"Seminal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... glories of his country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of national interest—a small seminal principle rather than a formed body—and should tell him: Young man, there is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... bodies, souls, Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations, Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal milk, All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth, All the governments, judges, gods, follow'd persons of the earth, These are contain'd in sex as parts of itself ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... qualities, as the causes of all the phenomena, whether of living or dead matter.—GLISSON ought not certainly then to be regarded as the author of this dogma in medical philosophy. PLATO certainly taught it. VAN HELMONT could not get along without investing matter with what he called a "seminal likeness, which is the more inward spiritual kernel of the seed," &c. But we will let him speak for himself. "Whatsoever," says V. H., "cometh into the world, must needs have the beginning of its motions, the stirrer up and inward director of generation. Therefore all things, however hard ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... that ideas rule the world! Two hundred and fifty years ago, certain new sidereal conceptions arose in the minds of half a dozen philosophers, (isolated and utterly destitute of political or social influence, powerful only in the possession of a sublime and seminal thought,)—conceptions which, during these two centuries, have succeeded in overthrowing a doctrine as old as the human mind, closely interknit with the entire texture of opinions, authority, politics, and religion, and establishing a theory flatly contradicted by the universal dictates of experience ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behooves me to approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not overlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and spinning him out to the uttermost coil of his bowels. Having already described him in most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now remains to magnify him in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... names of the parts of the male organs—testicle (spermary or testes), sperm duct (vas deferens), scrotum, prostate, seminal vesicles, penis, glans, prepuce (foreskin), urethra—should be taught; and the scientific dignity of these words as substitutes for vulgar words should be emphasized. In dealing with boys and young men I have noticed that these ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... rising glories of his country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle rather than a formed body, and should tell him,—"Young man, there is America,—which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... rendered tenfold and hundredfold uglier, pitifuler. Whatsoever vices, whatsoever weaknesses were in the man, the parvenu will show us them enlarged, as in the solar microscope, into frightful distortion. Nay, how many mere seminal principles of vice, hitherto all wholesomely kept latent, may we now see unfolded, as in the solar hothouse, into growth, into ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... various purposes, from the prince whom we had set up. We obtained, too, the town of Calcutta more completely than we had before possessed it, and the twenty-four districts adjoining. This was the first small seminal principle of the immense territorial acquisitions we ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Beattie, Campbell, Scott, and Wordsworth. When we consider the large number of poets in whom Spenser awakened the poetic gift, or those to whose powers he gave direction, we may safely pronounce him the most seminal poet ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... perform the sexual function. It is frequently due to conjugal excesses, but the principal cause is the baneful widespread practice of masturbation, or self-pollution. It manifests itself in what is known as Spermatorrhea, or involuntary emissions of the seminal fluid, and if allowed to continue unchecked, speedily depletes the vitality of the sufferer, and renders him a physical wreck. Do not be deceived by the lying advertisements of unprincipled charlatans, that any drug can help you. The treatment must be hygienic and thorough, and may necessitate ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... not only when new truth, moral or spiritual, has thus to fit itself to the lips of men, that such enlargements of speech become necessary: but in each further unfolding of those seminal truths implanted in man at the first, in each new enlargement of his sphere of knowledge, outward or inward, the same necessities make themselves felt. The beginnings and progressive advances of moral philosophy in Greece, [Footnote: See Lobeck, Phrynichus, p. ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... from the operation of natural objects on the mind. But it was Mr. Wordsworth's purpose to consider the influences of fancy and imagination as they are manifested in poetry, and from the different effects to conclude their diversity in kind; while it is my object to investigate the seminal principle, and then from the kind to deduce the degree. My friend has drawn a masterly sketch of the branches with their poetic fruitage. I wish to add the trunk, and even the roots as far as they lift themselves above ground, and are visible ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... showed that an immense number of these extremely fine and mobile thread-like beings exist in the male sperm (this will be explained in Chapter 2.7). This astonishing discovery was further advanced when it was proved that these living bodies, swimming about in the seminal fluid, were real animalcules, and, in fact, were the pre-formed germs of the future generation. When the male and female procreative elements came together at conception, these thread-like spermatozoa ("seed-animals") ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... human being from the time of birth to the on-coming of puberty. But this contradiction is apparent merely, and depends on the assumption that the on-coming of puberty is indicated by certain outward signs (more especially the first menstruation and the first seminal emission), insufficient attention being paid to the long period of development which usually precedes these occurrences. And yet, during this period of preliminary development, the occurrence of certain manifestations of the sexual life is ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... Aristotle's four principles of generation, unformed matter, privation, efficient, and final causes. Aristotle was a pedantic blockhead, and still more knave than fool. The same censure we may safely put on that wiseacre, Dioscorides, with his faculties of simples— his seminal, specific, and principal virtues; and that crazy commentator, Galen, with his four elements, elementary qualities, his eight complexions, his harmonies and discords. Nor shall I expatiate on the alkahest of that mad scoundrel, Paracelsus, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... give the sexual character to the soma. When castration is carried out at birth the male somatic characters do not entirely disappear, because the hormone of the interstitial cells has acted during intrauterine life. The functional independence between the interstitial cells and the seminal tubules is shown by the fact that if the vasa deferentia are closed the seminal gland (i.e. tubules) degenerates while the interstitial cells do not. In the embryo the interstitial gland is large, in ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... Leeuwenhoek with great acuteness examined microscopically the solids and fluids of the body, recognized the presence of scales in the cuticle, and discovered the corpuscles in the blood and milk, and the spermatozoa in the seminal fluid. The researches of Malpighi also tended greatly to improve the knowledge of minute structure. He gave the first distinct ideas on the organization of the lung, and the mode in which the bronchial tubes and vessels terminate in that organ. By the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... eyes with the perusal of antiquated volumes, or burthens his memory with great accumulations of preparatory knowledge. A careless glance upon a favourite author, or transient survey of the varieties of life, is sufficient to supply the first hint or seminal idea, which, enlarged by the gradual accretion of matter stored in the mind, is by the warmth of fancy easily expanded into flowers, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... son of Kasyapa, Vibhandaka, having proceeded to a big lake, devoted himself to the practice of penances. And that same saint, comparable to a god, laboured for a long period. And once while he was washing his mouth in the waters, he beheld the celestial nymph Urvasi—whereupon came out his seminal fluid. And, O king! a hind at that time lapped it up along with the water that she was drinking, being athirst; and from this cause she became with child. That same hind had really been a daughter of the gods, and had been told of yore by the holy Brahma, the creator ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli |
