"Potency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hasten to discontinue present causes, by all means, and surrender the field to the operation of the old causes. 'The chain' of the slave 'must be broken when the civil law, which alone gives it strength, passes away.' Therefore hasten to restore the civil law to its old and tyrannical potency over the destiny of the slave. 'The institution must melt away as the war goes on.' Therefore, hasten not merely to finish the active stage of the war, but to surrender the power which victory will place in your hands to continue the same emancipating influences; and to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... are devils to ourselves, When we will tempt the frailty of our powers, Presuming on their changeful potency. Troilus and Cressida, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... yet in truth we've had Strange thunders from the potency of song; Mingled indeed with what is sweet and strong, From majesty: but in clear truth the themes Are ugly clubs, the Poets Polyphemes Disturbing the grand sea. A drainless shower Of light is poesy; 'tis the supreme ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... within reach,—under pain of being torn to pieces, while he went about in the flesh, or rather in the bones, poor lean being. Changed times; within the Century last past! For indeed there was in that man what far transcends all dizenment, and temporary potency over valets, over legions, treasure-vaults and dim millions mostly blockhead: a spark of Heaven's own lucency, a gleam from the Eternities (in small measure);—which becomes extremely noticeable when the Dance is over, when your tallow-dips ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... that they may secure it, they assume indifference. They assume indifference, but are hard at work with their usual weapons. The men can do very well by themselves. For them there is drinking, smoking, cards, and various games; but the potency of female spells soon works upon them, and all who are worth anything are more or less in love by the end of the first week. Of course it must all come to an end when the port is reached. That is understood, though there may sometimes be mistakes. Most pathetic secrets ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... President Lincoln, in his first message, discussed, ably enough, the right of secession as a mere constitutional or legal right. Others have done the same before and since. The opinion of the lawyer is all very well, but it has no special potency to restrain the nocturnal activities of the burglar. All such discussions are, for the present behalf, utterly puerile. Secession, revolution, the bloody destruction and extinction of the whole nation, were for years before the war foregone determinations ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared. He therefore still kept up a familiar intercourse with him, daily receiving the old physician in his study, or visiting the laboratory, and, for recreation's sake, watching the processes by which weeds were converted into drugs of potency. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... upon the top. Many were injured in the concussion; many tossed into the water; twenty perished. The survivors crept again on board their ship, as it now lay, and as it still remains, keel to the waves, a monument of the sea's potency. In still weather, under a cloudless sky, in those seasons when that ill-named ocean, the Pacific, suffers its vexed shores to rest, she lies high and dry, the spray scarce touching her—the hugest structure of man's hands within ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... plaything to be trifled with, half as a young god to be wounded by. This rising of the star of love as it ascends into the heaven of youthful fancy, is revealed in the melodies Mozart has written for him. How shall we describe their potency? Who shall translate those curiously perfect words to which tone and rhythm have been indissolubly wedded? E pur mi piace languir cosi.... E se non ho chi m' oda, parlo d'amor ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Redmond could only justify to Ireland the part which he was taking if he won, and that he and not they must be the judge of what Ireland would consider a defeat. In all probability, also, they overrated his power and that of the party which he led. They did not guess at the potency of new forces which only in these months began to make themselves felt, and which in the end, breaking loose from Redmond's control, undid his work. A new phase in Irish history had begun, of which Sir Edward Carson was the ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... of the virginal passion of dreams unmarred by experience—It was while listening to her voice, as he stood there in the dimly lighted hall, that Frederick Norman passed under the spell in all its potency. In taking an anaesthetic there is the stage when we reach out for its soothing effects; then comes the stage when we half desire, half fear; then a stage in which fear is dominant, and we struggle to retain our control of the senses. Last comes the stage when we feel the full power of the drug ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... (1798—1818), Wordsworth possessed this gift of melody. During those years he wrote works which profoundly influenced mankind. The gift then left him; he continued as wise and as earnest as ever, but his poems had no longer any potency, nor his ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... A few gaudy pictures of Saints and the Madonna ornamented the side walls, while in the rear hung the necessary crucifix. At the time of its building the jacal had been blessed, as was customary before occupancy, and to Enrique's reasoning the potency of the ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... already discussed the operation of the laws of inheritance. It was then stated that the whole story of maternal influence had not been told—that the mother could communicate qualities she never possessed. The potency of imagination at the time of conception over the child has been mentioned. It is now our design to consider its effects, during the period of pregnancy, upon the physical structure and the mental attributes of the offspring. We shall have occasion hereafter, in speaking of nursing, to illustrate ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... — N. power; potency, potentiality; jiva^; puissance, might, force, energy &c 171; dint; right hand, right arm; ascendency^, sway, control; prepotency, prepollence^; almightiness, omnipotence; authority &c 737; strength &c 159. ability; ableness &c adj.^; competency; efficacy; efficiency, productivity, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... asked myself, "Was I better and more truthful when I only believed in the power of the human intellect, or am I more so now, when I am losing the faculty of developing that power, and am in doubt both as to its potency and as to its importance?" To this I could return ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... which Buddhism inculcates, the exaltation of intellect which it proclaims, and the perfection of virtue and wisdom to which it points as within the reach of every created being, it may readily be imagined, that it must have wielded a spell of unusual potency, and one well calculated to awaken boldness and energy in those already animated by schemes of ambition. In Ceylon, on the contrary, owing more or less to insulation and seclusion, Buddhism has survived for upwards of 2000 years as unchanged in all its leading ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... proprietors,—the overwhelming argument whose invincible potency reassures them,—is that, in their opinion, equality of conditions is impossible. "Equality of conditions is a chimera," they cry with a knowing air; "distribute wealth equally to-day—to-morrow this equality ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack, the wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in their work. They have all recognized the potency and availability of that force. Physicians cure many patients with a bread pill; they know that where the disease is only a fancy, the patient's confidence in the doctor will ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... death-bone is so completely under the control of the operator that it usually goes straight to the person against whom he in the dead waste of the night breathes his moody and angry soul away. Should the medicine-man, however, be conscious that the potency is inclined to swerve, if he but put his hand to the right or left it must fly in accordance with ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... noble manner of bearing! But was it decorous—was it? He hated himself for the idea that forced itself upon him, just for an instant—no more—and yet, while it was present, thrilled him with its old potency of attraction towards her image. And then this falsehood—how terrible must be some dread of shame to be revealed—for, after all, the provocation given by such a man as Leonards was, when excited by drinking, might, in all probability, be more ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... expression she used to find so effective in Kunitz days when confronted by a person inclined to forget which, exactly, was his proper place. But Mrs. Morrison knew nothing of Kunitz, and the look lost half its potency without its impressive background. Besides, the lady was not one to notice things so slight as looks; to keep her in her proper place you would have needed sledge-hammers. She came in without thinking it necessary to wait to be asked to, nodded ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... powers of the mind, as it withdraws the attention to the external and therefore is hardly to be compared with that deep silence of the subconscious mind, where deep thoughts, and the silent forces of high potency are evolved. It is necessary to be silent before you can speak wisely. The person that is really alert and well poised and able to speak wisely under trying circumstances, is the person that has practiced in the silence. Most people ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... by the colours, are almost complementary, are the chemically active rays the same? The general relation of colour to chemical action is worthy of the application of the method by which Dr. Draper proved so conclusively the chemical potency of the yellow ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... The potency of composts can vary greatly. Most municipal solid waste compost has a high carbon to nitrogen ratio and when tilled into soil temporarily provokes the opposite of a good growth response until soil animals and microorganisms ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... linked still in zealous friendship with the grandfather whose hope had yearned toward him when he was unborn, and who, though dead, was yet to speak with him in those written memorials which, says Milton, "contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are," he seemed to himself to be touching the electric chain of his own ancestry; and he bore the scrutinizing look of Kalonymos with a delighted awe, something like what one feels in the solemn commemoration of acts done long ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... have become household words and every-day conceptions. The reality and the importance of the natural processes on which Darwin founds his deductions are no more doubted than those of growth and multiplication; and, whether the full potency attributed to them is admitted or not, no one doubts their vast and far-reaching significance. Wherever the biological sciences are studied, the 'Origin of Species' lights the paths of the investigator; wherever they are taught it permeates the course of instruction. Nor has the influence ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Sir John; not an empire's worth, Nor wealth of Ind could buy The like, for never was jewel seen Of such wondrous potency. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... fact, leave the hands of the physician. Invaluable for the detection of diseases of the throat which impair the voice and which have to be cured either by treatment or operation before the voice can be restored to its original potency or charm, its value in studying the physiology of voice-production and the functions of the vocal organs is doubtful. In fact, it is its use by amateur laryngoscopists that has resulted in the promulgation ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... as ever, she saw—had the same charm of manner—a charm owing not a little of its potency to the impression he made of the man who would dare as far as any man, and then go on to dare a step farther—the step from which all but the rare, utterly unafraid man shrinks. His look at her could not but appeal ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... to Offa, and stands by his bedside with eyes that gleam in the dim light of the lamp that burns in the chamber, and wakes him, but not easily. On him the potency of that Frankish wine lingers yet, and he does not rouse quickly, but stares at her with ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... attend the robust brood who, coated in dirt, and with mud and refuse for playthings, live and thrive, and grow into manhood, and, in contrast to the pale face and flabby flesh of the aristocratic child, exhibit strength, vigour, and well-developed frames, and our belief in the potency of the life-giving elements of air, light, and cleanliness receives a shock that, at first sight, would appear fatal to the implied benefits of these, in reality, all-sufficient ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... condiment with his tasteless and indigestible diet. Both directly and indirectly, therefore, the employments that withdraw women from domestic pursuits are likely to increase alcoholism, and, it may be added, to increase its greatest potency for evil, namely its influence on the health ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... made its might felt, both on the earth and in the waters, continued its onward course, and rested not until it had penetrated into the gloomy realms of Dis. Therefore Heaven and Earth and Ocean and Hell itself have had experience of the potency of his weapons. And, in order that thou mayest understand in a few words the power of the deity, I tell thee that, while everything succumbs to nature, and nothing can ever be emancipated from her ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... work may be looked at as an illustration of the potency of his theory as an "instrument for the extension of the realm of natural knowledge." (Huxley in Darwin's "Life and Letters." II. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... Lucian more than the potency of a drug, lulling him into a splendid waking-sleep, every word being a supreme incantation. And it was not only his mind that was charmed by such passages, for he felt at the same time a strange and delicious bodily languor that held him motionless, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... said the emir. "Put it inside the sweat-band of the front of your hat and no one will perceive it and yet it will have all its potency." ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... the world, since it only had the power to do so. This "telurian germanization" was to be of immense benefit to mankind. The earth was going to be happy under the dictatorship of a people born for mastery. The German state, "tentacular potency," would eclipse with its glory the most imposing empire of the past ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... is for the disinherited, the weak, and the strong who have become weak; for those who have been wrecked by folly and passion, and too much love of living; for those whose capacities for good and evil, being both rooted in passion, are equally a peril and a potency—it is to these Christ chiefly speaks. To them the Gospel of unlimited forgiveness and unalterable love is the only vital, because the only efficacious Gospel. The man whose very virility of nature makes him the easy prey of murderous ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... for her—he knew her! Whether he did or not, he knew the potency of his physic. He knew that osiers can be made to bend. With a frightful noise of hammering, he himself nailed up the window-shutters of the room she was locked in hard and fast, and he left her there and roared across the household that any one holding communication with the prisoner should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that would not burn and water that would not drown. There was one thing we were ambitious to do, yet could not screw our courage to the sticking point; we wanted to get drunk to see how it felt. Either a Tom and Jerry had not sufficient potency, or we could never find the bottom of the glass before our stomachs rebelled, for we only paid the penalty in a penitential headache without the fun ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... beyond the grave, illusion though you may call it,[44] has a magic and divine potency that re-acts on the living. A mother's Ego, filled with love for the imaginary children it sees near itself, living a life of happiness, as real to it as when on earth—that love will always be felt by the children in flesh. It will manifest in ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... that Nietzsche did not live to see the success of his teaching in England.... Britain may claim to have bred the Superman in the highest potency yet attained. He has made a clean sweep of the old British morality. He is coldly and unfeelingly inspired by a frightful craving for power, that wades through rivers of blood, and knows neither compunction nor pity. These are weaknesses which the ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... essence and the outward mold of beauty, to the unkindled mind beauty is no more present then was Banquo's ghost to the guests of Macbeth. Macbeth's individual conscience made him see the ghost; nay, by a creative potency summoned it: and so is beauty created there where, without what I may call the aesthetic conscience, it no more exists than do the glories of Titian and Claude to the affectionate spaniel who follows his master ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... intelligent eyes and the face of a ne'er-do-well had caught my attention. The day had been a hot, languorous Sunday on which all things had seemed to be exhibiting their better side, and telling the sun that it was not in vain that he was pouring out his brilliant potency, and diffusing his living gold; while the man of whom I speak had, dressed in a new suit of blue serge, a new cap cocked awry, and a pair of brilliantly polished boots, been standing at the edge of the wharf, and gazing at the brown waters of the Kama, the emerald ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... lasts, and which, when it is gone, is the object of bitter lamentation for the rest of life, even hardship gives zest to enjoyment when the heart is buoyed—as what youthful heart is not?—by the sweet potency of woman's love. Fatigue, hunger, thirst, disease, and poverty are only trifles that are laughed at, so long as there is seen in the background of it all the lambent light of tender eyes speaking, as nothing else can, the language of the devoted heart. For many of his brother officers, ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... three centuries, and especially during the nineteenth century, commercial pre-eminence and pre-eminence in empire have departed from the Mediterranean. Italy, the ruler of the whole ancient world, and even in modern times a ruler of almost equal potency; Turkey, during the middle ages a chief power both in Europe and in Asia; Spain, for two centuries at the beginning of our modern epoch a chief power in Europe and the mistress of almost the whole Western world as well,—these countries have all sunk to positions ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... barbaric and ceremonious, a flirring of learned and venerable conceits and witticisms; something German in the best and worst sense of the word, something in the German style, manifold, formless, and inexhaustible; a certain German potency and super-plenitude of soul, which is not afraid to hide itself under the RAFFINEMENTS of decadence—which, perhaps, feels itself most at ease there; a real, genuine token of the German soul, which is at the ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... over the lip of the overhang. They were unevenly matched, Kirkwood far the slighter, but strength came to him in the crisis, physical strength and address such as he had not dreamed was at his command. And the surprise of his onslaught proved an ally of unguessed potency. Before he himself knew it he was standing on the overhang and had shifted his hold to seize the fellow about the waist; then, lifting him clear of the deck, and aided by a lurch of the cat-boat, he cast him bodily ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the great city we are met again, Where many souls there are, that breathe and die, Scarce knowing more of nature's potency, Than what they learn from heat, or cold, or rain; The sad vicissitude of weary pain;— For busy man is lord of ear and eye, And what hath nature, but the vast, void sky, And the thronged river toiling to the main? Oh! say not so, for she shall ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... all topless grandeurs, All beauty, and all starry majesties, And dim transtellar things;—even that it may, Filled in the ending with a puff of dust, Confess—'It is enough.' The world left empty What that poor mouthful crams. His heart is builded For pride, for potency, infinity, All heights, all deeps, and all immensities, Arrased with purple like the house of kings,— To stall the grey-rat, and the carrion-worm Statelily lodge. Mother of mysteries! Sayer of dark sayings in a thousand tongues, Who bringest ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... mine, thy mother being a sister of my mother Dakshayani, and now I desire to hear thee relate thine own prowess.' The lady replied, 'O hero with long arms, I am Avala[70] (weak) but my husband must be powerful. And by the potency of my father's boon, he will be respected by gods and Asuras alike.' Indra said, 'O blameless creature, I wish to hear from thee, what sort of power thou wishest thy husband to possess.' The lady replied, 'That manly and famous and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... concealment of stolen goods, the boundary-stones of fields, the traces of robbers and murderers, or even the existence of subterraneous springs and streams of water; albeit, I think these properties not easily to be discredited; but of its potency in discovering vein of precious metal, and hidden sums of money and jewels, I have not the least doubt. Some said that the rod turned only in the hands of persons who had been born in particular months of the year; hence astrologers had recourse to planetary influence when ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... to me that the lower potencies lose in power as they are kept for a longer period; hence, I consider it safer to prepare them fresh every year. As a general rule, I have found either the third or the thirtieth potency, sufficient. ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... most rare elixir," said he, after taking a deep draught, "prepared by the great enchanter Alquife, and of a magic potency." Then, being exhausted by his violent exertions of body and mind he stretched himself on the couch and soon ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the bugler of Destiny sounded the "Halt!" to the retreat of the armies of the Allies from the Belgian frontier. The marvelous fighting machine of the German armies, perhaps the most superb organization of military potency that has been conceived by the mind of man, seemed to reach its limit of range. Success had perched upon the German eagles, and for two weeks there had been a steady succession of victories. Nevertheless the British ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... again, in his old attic; it was spring, and his beloved city as beautiful as ever. He had expected a return of his old-time gaiety, but somehow the charm lacked potency. He wanted to paint, but his ideas were turgid and fragmentary. He wanted excitement, but the city only seemed to offer memories. The lapse of a short eighteen months had scattered his friends surprisingly. Adolph remained, but Nanette was married. Louise had left Paris, and Giddens, the ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... water on which a myriad coloured lights rocked and swam. And still his features wore that monkeyish look of unrest, of discontent and quizzical irony oddly mingled. He felt the lure, but it was not strong enough. Its influence had lost its potency. ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... Ever possessed it as they drew along: Yet throughout all it symboled none the less Potency ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... a wall. Outward from the low, rounded houses of the city's edge there reached a wide and verdant plain, which was separated from the jungle by a narrow moat of shimmering liquid—a liquid of such dire potency that across it, even those frightful growths could ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... energising spectacle of a noble and strenuous antiquity; for there are no such inspirers of young men as these old places! So much strength and youth went into them long ago that even yet they have strength and youth to give, and from them, as from the strong hills, pours out an inexhaustible potency of ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... His eye never departs from it. See how from that point the oblique circle which bears the planets[3] branches off, to satisfy the world which calls on them;[4] and if their road had not been bent, much virtue in the heavens would be in vain, and well-nigh every potency dead here below.[5] And if from the straight line its departure had been more or less distant, much of the order of the world, both below and above, would be defective. Now do thou remain, Reader, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... The Jesuits were scandalized that such a woman should usurp the reins of state, especially when they perceived that she mocked and defied them; and they therefore refused to pay her court, and even conspired to effect her overthrow. But they had not sufficiently considered the potency of her wrath, or the desperate means of revenge to which she could resort; nor had they considered those other influences which had been gradually undermining their influence,—even the sarcasms of the Jansenists, the ridicule of the philosophers, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... little girl was still there, and, if so, to send her to my room. Presently a faint tap, low down on the door, told me my expected visitor had arrived. Wide-eyed and smiling she entered, and having some cough drops on my dressing-table, I did the honours. Cough drops of strength and potency they were, too, but sweet, and therefore acceptable to a small girl. She looked at them in her wistful way, and then very prettily asked, "Please might she eat one ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... the very nethermost point of his downward swoop Solon Denney was raised to a height so dizzy that even the erstwhile sceptic spirit of Westley Keyts abased itself before him, frankly conceding that diplomacy's innocent and mush-like surface might conceal springs of a terrible potency. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... turned a page backward into the dark annals of violence and crime. And not alone in despotic Russia, but in Germany, the seat of modern philosophic thought and culture, the rage of Anti-Semitism broke out and spread with fatal ease and potency. In Berlin itself tumults and riots were threatened. We in America could scarcely comprehend the situation or credit the reports, and for a while we shut our eyes and ears to the facts; but we were soon rudely awakened from our insensibility, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... has been so appealing as that dream," she persisted. "I am telling you all this with the hope that once I have laughed with you over this witchcraft it will be robbed of its potency. I have destroyed the sacred wall of sentiment surrounding this ghost of mine because I rebel at being ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... incessantly through her restless dreams. It was the man who was beside the Princess, who had fought desperately for her whether he loved her cause or not, who was hourly under the spell of her enchantment. The potency of that spell seemed to grow the more she thought of it, and all the charm which some had professed to find in herself seemed to sink into insignificance. It was not sufficient to win the love of this man. And those waiting hours, too, are hours of danger. Troubles ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... much to keep one small house both clean and sanitary. Dr. Redfield knew that, and he swore at Duck Town for a vile and filthy hole. So did the people swear at Duck Town, and many of them suddenly stopped living there. For, despite the strength and courage of their champion; despite the potency of drugs; despite the sleepless nights and days spent in fighting disease, the ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... experiments, but it is also an impediment to every suggestion of improvement. It binds us to the letter of tradition, leads us to confound the accidental with the essential, and gives to certain notions and certain words a potency which must be described as an anachronism. We still use the language of the Revolutionary epoch, recognize no perils but those against which our ancestors had to guard, and put faith in the efficacy of methods that have no longer an object, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... inspired by the scenes of this drama is, I believe, that of delighted wonder. And such, as appears from the heroine's name, Miranda, who is the potency of the drama, is probably the sentiment which the play was meant to inspire. But the grace and efficacy in which the workmanship is steeped are so ethereal and so fine, that they can hardly be discoursed in any but the poetic form: it may well be doubted whether ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... shed thence its brilliancy. The moral authority of the human mind was no longer at Rome. The stir, light, direction, were from Paris; the European mind was French. There was, and there always will be, in the French genius something more potent than its potency, more luminous than its splendour; and that is its warmth, its penetrating power of communicating the attraction which it has, and ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... pastures, dotted with ragged stumps and backed by ragged forests. It was the distinctive autumn smell of the backwoods settlements, that smell which, taken into the blood in childhood, can never lose its potency of magic, its power over the most secret ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... as to each card in the Parallelogram, ever naming last the Significance of the Master-Card, until your Parallelogram is all interpreted to the Querist. And note that the Master-Card even as an Influence is not more potent than another, (as far as is known), and that its Dignity and Potency arise only in its being uninfluenced; and, so speaking, from its Significance with a certain Individuality not belonging to its two Fellows. Nor are there; any Influences cast Upward or Downward by the Cards, out of the Row in which ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... beneath a green mantle.[1] And my spirit that now for so long a time had not been broken down, trembling with amazement at her presence, without having more knowledge by the eyes, through occult virtue that proceeded from her, felt the great potency of ancient love. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... as showing the marvellous potency of primeval instincts, bells placed in church towers were supposed to have much of the supernatural power that the savage in his wilderness ascribed to the drum. We all know something of the bell legends ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... these prisons from which no living prisoner emerges; of them all you weary, for the normal brain can only stand a certain dose of the delirious and the melancholy. This aspect, then, of Piranesi's art, black magic in all its potency, need no longer detain us. His Temples of Paestum sound a less morbid key than his Carceri, and ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... charm had lost none of its power, for absence seemed to have gifted it with redoubled potency, the confirmation of that early hope to grace it with redoubled warmth. Sylvia let him keep her, feeling that he had earned that small reward for a year's endeavor, resolving to grant all now left her to bestow, a few moments more of blissful ignorance, then to show him ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... in the Acts of the Apostles, we have a proof of the wisdom of the Author of Revelation. He foresaw that the rite of "the laying on of hands" would be sadly abused; that it would be represented as possessing something like a magic potency; and that it would be at length converted, by a small class of ministers, into an ecclesiastical monopoly. He has, therefore, supplied us with an antidote against delusion by permitting us, in this simple narrative, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... think she is in any present danger. The poisoned knife is her safeguard. The whole household, after witnessing its terrible potency, fear it as they would the fangs of a rattlesnake. It was a lucky thought that left it ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... the charge of his gun, cutting the size of the path the volts covered, thereby increasing the potency of the discharge. The piled bodies sizzled, and to Asher's nose came a sulphurous smell. Then, there was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... the famous Pompey the Great, wherein once more the weakness and the strange fortune of the human race are proved. He was no whit deficient in foresight, but was deceived by having been always absolutely secure against any force of harmful potency. He had won many unexpected victories in Africa, and many in Asia and Europe, both by land and by sea ever since boyhood; and was now in the fifty-eighth year of his age defeated without good reason. He who had subdued the entire Roman sea perished on it: and whereas he had once, ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... the march of humanity, where centuries have trailed their dust, traditions gleam like monuments to attest the victory of this immemorial potency, female fidelity; and when we of the nineteenth century seek the noblest, grandest type of merely human self-abnegation, that laid down a pure and happy life, to prolong that of a beloved object, we look back to the lovely image of that fair Greek woman, who, when the parents of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... late for mercy against the potency of the spell she herself had raised, seemed to me an incident that raised her to the utmost height of tragic creation. But Rossetti's purpose was at once less ambitious ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... the wheels no longer roar at their cruel revolutions. Thus my peppermints speak to me of home, of quiet, of certain green places and a lilac hedge; there is about them the taste and odor of the ideal. They are for the future as well as for the past. Perhaps in some subtle way they do after all have potency for beauty. I fancy that some day I too shall stow away bags of them amid my worthless precious junk, and when prying hands disturb the dust the nostrils of a youngster now unborn will be greeted by a frail yet pungent aroma. I can only trust that he will ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... unless that child be in himself strong and high-minded, loving truth, hating a lie, and habituated to live in good-will with his fellows and with high ideals for the universe. Modern interest in the material factors of life is on account of their potency in making real selfhood; we acknowledge the importance of the physical as the very soil in which life grows. But the fruits are more than the soil, and a home exists for higher purposes than physical conveniences; these are but ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... it will be with us even as it was with Jesus? His resurrection was not only a pledge of what that of believers will be, carrying within itself the seed and potency of a blessed immortality, but it was also a sample of what ours will be. Death will produce far less change in us than we imagine it will do. We shall go on with living very much as if nothing had ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... whiskey. It will ruin your body and soul. Don't touch it, young man," added he, as he sank back on the camp-stool, whose center of gravity was nearly destroyed by the shock, and closed his eyes, as if overcome by the potency of his great enemy, which was just then beginning to have its full effect, and which produced a ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... him Rhubarb, by reason of his long russet beard, which we imagined trailing in the prescriptions as he compounded them, imparting a special potency. He was a little German druggist—Deutsche Apotheker—and his real name was Friedrich ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... intense and darker. The shadow of the Assyrian is upon Israel, and as generally happens in times of public anxiety, rites long disused are imagined to have a specially national character and a peculiar potency, and are fetched back from oblivion. The reform of Josiah (2 Kings xxii., xxiii.) was more thorough-going than that of Hezekiah. He made an end of all the unseemly worships his predecessor had encouraged at Jerusalem, so that nothing but ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... different person from the one intended—but the grace and loveliness of some, the dignity and elevation of others, the expression of wisdom in this face, of celestial courage in that, the calm and purity and beauty of all, give them an indescribable charm and potency. At the end of the room facing the door are the "Nativity" and "Transfiguration," the latter, infinitely beautiful and religious, full of quiet concentrated feeling. We were none of us critics: none of us had got beyond the stage ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Egyptians, the early Sumerians may have been in touch with Punt (Somaliland), which some regard as the cradle of the Mediterranean race. The Egyptians obtained from that sacred land incense-bearing trees which had magical potency. In a fragmentary Babylonian charm there is a reference to a sacred tree or bush at Eridu. Professor Sayce has suggested that it is the Biblical "Tree of Life" in the Garden of Eden. His translations of certain vital words, however, is sharply questioned ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... her recovered daughter to her heart, it appeared as if she strove to incorporate the two bodies into one. A cry of pleasure and astonishment drew all around her. Then came the evidence of the power of nature when strongly awakened. Age and youth alike acknowledged its potency, and recent alarms were overlooked in the pure joy of such a moment. The spirit of even the lofty-minded Conanchet was shaken. Raising the hand, at whose wrist still hung the bloody tomahawk, he veiled his face, and, turning aside, that none might see the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... nothing, and he went out. The smell of the soup, which was apparently of great potency, filled the little room. Axel tried to open the window wider, but though he was tall and he stood on his table, he could not ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... influence like gravitation or caloric. There is no reason to forbid special acts of the creative spiritual energy, for we observe to-day the production of plants and of beautiful fabrics by spiritual power where the necessary conditions exist. Moreover, the greatest potency of spiritual power is at the beginnings in the most plasmic conditions of matter. It is in the animal germ and the vegetable seed that the invisible world is most potential, and I am inclined to think that naturalists have attached ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... the sides to sit down upon when tired and no gear, or rope coils, or other nautical "dunnage," to interrupt their free locomotion on this king of quarter-decks, which had, besides, an awning on top to tone down the potency of the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... through his mind in long array, and he was impatient to prove their power in persuading Madeleine to return. Was it possible that she could refuse to see their force? If calm reasoning, if entreaties and prayers failed to move her, he would test the potency of a threat,—she should learn that he had vowed never to return to his paternal home, never to forgive those who had driven her forth by their cruelty, until she had proclaimed their pardon by again taking up her abode at the Chateau de Gramont. Madeleine, who shrank from all strife, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... bonzes was one who especially resented Yu Chan's rule over him, for he was more learned in the subtile crafts of the East than the rest, and the potency of his spells was known and feared throughout Siam. An unbending ascetic, indeed, was the grey-bearded Klan Hua, and the ruler of the country had already promised to him that he should become the head ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the hopes of at least a hundred of the first families. As for the women, they were beside themselves, and knew not which way to turn. It was evident that nothing had occurred within a half-century to create anything like the excitement that existed. Mien-yaun's prospects of eternal potency ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... fire very comfortable, and several people were stretched on sofas in a state of placid wretchedness. . . . . I have never suffered from sea-sickness, but had been somewhat apprehensive of this rough strait between England and France, which seems to have more potency over people's stomachs than ten times the extent of sea in other quarters. Our passage was of two hours, at the end of which we landed on French soil, and found ourselves immediately in the clutches of the custom-house officers, who, however, merely made a momentary examination of my passport, and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... positive. Capacity may denote mere receptivity, like the capacity of a quart measure. We may mean by potentiality a merely dormant or quiescent state—a capacity to become something different under external influences. But we also mean by capacity an ability, a power; and by potentiality potency, force. Now when we say that immaturity means the possibility of growth, we are not referring to absence of powers which may exist at a later time; we express a force positively present—the ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... the streets, but as a human being definitely connected with her outlook upon life. Still, the suggestion that their relations had changed did not come from him, for he knew that pity or sympathy given by request lacks the potency of that which is spontaneously offered. So he held his peace in order that Barbara might be the first to speak, and during those days his heart became filled with ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... (as we prefer to believe) he made an effort to discipline them to his poetic purpose and failed, we cannot certainly say. Of this, however, we are certain, that somehow, somewhere, there has been disaster. He is empty, now. He has the apparatus of enchantment, but no potency in his soul. He is forced to fall back upon the artistic honesty which has never forsaken him. That it is an insufficient ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... many other customs relative to the naming of things are all founded on the same idea of the potency and mysticism inherent in a name, which may be found in the legends of the old Egyptians, wherein the power of the great king and god Ra depended on the fact that no one knew his real name, until Isis by ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... wives, widows, and daughters of men of this stamp—and not half their effeminacy and baseness, as the honest rough old soldier Ammianus Marcellinus describes it, has been told here—the news brought from Egypt worked with wondrous potency. ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... of a man's life, more than his special actions and peculiar theories, is that by which other men are moved and admonished. I have extreme faith in the potency of this species of influence, and comparatively less in the effect of example, in special cases and particular details of conduct. Christ's teaching was always aimed at the spirit which should govern us, not ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... The liquor had merely been allowed to ferment, whereas a complicated process is necessary for the manufacture of the true arrack, but enough had been achieved to bring about dire consequences for Cuthbert Vane, who had found the liquid cool and refreshing, and was skeptical about its potency. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... her generals, Japan's hold on Mimana became more precarious than ever while her prestige in the peninsula declined perceptibly. Nevertheless her great military name still retained much of its potency. Thus, ten years later (A.D. 477), when the King of Koma invaded Kudara and held the land at his mercy, he declined to follow his generals' counsels of extermination in deference to Kudara's long friendship with Yamato. It is related that, after this disaster, the Japanese Emperor gave the town ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Ariel, the brutishnesses of Caliban, the humours of Stephano and Trinculo—all elements extrinsic to the actual story. But in Hamlet he adopted a similar course for purely dramatic reasons—in order to concentrate his effects and present the dramatic elements of his theme at their highest potency. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... younger than most men at thirty, albeit he worked fourteen hours a day, slept eight, and consumed the remaining two at his meals. But through all those fruitful years of toil he had still found time to dream, and the spell of the redwoods had lost none of its potency. He was still checker-boarding the forested townships with his adverse holdings—the key-positions to the timber in back of beyond which some day should come to his hand. Also he had competition now: other sawmills dotted the bay shore; other three- masted schooners ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... the nest; so, running up to the king, I pointed to the charm, saying, That has done it—hoping to laugh him out of the folly; but he took my joke in earnest, and he turned to his men, commenting on the potency of the charm. Whilst thus engaged, I took another rifle and brought the bird down altogether. "Woh, woh, woh!" shouted the king; "Bana, Mzungu, Mzungu!" he repeated, leaping and clapping his hands, as he ran full speed to the prostrate ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... etoile! You catch the sense admirably. Yes, I was born under an evil star; just that! But if I haven't pondered the mysteries unprofitably I shall emerge from the shadow in due season. When you see me scribbling I am calculating the potency of the dark fate that overhangs me and trying to estimate when if ever the cloud will pass. Don't trouble your head with those fancies; leave them to me. Hope is buoyed in me by the fact that never yet have my figures ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... the course of a generation. To our children they are not evidently shams; they are powerful working suggestions. Human institutions are things of life, and whatever weed of falsity lies still rooted in the ground has the promise and potency of growth. It will tend perpetually, according to its nature, to recover its old influence over the imagination, the thoughts, and ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... Darwin's; Huxley's; Parson's; Mivart's; Hyatt's; Cope's; Wallace's; the Gods; Denounced by the Princes of Science. Agassiz's Deliverance Against it. Imperfection of the Theory Eked out. Huxley's Protoplasm. Tyndall's Potency of Life in Matter. Buchner's Matter and Force. Lubbock's Origin of Civilization. Consequences of the Brutal Origin of ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... practices seems to ensure their immunity. Nevertheless, whether the power at work behind them is of the kind we are accustomed to call "supernatural," or whether it is merely the outcome of the human mind, there can be no doubt of its potency for evil and of its very definite effects in the obliteration of all sense of truth and ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... that labor is the redeemer of social well-being has been cried from the housetops in every tongue and every clime. Yet the simple words of Robert express the significance of labor and its mission with far greater potency. ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... in sympathy with whatever it was of mysterious attraction he represented to her. In him she felt the dominant, as a wild creature of the woods instinctively senses the master and drops its eyes. Resentment did not leave her, but over it spread a film of confusion that robbed it of its potency. In him, in his mood, in his words, in his manner, was something that called out in direct appeal the more primitive instincts hitherto dormant beneath her sense of maidenhood, so that even at this vexed moment of conscious opposition, her heart was ranging itself on his side. Overpoweringly ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... of them to possess. But I could not resist the evidence, and I abandoned my a priori notions. The evidence forcibly attests gradations in the central belief. It is found in various shades, from relative potency down to a vanishing trace, and it is found in significant proportion to the prevalence of animistic ideas, being weakest where they are most developed, strongest where they are least developed. There must be a reason ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... Lucy jingled home in her cab, feeling more giddy, more heartsick than ever. There now came upon her with more potency than ever, since now it was the matter immediately before her, the question what was she to do? What was she to do? She had eluded Sir Tom on the night before, and obliged him to accept, without any demand for explanation, her strange retirement. But now what was ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... now I am speaking only of content and exhilaration; but I may soon see another side of the picture. The afternoon glides by like the morning; no churlish houses and chimney-pots hide the sun, and we see him describe his magnificent curve, while, with mysterious potency, he influences the wind. Dull! Why, on shore we should gaze out on the same streets or fields or trees; but here our residence is driven along like a flying cloud, and we gain a fresh view with every mile! ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... make a poet, nor poker a great pleader. And yet I have seen poets who relied on the potency of their breath, and lawyers who knew more of the habits of a bobtail flush than they ever did of the statutes in such ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... anyone knew a person in San Francisco, with the possible exception of some scholarly teacher, who could describe even imperfectly the statues in Golden Gate Park. Here the Japanese journey miles to see a statue. The old scholars always preached the potency of something half concealed to stimulate the imagination, but it took a Japanese sage to conceive the idea of building a fine statue of a favorite war hero and then to bury it. And now thousands come to Kyoto to the very spot where the statue is buried, imagining its proportions, ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... Grace, The State takes notice of the priuate difference Betwixt you, and the Cardinall. I aduise you (And take it from a heart, that wishes towards you Honor, and plenteous safety) that you reade The Cardinals Malice, and his Potency Together; To consider further, that What his high Hatred would effect, wants not A Minister in his Power. You know his Nature, That he's Reuengefull; and I know, his Sword Hath a sharpe edge: It's long, and't may be saide It reaches ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... and set 'em to parking the United States," I suggested. "Mighty nice place they've got here." We rested a few moments by one of the fountains, tested the fruit that looked ripe, and went on, impressed, for all our gay bravado by the sense of quiet potency which lay about us. ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... have to be strictly monogamous, in the narrowest, most literal sense of the term. No exceptions whatever. Adultery, anything illicit, has always been not only unimaginable, but in fact impossible. We pair—or marry, or whatever they do here—once only. For life. Desire and potency can exist only within the pair; never outside it. Like eagles. If a man's wife dies, even, he loses all desire and all potency. That would make it physically impossible for you two to follow the Hodellian Code. You'd both be completely impotent with any women whatever except ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... myself am obliged {by} it. But, however, that your affectionate breasts may not be alarmed with vain fears, despise these flames of Oeta. He who has conquered all things, shall conquer the fires which you behold; nor shall he be sensible of the potency of the flame, but in the part {of him} which he derived from his mother. {That part of him}, which he derived from me, is immortal, and exempt and secure from death, and to be subdued by no flames. This, too, when disengaged from earth, I will receive into the celestial ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... it Thou, above all lights that are, Prime Potency, did Thy hand unbar The prison-gate of Rephan ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... to-day. With stronger truth be it said, that a devout heart may consecrate a den of thieves, as an evil one may convert a temple to the same. My heart, perhaps, has not such holy, nor, I would fain trust, such impious potency. It must suffice, that, though my form be absent, my inner man goes constantly to church, while many, whose bodily presence fills the accustomed seats, have left their souls at home. But I am there, even before my friend, the sexton. At length, he comes,—a ...
— Sunday at Home (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Vautrin, Herrera, or Jacques Collin, as he is indifferently called, that a French critic has interpreted this personage as a mere allegorical embodiment of the seductions of Parisian life, as they exist side by side with the potency and resourcefulness of crime ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... potency of example.—"He hath left us an example to follow in His steps." "He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also to walk even as He walked." Once when He was praying in a certain place His disciples said, "Lord, teach us to pray." They had come within the powerful attraction of His Spirit. ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... hold that all the power and potency of the universe was stored up in that primordial cell, and that all things have been worked out without any superintending agency other than the forces resident in matter. Every operation of ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... "methinks he did not take much of thee. I would I could have seen him,"—and her voice grew sadder. "Not that my voice should have had any potency with him: that had it never yet. But I would fain have noted how far the years had changed him, and if—if there seemed any more hope of his amendment than of old time. There was a time when in all Oxfordshire he was allowed ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... used in common practice; and hence one advantage, at least, of Hahnemann's methods. Stated briefly, his theory was that if a tincture be reduced to one-fiftieth in strength, and this again reduced to one-fiftieth, and this process repeated up to thirty such dilutions, the potency of such a medicine will be increased by each dilution, Hahnemann himself preferring the weakest, or, as he would call it, the strongest dilution. The absurdity of such a theory is apparent when ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... encourage their men to excel their record of previous years. The inquiry developed, however, that a few are unwilling to employ competition even in this mild form as a means to increased efficiency. Most of the firms made conscious use of this principle and were convinced of its potency. ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... he is unable to perpetuate his species without the aid of the impelling madness. Nay, men will not have it otherwise; and when an individual urges that his reason has placed him above the beast, and that, without the impelling madness, he can mate with greater wisdom and potency, then the poets and singers rise up and fling potsherds at him. To improve upon nature by draining a malarial swamp is permitted him; to improve upon nature's methods and breed swifter carrier-pigeons ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... rest, all these theories had very little influence on their conduct. Reason was continually figuring in their speeches, but never in their actions. These were always dominated by those affective and mystic elements whose potency ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... of trouble might have been saved had Rita permitted him to make the settlement with Sukey, but she did not. The infinite potency of little things is one of the ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... memory. When such paralysis would cease, if ever, no one could tell. The power to recall everything might return at any moment or it might be delayed indefinitely. A shock, a familiar face, might supply the potency required, or restoration come through the slow, unseen processes of nature. Martine believed that Helen's face and ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... shaking a tambourine set round with tinkling bells, and thumping it on its parchment head. Without interrupting his brisk, though measured movement, Donatello snatched away this unmelodious contrivance, and, flourishing it above his head, produced music of indescribable potency, still dancing with frisky step, and striking the tambourine, and ringing its little bells, all in ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with Osiris played a dominant part in suggesting the ritual of libations. Just as water, when applied to the apparently dead seed, makes it germinate and come to life, so libations can reanimate the corpse. These general biological theories of the potency of water were current at the time, and, as I shall explain later (see p. 28), had possibly received specific application to man long before the idea of libations developed. For, in the development of the cult of Osiris[43] the general ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... conspiracy of silence, the masterly work of Marx to oblivion, but now his name is coming to rank with those of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer as the three Titans of the scientific revolution which begot the intellectual renaissance and gave fresh potency to the civilizing thought of the latter half ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... darkness and a strong smell of gunpowder. Polly gazed at the spectacle with undisguised awe and fascination. Hickory and Patsey breathed hard with satisfaction; it was beyond their wildest dreams of mystery and romance. Even Wan Lee appeared transfigured into a superior being by the potency of his own spells. But an unaccountable disturbance of some kind in the dim interior of the tunnel quickly drew the blood from their blanched cheeks again. It was a sound like coughing followed ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... overpowering potency, reaching you, made you turn away, and then the immense disorder of the camp seized and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... head," quoth Sir Pertinax, "an thy grand-dam hath a potency in spells and such black arts—the which is an ill thing—thou hast a powerful gift of versification the which, methinks, is worse. How cometh this distemper o' the ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... COMTESSE,—Fame, with her hundred tongues, has announced to, me in my retreat the fall of M. de Choiseul and your triumph. This piece of news has not occasioned me much surprise, I always believed in the potency of beauty to carry all before it; but, shall I confess it? I scarcely know whether I ought to congratulate myself on the success you have obtained over your enemies. M, de Choiseul was one of my kindest friends, and his all-powerful protection sufficed to sustain me against ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... army—a fear which had considerably increased upon him since he had joined this expedition, for he had noted carefully the disciplined obedience of the little squad of regulars, and had been much struck with its obvious potency for offence and defence. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... electric light upon his table was softly shaded. The steward who waited upon him was swift-footed and obsequious, and seemed entirely oblivious of Philip's shabby, half-soaked clothes. He ordered champagne a little vaguely, and the wine ran through his veins with a curious potency. He ate and drank now and then mechanically, now and then with the keenest appetite. Afterwards he smoked a cigar, drank coffee, and sipped a liqueur with the appreciation of a connoisseur. A fellow passenger passed ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... left behind are nourished and tended, with thorough belief and devoted care, by her who shared his authority in life, and now bears alone the family sceptre, there can be no bound set to their possible potency in a mind of high spiritual order. The primary impulse became with Alister a large portion of his religion: he was the shepherd of the much ravaged and dwindled Macruadh-fold; it was his church, in which the love of the neighbour was intensified ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... you are going to be kilt, you will be kilt ony-way." That is the everyday religion of the trenches. "When your time comes you will get yours, and all the machine guns and shells in Germany can have no potency if your time has ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... with leather visors and enameled Red Crosses above the leather. We had cotton khaki tunics unadorned, and of a vintage ten years old. They had khaki worsted of a cut to conform to the newest general order. They had Sam Browne belts of high potency, and we had no substitute even for that insignia of power. They had shiny leather puttees. We had tapes. They had brown shoes—we had not given a fleeting thought to shoes. We might as well have had congress gaiters! So when the conversation with Major Murphy turned to a point where ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... heaven or earth Holds potency more weird Than our hearts hold, that throb from birth With wavering ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... nations, whereas the Ethics of Christ, which deal almost solely with individuals and His personal followers, will find more and more practical application as individualism, in its capacity of a moral factor, grows in potency. The domineering, self-assertive, so-called master-morality of Nietzsche, itself akin in some respects to Bushido, is, if I am not greatly mistaken, a passing phase or temporary reaction against what he terms, by morbid distortion, ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... of his church, as of all others, in a lesser degree perhaps, is too crass, too mechanical, too childish to tally the ideals of a generation which is each day awakening to some new potency of matter, some wider conception of ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... be made to convert the pencils of light which they emit into real bona fide pencils, and commence taking their own likenesses? Improbable as the thing may have seemed, however, there were powers in nature of potency enough to effect it, and the newly discovered art of the photographer is simply the art of employing these. The figures and landscapes of the camera obscura can now be fixed and rendered permanent,—not yet in all their various shades of colour, but in a style scarce less striking, and to ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... on the patriotic resolutions of Mecklenburg, and they became concealed from view in the blaze of the National Declaration bursting forth on the 4th of July, 1776, which only re-echoed and reaffirmed the truth and potency of sentiments proclaimed in Charlotte on the 20th of ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter |
