"Modify" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to modify and even suppress such of the traditionary views with which they did not agree or which they found it difficult to maintain. Brilliant oppositions from the opposing schools often made it necessary for them to offer solutions to new problems unthought of before, but put forward by some ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... will absorb more water than a clay soil, and if the soil is entirely clay, it is not suitable for such treatment. Sewage passed over the surface of clay soil, however, will, in the course of a few months, so modify the clay as to convert it into a loam, and in this way increase its ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... addressed to Nature, to which she sends intelligible replies. These replies, however, usually reach the questioner in whispers too feeble for the public ear. But after the investigator comes the teacher, whose function it is so to exalt and modify the experiments of his predecessor, as to render them fit for public presentation. This secondary function I shall endeavour, in the ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... He fixes his eye with imperturbable steadiness on the central fact, then with serene, intrepid modesty suggests the relevancy to this of the world as it is around us, and then trusts the healthy attraction of the higher to modify and better the lower. Give man, he says, something to work for, namely, the high uses of his spirit; give him next something to work with, namely, actual civilization, the powers, limits, and conditions which actually exist in and around him; and if these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... king are feeble. A democratic Parliament with a growing Labour party has far more power to change Oxford than the Stuarts ever had, and even at this moment (1919) a third Royal Commission is beginning to sit. Will it modify, will ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... after receiving his letters; and it may be supposed that the bombastic style of that epistle would not efface the unfavorable impression produced by Balthazar's exterior. The representations of Haultepenne and others induced him so far to modify his views as to send his confidential councillor, d'Assonleville, to the stranger, in order to learn the details of the scheme. Assonleville had accordingly an interview with Gerard, in which he requested the young man to draw up a statement ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... [Roused] Of course, if nobody will modify their attitude —Johnny, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, and [To MRS MARCH] ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... it almost to breaking. The Prince had permitted her to linger much less, before his move to the door, than they usually lingered at the gossiping close of such evenings; which she, all responsive, took for a sign of his impatience to modify for her the odd effect of his not having, and of Charlotte's not having, instantly acclaimed the issue of the question debated, or more exactly, settled, before them. He had had time to become aware of this possible impression in her, and his ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... though somewhat bitter, zeal. Naturally, these open criticisms caused a great scandal in ecclesiastical circles, and many vigorous attempts were made to reconcile the recalcitrant nun and induce her to modify her views. Finally, moved by the pious exhortations of the patriarch, Federigo Cornaro, she became somewhat resigned to her fate. Then it was said of her that "she abandoned the pomp of fine garments, which had possessed so great ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... still prevailed with him. He was a gentleman;—and would have felt himself disgraced to enter the house of such a one as Augustus Melmotte. Not all the duchesses in the peerage, or all the money in the city, could alter his notions or induce him to modify his conduct. But he knew that it would be useless for him to explain this to Lady Carbury. He trusted, however, that one of the family might be taught to appreciate the difference between honour and dishonour. Henrietta Carbury had, he thought, a higher ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Bergenheim's bed, and the latter, adding a practical lesson to verbal advice, began to modify the maid's work to suit ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... If a boy frequently dresses up as a girl, or a girl as a boy, and if we observe between two boys, or between two girls, an unduly intimate friendship at an age which corresponds to the period of the undifferentiated sexual impulse, it will be as well to modify the children's education accordingly. A girl with such inclinations should, for example, be thrown as much as possible into the society of lads of an appropriate age. In the case of those who are still quite young, there is no doubt that by the proper measures ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... would seem incredibly few, if summed up and presented to the more ignorant of her critics. She also claims to derive from her Founder legislative power by which she can make decrees, unmake them or modify and vary them to suit different times and circumstances. She rightfully claims the obedience of her children to this exercise of her authority, but such disciplinary enactments, by their very nature variable and modifiable, do not and cannot ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... luxury undermined the moral health, and destroyed not only elevation of sentiment but martial virtues. Literature declined in spirit and taste, and was directed to frivolous subjects. Christianity had not become a power sufficiently strong to change or modify the corrupt institutions controlled by the powerful classes. The expensive luxury of the nobles was almost incredible. The most distant provinces were ransacked for game, fish, and fowl for the tables of the great. Usury was ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... life among the inhabitants. The Chateau de Buxieres stood in the midst of a vast carpet of snow on which the sabots of the villagers had outlined a narrow path, leading from the outer steps to the iron gate. Inside, fires blazed on all the hearths, which, however, did not modify the frigid atmosphere of the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the class of agglutinate tongues, i.e. tongues wherein the inflections can be shown to consist of separate words more or legs incorporated or amalgamated with the roots which they modify. It may be said that this view ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... they had selected could hardly have been a better one for the boys' purpose. It was placed right against the bush behind which they were hiding. The voices came to them clearly, although the speakers took pains to modify them. ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... of braces and stays, arranged in such a way as to transfer and distribute the pressure from without, and give rigidity to the whole construction. In the engine and boiler room it was necessary to modify the arrangement of stays, so as to give room for the engines and boiler. All the iron, with the exception of the heaviest ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... consumption or that of other peoples. Thereby we have enriched ourselves and the rest of mankind. But the question still arises whether this process is one that should be left altogether unchecked, or whether it involves evils which go far to modify its benefits. In other words is it a good thing for us, socially and politically, to enrich ourselves beyond a certain point by a process which involves our dependence on other countries ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... to recollect that the abrading action of water has been absent from the moon; so that, while accumulations of matter had been proceeding throughout a prolonged period over its surface, there was no counteracting agency of denudation at work to modify or lessen the effects of ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... Mr. Podmore's first proposal it was eventually decided to modify the resolution of 7th November, 1883, by inserting the words 'to help on' between the words 'shall be' and the ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... they wouldn't. You'd have to modify your stride a little; but you'd negotiate it. ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... contraction of their muscular walls. The effect of this influence of the nervous system enables it to control the circulation over certain areas; and, notwithstanding the force of the heart and the state of the blood-vessels in general, to materially modify the circulation in different spots. Blushing, which is simply a local modification of the circulation, is effected in this way. Some emotion takes possession of the mind, and the action of the nerves, which ordinarily keep up a moderate contraction of the muscular coats of the arteries, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... highest victory of great power is that of self-restraint, and it would be a beneficent result of this memorable meeting, this oecumenical council of the press, if it taught us all—the brethren of this mighty priesthood—that mutual knowledge of each other which should modify prejudices, restrain acerbity of thought and expression, and tend in some degree to ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... was my case, when I wrote some passages which occur in an essay reprinted among "Darwiniana."[2] But when, not long ago "the voice" put it to me, whether I had better not expunge, or modify, these passages; whether, really, they were not a little too strong; I had to reply, with all deference, that while, from a merely literary point of view, I might admit them to be rather crude, I must stand by the substance of these ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... public prints, as well as before the directors, meanwhile keeping his announcement of the three performances before the people. But the sale of tickets amounted to next to nothing, and Mr. Conried yielded with as much grace as possible, when on January 30th the directors refused to modify their action, though they expressed a willingness to recoup Mr. Conried for some of his expenses in mounting the opera. The directors who took this action were J. P. Morgan, William K. Vanderbilt, G. G. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... I doubted whether I should tell Wynnie, for I could not know with any certainty that Percivale was in the schooner. But presently I recalled former conclusions to the effect that we have no right to modify God's facts for fear of what may be to come. A little hope founded on a present appearance, even if that hope should never be realised, may be the very means of enabling a soul to bear the weight of a sorrow past the point at which it would otherwise break down. I would therefore tell ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... supercilious tyranny, impropriating the Spirit of God to themselves." Milton, we know, did not habitually attend public worship at any of the conventicles of the sectaries, or perhaps he might have found reason to modify this censure. ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... me in not a very satisfactory state of mind. The ardor of my calculations had commenced abating. Certain elements, not seen and considered in the outset, were beginning to assume shape and consequence, and to modify, in many essential particulars, the grand result towards which I had been looking with so much pleasure. Shadowy and indistinct became the landscape, which seemed a little while before so fair and ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... too late to come back to a right place, and I for my part come back to mine, and entreat you my dearest friend, first, not to answer this, and next, to weigh and consider thoroughly 'that particular contingency' which (I tell you plainly, I who know) the tongue of men and of angels would not modify so as to render less full of vexations to you. Let Pisa prove the excellent hardness of some marbles! Judge. From motives of self-respect, you may well walk an opposite way ... you.... When I told you once ... or twice ... that 'no human influence ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... one thing, they have no voice at all. It is administered in a standardized form by a committee of middle-class people appointed in the neighbouring town, who carry out provisions which originate from unapproachable permanent officials at Whitehall. The County Council may modify the programme a little; His Majesty's inspectors—strangers to the people, and ignorant of their needs—issue fiats in the form of advice to the school teachers; and meanwhile the parents of the children acquiesce, not always approving what is done, but ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... by the close attachment and freely intercommunicating blood-vessels between the modified embryo and the mother. But it is a most improbable hypothesis that the mere blood of one individual should affect the reproductive organs of another individual in such a manner as to modify the subsequent offspring. The analogy from the direct action of foreign pollen on the ovarium and seed-coats of the mother-plant strongly supports the belief that the male element acts directly ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... various graving instruments by which the finer or coarser lines are drawn. Not only are these lines frequently uninterrupted for a distance of many yards, but they are also parallel, except when some change takes place in the thickness of the ice, which may slightly modify the trend of the mass, or where lines in a variety of directions are produced by the intermittent action of separate glaciers running successively at different angles over the same surfaces. The deeper grooves sometimes present a succession ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... used a human reason, perfect of its kind, but still human in all the implications of the word, were in his eyes Agnoetae; they were unbelievers who asserted the ignorance of Christ and set bounds to the vision and knowledge of the infinite. The monophysite would modify his opinions and approach the catholic position on other doctrinal points, but never on this. He might be persuaded to admit that Christ's body and "animal soul" were real and human, but to the consubstantiality of Christ's mind with ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... first Marconi apparatus was that anybody within the working radius of the sending-instrument could read its messages. To modify this objection secret codes were at times employed, as in commerce and diplomacy. A complete deliverance from this difficulty is promised in attuning a transmitter and a receiver to the same note, so that one receiver, and no other, shall respond to a particular frequency of impulses. The ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... cross-examination on the part of the prisoner. He made no attempt to modify what had been said before, but asked in a gentle apologetic voice: "Was that the last time you ever saw, or thought you ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... should feel that the number thus obtained was not very accurate, he might reflect that if there were ten times as many it would add but another cipher to a long line of similar ones and would not materially modify it. The point is that there is a definite, computable number. If one will then add to these the number of molecules in the more distant stars and nebulae, of which there are visible about 100,000,000, making such estimate of their individual size as he thinks prudent, ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... had given me contained a will made by Mrs. Drainger, together with a few securities totaling no great value, and other less important documents. This will she now directed me to modify so that the inheritance of the property upon her death would be conditional upon the fulfillment by the heir of certain conditions which she said ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... central government. Almost absolute power was now given these corporations to manage their own concerns, and the organization of the police was placed in their hands; at a later period, however, it was found necessary to modify ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... little wider or a little more narrow, still it is inconceivably hideous. Pantaloons and Hessian boots were the least objectionable features of the costume which the imagination of a Brummell and the genius of a Royal Prince were called upon to modify or change. The hours of meditative agony which each dedicated to the odious fashions of the day have left no monument save the coloured caricatures in which ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... the strange man; and we are obliged to modify his phraseology in order to make it admissible to ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... the voting of this expedition, and neither being puffed up with hopes, nor transported with the honor of his high command so as to modify his judgment, showed himself a man of virtue and constancy. But when his endeavors could not divert the people from the war, nor get leave for himself to be discharged of the command, but the people, as it were, violently took him up and carried him, and against his will put him in the office ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... taken his resolution once forever; urgent necessity might, perhaps, have constrained him temporarily to suspend the execution of the penal statutes, but never, formally, to repeal them entirely, or even to modify them. In vain did Egmont represent to him that the public execution of the heretics daily augmented the number of their