of the sap in plants is conducted in a manner precisely similar to that of the blood in man, from the regular contraction and expansion of the vessels; but, on account of their extreme minuteness, it is almost an impossibility to be certain upon this point. Numerous observations made with the microscope show that their diameter seldom exceeds a 290th part of a line, or a 3,000th part of an inch. Leuwenhoeck reckoned 20,000 vessels ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... his arrival in town, called at my chambers, and related with his usual minuteness and precision as many of the foregoing particulars as he knew and thought proper to communicate to me. For the rest I am indebted to subsequent conversations ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... fraud can be imposed, or was ever imposed upon a whole people. They are their own witness also that they were given by the hand of Moses, for they are all prefaced by the words, "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying." When we consider their fundamental character, their extent, and the number and minuteness of their details, we cannot for a moment suppose that they were left unwritten by such a man as Moses, who had all the qualifications for writing them. Why should not the man who received them from the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... that these observations comprehend; but, with the use of apparatus suitably arranged, the movements at all depths have been determined, with the exact amount of power exerted by streams coursing along the bed of the sea. The necessity for this minuteness of examination has been fully shown in some of the curious discoveries that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... treasures of the institution by intelligent officials. A young man who spoke excellent English was given me as a guide by the distinguished Director-in-Chief. Classification of the books is carried to great minuteness, and it is but the work of a moment, to one familiar with its principles, to turn to any book of the million. The apartments are plain and crowded, although some of the rooms of the adjoining palace had recently been turned into the library, which is fast outgrowing its ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... our Professor, as Poets are wont, look back on his childhood; the historical details of which (to say nothing of much other vague oratorical matter) he accordingly dwells on with an almost wearisome minuteness. We hear of Entepfuhl standing "in trustful derangement" among the woody slopes; the paternal Orchard flanking it as extreme outpost from below; the little Kuhbach gushing kindly by, among beech-rows, through river after river, into the Donau, into the Black Sea, into the ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... their steep roofs climbing high in successions of blinking dormers, were more richly mediaeval than anything the travellers had ever dreamt of before, and they feasted themselves upon the unimagined picturesqueness with a leisurely minuteness which brought responsive gazers everywhere to the windows; windows were set ajar; shop doors were darkened by curious figures from within, and the traffic of the tortuous alleys was interrupted by their progress. They could not have said which delighted them more—the houses in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... elected mayor, after a close election, disputed by Chapin. The enemy practised a good thing on him. During one of the delegate elections, when his ambition seemed to tower higher than it now does, he published a sort of memorabilia, like that of Dr. Mitchell, in which was set forth, with much minuteness of detail, all that he had ever done, and much of all he ever thought, for the good of this poor territory. Such, for instance, as that in 1802, he was appointed town-clerk of Hamtramck; that he offered, in 1811, his services to Congress in a military ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... that on the large Atlantic liners the bowsprit has been removed, or at any rate a notice put up: "Authors are requested not to lie prostrate on the bowsprit." But even without this advantage, three or four generations of writers have chronicled with great minuteness their sensations during the transit. I need only say that my sensations were just as good as theirs. I will content myself with chronicling the fact that during the voyage we passed two dolphins, ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... monsieur. I speak English—I learned it when I was valet for Mr. Parker in London. That is why I am sent here. The pay is of a minuteness. ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... illustration of the minuteness of this subdivision, an instruction card similar to the one used is reproduced in Figure 1 on the next page. (This card was about 7 inches long by ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... Macha. The floruit of Cuculain, therefore, falls completely within the historical penumbra, and the more carefully the enormous, and in the main mutually consistent and self-supporting, historical remains dealing with this period are studied, the more will this be believed. The minuteness, accuracy, extent, and verisimilitude of the literature, chronicles, pedigrees, &c., relating to this period, will cause the student to wonder more and more as he examines and collates, seeing the ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... Esther, his love in youth, his wife, dearer growing with the passage of years. And yet he was not unmindful of business. Every day a messenger brought him a despatch from Sanballat, in charge of the big commerce behind; and every day a despatch left him for Sanballat with directions of such minuteness of detail as to exclude all judgment save his own, and all chances except those the Almighty has refused to submit to the most ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... With distinct minuteness did she print herself upon my consciousness in that five minutes' interval: she was painted a dull and cholera yellow, like many Russian ships, and there was a faded pink space at her bows under the line where the yellow ceased: ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... of their paper, for they still kept up their old habit of writing tales and poems, and loved to scribble out of doors. And some of it they would use in drawing, since at this time they were taking lessons, and Emily and Charlotte were devoted to the art: Charlotte making copies with minuteness and exact fidelity; Emily drawing animals and still-life with far greater freedom and certainty of touch. Some of Charlotte's paper, also, must have gone in letter-writing. She had made friends at school, an event of great importance to that narrow ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... existence, the physical with the spiritual, we find the horizon of consciousness in the former, is vaguely defined and very much limited; while in the latter, it is sharply defined and widely extended. The more we study and compare, the more readily we understand, that space, duration, size, minuteness, solidity and porosity, are all relative terms which depend for their significance entirely on the standpoint of consciousness. So apparent is this fact, that we soon learn how impossible it is for ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... an indifferent reader, may appear trivial, to a spectator and participant seem often of importance. To the design of this work (which was, to furnish a complete record of the transactions of the colony from its foundation), accuracy and a degree of minuteness in detail seemed essential; and on reviewing his manuscript, the author saw little that, consistently with his plan, he could ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... that I had myself just been trampling on the established boundaries of obligation, and therefore might well have a fellow-feeling for other offenders. Add to which, I had known Mr. Falkland from the first as a beneficent divinity. I had observed at leisure, and with a minuteness which could not deceive me, the excellent qualities of his heart; and I found him possessed of a mind beyond comparison the most fertile and ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... little voyage was the complete knowledge of the existence of a strait separating Van Diemen's land from the continent of New Holland, it may not be improper to enter with some degree of minuteness into the particulars of it; and the writer of these pages feels much gratification in being enabled to do this, from the accurate and pleasing journal of Mr. Bass, with the perusal and use of which he has ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... and, if you undertake my cause, I shall avoid it: and, accordingly, I ask you this favour. But why, you may well ask, when you have already often assured me that yOu intended to record in your book with the utmost minuteness the policy and events of my consulship, do I now make this request to you with such earnestness and in so many words? The reason is to be found in that burning desire, of which I spoke at the beginning of my letter, for something prompt: because I am in a flutter of impatience, ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... these remarks in some measure to the Scottish pulpit ministrations of an older school, in which a minuteness of detail and a quaintness of expression were quite common, but which could not now be tolerated. I have two specimens of such antiquated language, supplied by correspondents, and I am ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... the low walls of the catacombs. There is absolutely nothing to tell us how they lighted these vast buildings up, how they even introduced sufficient light to paint them by or to build them. Look at the minuteness ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... woman not only of sprightly wit, but of great beauty. She liked to tell in her old age of a dinner which John Hancock gave for her father and her, in Boston, when she was a girl. She described her dress with great minuteness, and added naively, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... two months. The annals of the time describe this expedition with great particularity, presenting a scene of pomp almost surpassing credence. Some allowance must doubtless be made for exaggeration; and yet there is a minuteness of detail which, accompanied by corroborative evidence of the populousness and the power of these Tartar tribes, invests the narrative with a good degree of authenticity. We are informed that several hundreds of thousands of men were in movement; ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... of 360 diameters. Taking into account the large number of species of fungi, probably scarcely less numerous than all the flowering plants, and the immense number of spores which some of the individuals produce, they must be exceedingly plentiful and widely diffused, though from their minuteness not easy to be discerned. It has been attempted to estimate the number of spores which might be produced by one single plant of Lycoperdon, but the number so far exceeds that which the mind is accustomed to contemplate that it seems scarcely possible to realize ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... painted at different periods of her life, yet they bear so great a resemblance to each other that we may reasonably infer they were all good likenesses—in each of them the mole on the cheek has been defined with all due minuteness." ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... situation, than to those reminding themselves of its fine compensations. Hawthorne's entries are to a great degree accounts of walks in the country, drives in stage-coaches, people he met in taverns. The minuteness of the things that attract his attention and that he deems worthy of being commemorated is frequently extreme, and from this fact we get the impression of a general vacancy in the field of vision. "Sunday evening, going by the jail, the setting sun ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr. |