followers, while the courage and even joy with which they met their death filled the spectators with the deepest admiration, and awakened in them high opinions of a doctrine ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... grasses. Then in spare moments John Gates began the construction of a house. He was a man of tremendous energy, but also of many activities. The days were not long enough for him. In him was the true ferment of constructive civilization. Instinctively he reached out to modify his surroundings. A house, then a picket fence, split from the living trees; an irrigation ditch; a garden spot; fruit trees; vines over the porch; better stables; more fences; the gradual shaping from ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... toleration for their scruples, not a revolution in the Church to suit their views. Charles II., while distinctly asserting his intention of maintaining the ritual of the Church in his own chapel, was ready, with his usual complaisance, to indicate a willingness to accept a compromise and to modify some of the usages of the Church, which, under Laud's rule, had become a part of her constitution. But in doing so he really went beyond, not only the terms of the Declaration, but the power of his own prerogative. The alteration desired could only be carried out by the action of Parliament; ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... It finally enacted a bill known as Macon's Bill No. 2, which in a sense reversed the former policy, since it left commerce everywhere free, and authorized the President, "in case either Great Britain or France shall, before the 3d day of March next, so revoke or modify her edicts as that they shall cease to violate the neutral commerce of the United States," to cut off trade with the nation which continued to offend. The act thus gave the President an immense discretionary power which might bring the country face to face with war. It was ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... certainty, and such radical sceptics as Sextus Empiricus. Upheld by the Stoics, however, who with very few exceptions were in favor of astrology, it can be maintained that it emerged triumphant from the first assaults directed against it. The only result of the objections raised to it was to modify some of its theories. Later, the general weakening of the spirit of criticism assured astrology an almost uncontested domination. Its adversaries did not renew their polemics; they limited themselves to the repetition of arguments that had been opposed, if not refuted, ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... admit, is a severe test. I am prepared however to give him a public opportunity of establishing his fitness for his post, and with that end I propose to put to him the following problems, and if his answers are satisfactory I shall most willingly modify my criticisms; but he must write on one side of the paper only and number his pages in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... paper—for the present. She undertakes to modify the point of view afterward. All she asks is that I shall renounce my heresy: the gift ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... who were scalping him. These were dreams suggested by sensations which, were conveyed from the surface of the body, through the nerves, until corresponding impression was produced on the mind. Upon the same principle, very strong impressions received during the day may modify and very materially influence the character of our dreams at night. Dr. Beattie states that once, after riding thirty miles in a very high wind, he passed a night of dreams which were so terrible, that he found it expedient to keep himself awake, that he might ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... immense growth of scientific knowledge during the last century was bound to react on human conceptions of scientific procedure. The enormous number of new facts brought to light by manipulating hypotheses could not but modify our view of scientific law. Laws no longer seem to scientists the immutable foundations of an eternal order, but are inevitably treated as man-made formulae for grouping and predicting the events which verify them. The labours of physicists like Mach, Duhem, and Ostwald, ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... better appliances and a more efficient organization will make it possible for Asia to create for herself, and ultimately export much that she now imports, and this will react on the character of the industries of America and Europe. We shall somewhat modify our industries in order to get the benefit of new openings for commerce, and some of the things which we now directly produce we may find it more profitable to get by exchange, which is indirect production. On the other hand, some foreign products ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... it. The people are getting tired of it. You are going to have a great influence in the legislature. We concede that fact. Now, what we want to do is to talk over some of these bills and get your influence to modify or ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... marriages, and the consequent degeneration of type, from a union which lowers one of the contracting parties without raising the other, beats but faintly against these remote shores, cut off from associations which mould and modify the crudities of individual thought in regions swept by the full tide of contemporary life. The idea of welding European and Asiatic elements into one race, as a defence against external aggression, possesses a superficial plausibility, but ages of ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... sun than at other times. It wobbles slightly on its axis. It is inclined to the plane of the ecliptic, causing the seasons, and that brings a new set of factors into the problem. A mountain range or a desert will modify the atmosphere, even the difference between a forest and a prairie ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... of all the faculties, involved in such a method. The hurry of traveling, joined to the lack of the most ordinary facilities for observation, has not rendered my task more easy. I therefore claim indulgence for such of my identifications as a later examination, made at leisure, may modify, and for descriptions which sometimes bear the stamp of the precipitation with which they ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... rocks. Here there were only low shrubs as a rule and these mainly along the immediate edge of the water, though high up on north slopes pines began to appear. Altitude, latitude, and aridity combine to modify vegetation so that in an arid region one notices extraordinary changes often in a single locality. The walls still had the tendency to break into turrets and towers, and opposite our next camp a ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... (as you seem anxious) that my colleague approves of a proposal, on my part, to slightly modify the last prescription. We recognise the new symptoms, without feeling alarm." Having issued this bulletin, Mr. Null sat down to make his feeble treatment of his patient ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... inspection of me, fatigued himself in bowing to the very ground, but would not in the least modify his charge. He got into a caleche, the horses of which followed me so close that they touched the hind wheels of my berline. The idea of entering, escorted in this manner, into the residence of an old friend, into a paradise of delight, ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... among his own Northern Democrats at Freeport? And yet it seemed to give him a keen pleasure to call his hearers "Black Republicans." "Not black," came from the crowd again and again, and once a man: shouted, "Couldn't you modify it and call it brown?" "Not a whit!" cried the Judge, and dubbed them "Yankees," although himself a Vermonter by birth. He implied that most of these ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... withdraw it; but I ask you to hear my prayer before you speak. Perhaps it may exert an influence—may modify your request. I allow myself, therefore, in consideration of your own interest, solely to beg that I ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... in as far as they are widely known and express a more or less standardised point of view. The implication they contain is that all deprivation is brought upon us by the Will of God, and that our wisest course is to beat ourselves down before that which we cannot modify. Beneath the car of this Juggernaut we must flout our judgments and crush our affections. As He knows so well where to hit us we must stifle our moans when He does so. As He knows so well what will ring our hearts we must be content to let Him give so that He can the more ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... of his discourse. He uttered thoughts and feelings upon this subject, original and startling at that time, but which have since been quoted, both in the Old and New World, and have had power to modify those cruel laws which at that period made woman, despite her understanding intellect, an idiot, and despite her loving heart ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... until sunrise, when the Major, attended by the Deputy Sheriff and half a dozen constables, arrived. The night ride of several miles had not sufficed to modify the fury into which Old Hurricane had been thrown by the news Herbert Greyson had aroused him from sleep to communicate. He reached Hurricane Hall in a state of excitement that his factotum Wool characterized as "boiling." But "in the ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... statement is strictly historical. On the death of Andrea Dandolo (September 7, 1334) the Maggior Consiglio appointed a commission of five "savi" to correct and modify the "promissione," or ducal oath. The alterations which the commissioners suggested were designed to prevent the Doge from acting on his own initiative in matters of foreign policy.—La Congiura, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... had, of course, preceded them, and the row of waving figures in the field gave them a welcome that went straight to Minks's heart. He felt proud for his grand employer. Here was a human touch that would modify the majesty of the impersonal mountain scenery in his description. He waved his handkerchief frantically as the train shot past, and he hardly knew which attracted him most—the expression of happiness on Mr. Rogers's face, or the line of nondescript humanity that gesticulated in the field as though ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... engaged a working-man To mend a leaky pot or pan Or else a pipe that's porous, He would not modify his fees For hours and hours of vacant ease Though out of ARISTOPHANES I said ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... crowded in a space Which left scarce room for motion or exertion; They did their best to modify their case, One half sate up, though numbed with the immersion, While t' other half were laid down in their place, At watch and watch; thus, shivering like the tertian Ague in its cold fit, they filled their boat, With nothing but the sky ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... accumulations have been subjected. One of the most impressive lessons to be learnt from his account of 'Volcanic Islands' is the prodigious extent to which they have been denuded...He was disposed to attribute more of this work to the sea than most geologists would now admit; but he lived himself to modify his original views, and on this subject his latest utterances are quite abreast ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... potatoes to store cattle, since writing the above, I wish to modify the opinion I have expressed to a certain extent. I had a conversation with Mr Hope on the subject, and he states that his belief is, that potatoes are not prejudicial to the growth of store cattle when put to grass, and that his ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... cannot have reason to reject a belief except on the ground of some other belief. Hence, by organizing our instinctive beliefs and their consequences, by considering which among them is most possible, if necessary, to modify or abandon, we can arrive, on the basis of accepting as our sole data what we instinctively believe, at an orderly systematic organization of our knowledge, in which, though the possibility of error remains, its likelihood is diminished by the interrelation of ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... but oh! it's still better when he preaches it! I hope I did not do wrong in copying a part of it? I wish to impress it on the children. There are some worldly influences at work with them, dear madam [looking at Lady K. in the garden], which I do my feeble effort to—to modify. I wish YOU could ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... than either tempo or dynamics, and is obviously less under the control of the conductor. The vocalist may be induced to sing more loudly or the violinist to play more rapidly, but it is often impossible to get either to so modify his actual tone quality as to make his rendition more expressive. And yet, in spite of this difficulty, there are many passages in both choral and orchestral music in which the essential significance depends ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... happy and industrious life. His technical position was that of master to a form low down on the Modern Side. But his work lay elsewhere. He organized. If no organization existed, he would create one. If one did exist, he would modify it. "An organization," he would say, "is after all not an end in itself. It must contribute to a movement." When one good custom seemed likely to corrupt the school, he was ready with another; he believed that without innumerable customs ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... the vast majority professed allegiance to Western ideals, and if they had not altogether-and often far too hastily-abjured, or learned secretly to despise, the beliefs and customs of their forefathers, they were at any rate anxious to modify and bring them into harmony with those of their Western teachers. They may often have disliked the Englishman, but they respected and admired him; if they resented his frequent assumption of the unqualified ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... vary, are also regular in their return. The states which recur daily are morning, noon, evening, and night; those recurring yearly are spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Moreover, the annual states modify regularly the daily states. All these states are likewise dead because they are not states of life, as in the spiritual world; for in the spiritual world there is continuous light and there is continuous heat, the light corresponding to the state of wisdom, and the ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... misgivings, and frailties, for which policy and reverence prescribe concealment, and which are supposed in the play, indeed, to be shrouded from the profane and vulgar eye, a circumstance which, of course, was expected to modify the impression. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... of existence, as are the moral and social laws of the ants or the bees. We pass out of that state in which these things appear to be final, and we forget them forever. This is easily shown, because a man of broad habits of thought and of intelligence must modify his code of life when he dwells among another people. These people among whom he is an alien have their own deep-rooted religions and hereditary convictions, against which he cannot offend. Unless his is an abjectly narrow and unthinking mind, he sees that their form of law and order ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... inconsistencies of the theories of Darwin were seen by him as by his critics, and he was ever willing to admit the doubt. None of his disciples was as ready to modify his opinions as he. "We must beware of making science dogmatic," ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... inclined to question the accuracy of those writers who denounce the avarice and rack-renting propensities of the landlords of their time. But when we examine the question more closely, we find so many circumstances to modify and even to change our first views, that by degrees we arrive at the belief, that the complaints made were substantially true. If the rents of those times seem to us very low, we must remember that the land, for the most part, was in a wretched condition; ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... speaking English to Lebeau is that suited to the role of a dapper young underling of vulgar mind habituated to vulgar companionships. I feel it due, if not to Graham himself, at least to the memory of the dignified orator whose name he inherits, so to modify and soften the hardy style of that peculiar diction in which he disguises his birth and disgraces his culture, that it is only here and there that I can venture to indicate the general tone of it; but in order to supply my deficiencies therein, the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... indifferent—which filters through regarding China becoming the El Dorado of the Westerner. He is wanted for no other reason than that of teaching the Chinese to foreignize as much as he can, teaching the leaders of the people to strive to modify national life, and to raise public conduct and administration to the best ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... spread, and it stood out, the one glorious object in the whole tenement. Also the children with the utmost pride showed their gold band rings which according to the custom of those days each wore on the "wedding finger"; even the five year old displayed his golden trophy. Mr. Nelson did his best to modify the protests of his outraged staff. Finally we did see at least something of his point of view, that to the family these symbols of respectability meant what a Persian rug would have meant in a more sophisticated family. For these friends of ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... Hugo, there are high examples of modern art dealing thus with modern life, regarding that life as the modern mind must regard it, yet reflecting upon blitheness and repose. Natural laws we shall never modify, embarrass us as they may; but there is still something in the nobler or less noble attitude with which we watch their fatal combinations. In those romances of Goethe and Victor Hugo, in some excellent work done after them, this entanglement, this network of law, becomes ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... which greeted this naive discharge of wisdom did not modify the poor little waif's ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... administer the sacrament. Every Doctor in a Christian land should understand how to do it, and do it with unerring accuracy. It were a disgrace for him to be ignorant of what even an ordinary child is expected to know. The ceremony is so simple; and yet, being an institution of Christ, no man can modify it to suit his notions; if what is done is not just what Christ appointed to be done, it will be of no avail. Notice, therefore, carefully every detail. You will take a little water, say a cupful, real water—cold or lukewarm, that matters not—you will slowly pour it on the ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... had her own settled way of living, and was unflinching in her ideas; who united a conviction of her own wisdom to perfect ignorance of the human heart,[140] all the while fancying that she knew it so well; who, far from consenting to modify her habits, would fain have imposed them on others. In short, a woman who had nothing in common with him, who was unable to understand him, or to find the road to his heart or mind; finally, one to whom forgiveness seemed a weakness, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... presenting the abandonment of armed resistance on the part of the insurgents as the only indispensable condition to ending the war," said the President, "I retract nothing heretofore said as to slavery. . . . While I remain in my present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the Emancipation Proclamation. Nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that Proclamation or by any of the Acts of Congress. If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an Executive duty to re-enslave such persons, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... measures as were taken, only strengthened racial dissensions and were equally insincere and inefficient. The present constitution of 1867, as well as the previous constitutions of 1849, 1860 and 1861, was granted by the crown, to whom it was reserved to reverse or modify the same. The parliament is absolutely powerless in Austria. It is a mere cloak for absolutism, since the famous Paragraph 14 provides for absolutist government by means of imperial decrees without parliament in case of emergency. The dynasty took ample advantage of this clause ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... Well, I daresay it is, lad, in your eyes; but let me tell you, it is a place of deep interest, and, I may add without vanity, importance. There are inventions here, all in a state bordering more or less upon completion, which will, when brought into operation, modify the state of society very materially in many of its most prominent phases. Here, for instance, is a self-acting galvano-hydraulic engine, which will entirely supersede the use of steam, and, by preventing the consumption of coal now going on, will avert, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... has compelled these ill-wishers to modify their most cherished theory of democracy in the United States. They thought that the marvellous energy for military combination, developed by a democracy suddenly emancipated from oppression, such as was presented by the French people in the Revolution of 1789, was not the characteristic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... etc., modify the respiratory movements even in health. Respiration consists of two acts—inspiration and expiration. The function of respiration is to take in oxygen from the atmospheric air, which is essential for the maintenance of life, and to exhale the deleterious ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... when I was born, I will go on with my narrative. As every schoolboy knows, in the latter part of the nineteenth century the civilization of to-day, or anything like it, did not exist, although the elements which were to develop it were already in ferment. Nothing had, however, occurred to modify the immemorial division of society into the four classes, or nations, as they may be more fitly called, since the differences between them were far greater than those between any nations nowadays, of the rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant. I myself was rich and ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... respect of the methods by which those principles can be presented to the multitude in a manner which shall produce conviction. Looking back on Aristocracy and Evolution, I now think that, if I could have rewritten it in the light of the above considerations, I should modify, not its argument, but the manner in which this argument was presented. Much of its substance I have incorporated in what I have written since; but, as it stood when I finished it, I felt it so far satisfactory that it expressed all I had then to say as to the ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... have no reason to modify in any material degree my views of the general military situation, as expressed in my dispatch of Nov. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... in the equilibrium of the brain and mental faculties and produces great modifications in the memory and in sensibility. Life is indeed a long series of habits to which we are accustomed; hypnotism changes these habits which in a normal condition we do not try to modify, and on awakening, all memory of the change is gone, although its ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... the place both soothing and steadying. And of precisely this he stood sorely in need just now. For it must be admitted that a change had come over the spirit of Julius March's great ecclesiastical dream. Absence from Oxford and foreign travel had tended at once to widen and modify his thought. He had seen the Tractarian Movement from a distance, in due perspective. He had also seen Catholicism at close quarters. He had realised that the logical consequence of the teaching of the former could be nothing less than unqualified ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... to describe snow-houses and snow-walls covered with sail-cloth, under "Huts." Here I will speak of more simple arrangements. Dr. Kane says:—"We afterwards learnt to modify and reduce our travelling-gear, and found that in direct proportion to its simplicity and to our apparent privation of articles of supposed necessity, were our actual comfort and practical efficiency. Step by step, as long as our Arctic service continued, we went on reducing our ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... Government of the United States be the agent of the State governments, then they may control it, provided they can agree in the manner of controlling it; if it be the agent of the people, then the people alone can control it, restrain it, modify, or reform it. It is observable enough, that the doctrine for which the honorable gentleman contends leads him to the necessity of maintaining, not only that this General Government is the creature of the States, but that it is the creature of each of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... it fit the machine, the effort should be to adapt the educational process to suit the human mind. To what extent they are doing this is one of the great questions for teachers of the present day. To what extent,—admitting that now in some particulars they fail,—it may be possible to modify and adapt methods to the actual and genuine needs of human nature, is certainly a problem worthy of the earnest thought of the broadest and best cultured minds. In attempts at adaptation we have fallen into a process of analyzing the youthful human creature. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... birth, or at any rate, after conception, to one and the same environment. Thus some careful observations made recently by Professor Boas on American immigrants from various parts of Europe seem to show that the new environment does in some unexplained way modify the head-form to a remarkable extent. For example, amongst the East European Jews the head of the European-born is shorter and wider than that of the American-born, the difference being even more marked in the second generation of the ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... work out our propositions and figures in space with mathematical precision by adopting such conditions as the above. But afterwards the artist or draughtsman may modify and suit them to a more elastic view of things; that is, he can make his figures separate from one another, instead of their outlines coming close together as they do when we look at them with only one eye. Also he will allow for the unevenness of the ground and the roundness of our globe; he may ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... numerous ways by the movement of the tongue and mandibles. Nor is that all, for the air column pumped up from the lungs may be increased or diminished at will, a very strong current producing a loud tone, and a feeble current a low one. The elongation or contraction of the whole throat will also modify the pneumatic column, and thereby alter the ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... have been able to dwell on the broad features of the country which it takes many ages to change or modify. From the earliest times we can record the settlers on this chosen spot must have looked out on the same hills and the same broad valley with its overarching sky. But then, instead of the "crown of gold" of which Drayton sings, or the silver ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... direct them, in order to render us better and more certain of our dispositions. For it is undoubtedly more painful to an honest man to resist desires already formed, and which it is his duty to subdue, than to prevent, change, or modify the same desires in their source, were he capable of tracing them to it. A man under temptation resists once because he has strength of mind, he yields another time because this is overcome; had it been the same as before he would again ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... externally an infusion of the herb acts as an anodyne to subdue irritation of the skin, and it may be taken as a medicine to modify skin diseases. The fresh juice is attractive to flies, but at the same time it serves to poison them: so if it be mixed with milk, and placed where flies resort they will drink it and perish at ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... value in the improvement of our European breeds. Nathusius makes a remarkable statement ('Schweineschadel' s. 138), that the infusion of the 1/32nd, or even of the 1/64th, part of the blood of S. indicus into a breed of S. scrofa, is sufficient plainly to modify the skull of the latter species. This singular fact may perhaps be accounted for by several of the chief distinctive characters of S. indicus, such as the shortness of the lachrymal bones, etc., being ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... have been very considerable, and we may justly believe it to represent some thousands of years; but whatever its length, we find that the time was not sufficient to wipe out the early views which had been handed on from generation to generation, or even to modify some of the beliefs which we now know to have existed in an almost unchanged state at the latest period of Egyptian history. In the texts which were edited by the priests of Heliopolis we find references to a state or condition of things, as far as social matters are concerned, ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... others, but they do this, not as echoes only, they authenticate their tidings, they take care to see what the discoverers have taught them to see, and in consequence of this clear vision they are enabled to arrange and modify the materials so as to produce new results. The Primary Class is composed of men of genius; the Secondary Class of men of talent. It not unfrequently happens, especially in philosophy and science, that the ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... it finish? In Para, at Belem, eight hundred leagues from this little Peruvian village, if nothing happened to modify the route. How would it finish? That was the secret of ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... by rational ideas! But can a man of sound sense listen for one moment to such a doctrine? Either predestination admits the existence of free-will, or it rejects it. If it admits it, what kind of predetermined result can that he which a simple resolution, a step, a word, may alter or modify ad infinitum? If predestination, on the contrary, rejects the existence of free-will it is quite another question; in that case a child need only be thrown into its cradle as soon as it is born, there is no necessity for ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... called Jewish Letters, published at Newcastle in 1746. (The Dublin edition of 1753 I have not seen.) Though d'Argens's purpose in Letter 35 may have been to advertise his own novel, what he had to say is interesting. Like many others, he could scoff at the heroic romances and yet borrow and quietly modify the doctrines of Ibrahim and Clelie. He proposed a still more "advanced" vraisemblance and decorum—psychological analysis tinged with cynicism rather than idealism; gallantry but against the background sometimes of the modern city; a plainer ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... Ah, that is difficult to describe, whether in one hour or in many hours. It is first a matter of experiment, of individuality, then of experience and memory. We listen and create the tone, modify it until it expresses our ideal, then we try to remember ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... our main proposition had two sides. One of them has now been dealt with: namely, that physical things do not influence mind (or form ideas and beliefs) except as they are implicated in action for prospective consequences. The other point is persons modify one another's dispositions only through the special use they make of physical conditions. Consider first the case of so-called expressive movements to which others are sensitive; blushing, smiling, frowning, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... shrank from putting his name first to the instrument; whereupon their names were written about it in a circle, making what mutinous sailors call a Round Robin. Johnson received it half graciously, half grimly. "He was willing," he said, "to modify the sense of the epitaph in any manner the gentlemen pleased; but he never would consent to disgrace the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English inscription." Seeing the names of Dr. Wharton and Edmund Burke among the signers, "he wondered," he said, "that Joe Wharton, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... better, as youth fondly imagines; and that experiments are not invariably successful. They have also learnt that no amount of talk will alter hard facts, and that the law that effect will follow cause is an inflexible one which torrents of fluent platitudes will neither affect nor modify. Even should this entail their being labelled with the silly and meaningless term of "reactionary," I do not imagine that their equanimity is much upset by it. It is, perhaps, natural for the elderly to make disparaging comparisons between ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... or even to any occupation which necessitates a daily walk to business and back again in all kinds of weather. Women's dress can easily be modified and adapted to any exigencies of the kind; but most women refuse to modify or adapt it. They must follow the fashion, whether it be convenient or the reverse. And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... asserters are verbs and participles, though the latter assert nothing; his adnames are articles, adjectives whose nouns or pronouns are expressed, and adverbs that relate to adjectives; his modifiers are such adverbs as "modify the sense or sound of a whole sentence;" his relatives are prepositions, some of which govern no object; his connectives are conjunctions, with certain adverbs and phrases; his interrogatives and repliers are new parts of speech, very lamely ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the outside crust little remains that can be called gratifying. These men are like the apple of Sodom; at least, so I thought on landing, after a long squabble with them respecting the passage money, carried on in bad Italian and French. A nearer acquaintance with them may, perhaps, modify my views ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... disease, and temperament, and organization, and circumstance, together with the multitude of independent agencies which affect the opinions, the conduct, and the happiness of individuals, and produce determinations of the will, and modify the judgement, so as to produce effects the most opposite in natures considerably similar. These are those operations in the order of the whole of nature, tending, we are prone to believe, to some definite mighty end, to which the agencies of our peculiar nature are subordinate; nor ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... character was known to Stukely, so she could afford to exaggerate the expression of her anger, and she did not modify it, forgetful that a woman is the representative of the sex with cynical men, and escapes from contempt at the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... domestic life that you are scarcely better informed than I as to the latest modes. We will drive in the park, use our eyes on the avenue, and visit several fashionable establishments first. Then I wish to find a dressmaker who is not an idiotic slave of fashion, and who can modify the prevailing styles by taste and appreciation of the person for whom she works. The one whom I employ must make dresses for me and under my direction, and not dresses in the abstract, as if they were for the iron-framed form on which she ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... do you really dislike or disapprove this plan? If you do I will willingly modify it according to your judgment; or even, if you wish it, I will willingly drop it altogether," she ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... days of building the airships of the 23 class, further information was obtained relating to rigid airship construction in Germany, which caused our designers to modify their views. It was considered a wrong policy to continue the production of a fleet of ships the design of which was becoming obsolete, and accordingly within ten months of placing the order for this class a decision was reached that the last four ships were to be altered to ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... similar conditions. There are, however, many accidental, or "occasional," minerals, as they are termed, which belong to granite. Among these black schorl or tourmaline, actinolite, zircon, garnet, and fluor spar are not uncommon; but they are too sparingly dispersed to modify the general aspect of the rock. They show, nevertheless, that the ingredients were not everywhere exactly the same; and a still greater difference may be traced in the ever-varying proportions of the feldspar, ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... of a Man, shape of a Time, have we in this Abbot Samson and his history; how strangely do modes, creeds, formularies, and the date and place of a man's birth, modify the figure of ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... inducing excessive variability. The prevention of free crossing, and the intentional matching of individual animals, are the corner-stones of the breeder's art. No man in his senses would expect to improve or modify a breed in any particular manner, or keep an old breed true and distinct, unless he separated his animals. The killing of inferior animals in each generation comes to the {86} same thing as their separation. In savage and semi-civilised countries, where the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... had passed,—four, in this instance,—and there came a time, only a few weeks previous to the opening of our story, when Di found herself constrained to modify her view ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... economic tendencies of the state. These are the vital forces that work beneath the surface and dominate the external form. It is to changes in the economic and social life of a people that we must look for the forces, that ultimately create and modify ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... Particulars of the source of each story will be found in the Notes on the Sources at the end of this volume. In the same place will also be found a pronouncing-index of proper names. I have endeavoured, in the text, to avoid or to modify any names which in their original form would baffle the English reader, but there remain some on the pronunciation of which he may be glad to ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... should now consider whether these same laws still operate, when the distribution takes place through the complex mechanism of exchange and money; or whether the properties of the mechanism interfere with and modify ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... tell-tale feature which reveals the secret of a bird's life, was not long, but thick, and black as jet, and the dark eye was set in a heavy, black band across the side of the head. The combination of black and gray was very effective, and closer acquaintance did not modify my first opinion of the little stranger; he was a bonny bird with clear, open gaze, graceful in every movement, and innocent and sweet in life I was sure, and am still, in ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... entertained that the President would grant us an audience at once; but a delay of nearly a week occurred. In the mean time several conferences were held, at which a general review of the situation was gone over, and it was decided to modify our demands, asking for nothing personally, only a modification of the order in the interest of humanity to dumb animals. Before our arrival, a congressman and two senators, political supporters of the chief executive, ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... replied, "has been eminently satisfactory. Circumstances, perhaps, have compelled me to modify the original idea of it, but nevertheless it has been a completely successful test. Since we started out, I have been doing a good deal of thinking, and I have come to the conclusion that what the Paterson Dyeing and Refining Company really needs ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... recollection of our most innocent enjoyment." Edward, as the mother's favorite, escaped her severity; but it fell upon Mary with double force, and was with her carried out with a thoroughness that laid its shortcomings bare, and consequently forced Mrs. Wollstonecraft to modify her treatment of her younger children. This concession on her part shows that she must have had their well-being at heart, even when her policy in their regard was most misguided, and that her unkindness was not, like her ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... laid bare my heart and allowed you to read it, you will believe in the sincerity of what I am about to add. Though the glimpse I had of you was all too rapid, it has sufficed to modify my opinion of your conduct. You are a poet and a poem, even more than you are a woman. Yes, there is in you something more precious than beauty; you are the beautiful Ideal of art, of fancy. The step you took, blamable as it would be in ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... his plays. This makes Jonson, like Dryden in his time, and Wordsworth much later, an author to reckon with; particularly when we remember that many of Jonson's notions came for a time definitely to prevail and to modify the whole trend of English poetry. First of all Jonson was a classicist, that is, he believed in restraint and precedent in art in opposition to the prevalent ungoverned and irresponsible Renaissance spirit. Jonson believed that ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... breezes. Before starting for Rome on the 17th of March, he sent him a few sharp lines complaining of the Presse's delay in printing the Peasants. As a matter of fact, the readers of the Presse were not pleased with the story; and the editor had been obliged to request the author to modify the unpublished part. Balzac complied, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... were on their feet now, insisting that the King modify Joan's frankness; but he was not minded to do it. His ordinary councils were stale water—his spirit was drinking wine, now, and the taste of it was ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... on this principle, namely,—that, whilst he enforced from the pulpit the general doctrine of non-resistance, he was not obliged to take notice of the theoretic limits which ought to modify that doctrine. Sir Joseph Jekyl, in his reply, whilst he controverts its application to the Doctor's defence, fully admits and even enforces the principle itself, and supports the Revolution of 1688, as he and all ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... said, "be three men walking together: from that number I should be sure to find my instructors; for what is good in them I should choose out and follow, and what is not good I should modify." ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... its pillars. Hence we may understand the charm of that irregularity that prevails in the forms of vegetation. If we remove a branch from an Elm or an Oak, or even from an Ash, we destroy no positive symmetry; it is like removing a stone from a loose stone wall; we do but slightly modify its disproportions. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... same time large concessions, in spirit if not in letter, helped to modify the rigour of this constitutional doctrine. "I have not drawn any specific line," Russell wrote at the end of the despatch already quoted, "beyond which the power of the governor on the one hand, and the privileges of the assembly on the other, ought not to extend.... The governor ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... be beat out, even though to effect this was to make the lines irregular. As I have said in my Schweich Lectures: "If the Hebrew poet be so constantly bent on a rhythm of sense this must inevitably modify his rhythms of sound. If his first aim be to produce lines each more or less complete in meaning, but so as to run parallel to its fellow, it follows that these lines cannot be always exactly regular in length or measure of time. If the ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... forgiving a brother. There should not be a little, narrow, grudging forgiveness; it should be large, loving, and free. But parallel with forgiveness there must be faithfulness. Faithfulness to the evil-doer himself, and to the community, comes in here to modify, not the nature, but the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... have you act contrary to them. But I wouldn't have you obtrude them too ostentatiously—for your own sake, Le Breton, for your own sake, I assure you. Remember, you're a very young man yet: you have plenty of time before you to modify your opinions in: as you go on, you'll modify them—moderate them—bring them into harmony with the average opinions of ordinary parents. Don't commit yourself at present—that's all I would say to you—don't commit yourself at present. When you're ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... sense of the gap between man and the natural world felt because man has no power over it. He cannot swerve nor modify its laws, nor do his laws acknowledge its ascendency over them. But what makes the gulf deeper is the sense of the immeasurable moral difference between a thinking, feeling, self-estimating being ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... Bland, the master-at-arms, was no vulgar, dirty knave. In him—to modify Burke's phrase—vice seemed, but only seemed, to lose half its seeming evil by losing all its apparent grossness. He was a neat and gentlemanly villain, and broke his biscuit with a dainty hand. There was a fine polish about his whole person, and a pliant, insinuating ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... another kind of composition more frequent in our language than perhaps in any other, from which arises to foreigners the greatest difficulty. We modify the signification of many verbs by a particle subjoined; as to come off, to escape by a fetch; to fall on, to attack; to fall off, to apostatize; to break off, to stop abruptly; to bear out, to justify; to fall in, to comply; to give over, to cease; to set off, to ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... burned away the natural ties of kindred and neighbour and home. Enough that the few remaining members spared out of what must have been a small family cut Margarita's father definitely off from them, in terms no man could have tried with any self-respect to modify. His father, a Northerner, who had identified himself since his Southern marriage with his wife's interests and kinsfolk, had lost touch with his own people, and a few death notices, slipped in among the letters, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... good-hearted. If I had been as unaccommodating and unsympathetic as some people, I would have told Mr. Bloke that I wouldn't receive his communication at such a late hour; but no, his snuffling distress touched my heart, and I jumped at the chance of doing something to modify his misery. I never read his item to see whether there was anything wrong about it, but hastily wrote the few lines which preceded it, and sent it to the printers. And what has my kindness done for ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... of prostitution seem to me those that here chiefly concern us, it is scarcely necessary to point out that many other causes contribute to produce and modify prostitution. Prostitutes themselves often seek to lead other girls to adopt the same paths; recruits must be found for brothels, whence we have the "white slave trade," which is now being energetically combated in many parts of the world; while all the forms of seduction ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... was Mr. Gryce's first thought. "He is going to show us the bow and confess to what was undoubtedly an accident." But Mr. Gryce felt more or less ready to modify this impromptu conclusion when, on passing through the arch himself he came upon the young man still standing in Section VI, with his eyes on the opposite gallery and his whole frame trembling ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... injunction was issued by Judge Barnard, who was afterward impeached, and removed from office. On the day of the stockholders' meeting General Butler, counsel for the Ames faction, found Judge Barnard at lunch, and got him so to modify the injunction as to permit that the votes might be cast, the result of the election not to be declared until the further order of the Court. The other faction who had rested with fancied security under their injunction were taken ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... now introduced a modification upon which his supporters laid great stress. In the new version the 'checks' which proportion population to means of subsistence are not simply 'vice and misery,' but 'moral restraint, vice, and misery.'[228] How, precisely, does this modify the theory? How are the different 'checks' related? What especially is meant by 'moral' in this connection? Malthus takes his ethical philosophy pretty much for granted, but is clearly a Utilitarian according to the version of Paley.[229] ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... carriage is too heavy. I can only renew the representations contained in my letter of January 1, 1898, to the Adjutant General, accompanying drawing, etc., of my proposed carriage for machine guns. I would now, based on experience, modify my theory of organization as then proposed, and would make several changes in the model of carriage then proposed without departing ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... of which had been given him by the Prophet Daniel. God chose to employ this mode to acquaint the holy Patriarch with the various revolutions which would take place in his Order, and he signified them to him by the statue itself, by the different metals of which it was composed, either thus to modify by these humiliating foreshowings the honor which he derived from being the Founder of so wonderful a work as that of the establishment of his Order; or to inspire him with the intention of sending up fervent prayers to heaven, which should draw down graces on his flock at all times, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... hair-dresser was a person of no importance, yet it happened to him to modify not only Helwyse's external aspect, but the aspect of his mind as well,—by the presentation of a new idea; for strange to say, Helwyse had never chanced to doubt that seraphim were higher than cherubim, or that independence ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... had been reached in the caucus, so that Douglas was quite willing to modify the phraseology of the bill. "We see," said he, "that the difference here is only a difference as to the appropriate word to be used. We all agree in the principle which we now propose to establish." As he was not satisfied ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... Contradictions, both in Scripture and Reason, in Regard to this Doctrine. 4. Everlasting Punishment limits the Sovereignty of God. 5. Everlasting Punishment contradicts the Fatherly Love of God. 6. Attempts to modify and soften the Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment. 7. The meaning of Eternal Punishment in Scripture. 8. How Judgment by Christ is connected with Punishment. 9. The Doctrine of Annihilation. 10. The Doctrine of Universal Restoration. Chapter XV. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... or war, education, the instincts of the heart, the health of the body and the mind (if it be possible for the latter to be in a sane state when we fall in love), the buoyancy of youth or the decrepitude of old age,—these, and numerous other causes which I cannot at present enumerate, serve to modify to infinity the form and character of the sentiment. Thus we do not love at eighteen as we do at forty, nor in the city as we do in the country, nor in spring as we do in autumn, nor in the camp as we do in the court; nor does ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... H. Knowles did modify his code in this way some time after 1798. For his original signal he substituted two in MS. with the following neatly worded significations: 'No. 32. To break through the enemy's line together and engage on the opposite side. No. 33. To break through the enemy's line in succession and engage ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett |
