"Abstract" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Scharnhorst had pointed out the way of salvation, a strategic tempter was soon at hand in the person of General von Phull, an uncompromising theorist who planned campaigns with an unquestioning devotion to abstract principles. Untaught by the catastrophes of the past, Alexander once more let his enthusiasm for theories and principles lead him to the brink of the abyss. Phull captivated him by setting forth the true plan of a defensive campaign which he had evolved from patient study ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the Wars of New England with the Eastern Indians, 16 (ed. 1859). Penhallow was present at the council. In Judge Sewall's clumsy abstract of the proceedings (Diary of Sewall, ii. 85) the Indians are represented as professing neutrality. The governor and intendant of Canada write that the Abenakis had begun a treaty of neutrality with the English, but that as "les Jesuites ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... Stanley says: "Livingstone followed the dictates of duty. Never was such a willing slave to that abstract virtue. His inclinations impel him home, the fascinations of which it requires the sternest resolution to resist. With every foot of new ground he travelled over he forged a chain of sympathy which should hereafter ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... long time she sat in the light of the moon, and reflected on these mysteries with all the power of her untutored mind. But that power was soon exhausted, and vague, chaotic, abstract conceptions gave place to a definite image which had been eternally impressed upon her inward eyes. It was the figure of the young Quaker, idealized by the imagination of an ardent and emotional woman whose heart had been thrilled for ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... is not altogether easy to give a precise definition of the phrase. Like so many of the factors which enter into the composition of this most abstract, ideal, and intangible of the arts, the phrase demands considerable latitude of treatment, and will not readily submit to strict limitations or absolute technical conditions. Perhaps the most correct definition is, that the term phrase is equivalent to "sentence," and represents ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... them. This being so, I must add that the character of Captain Brassbound's mother, like the recovery of the estate by the next heir, is an interpolation of my own. It is not, however, an invention. One of the evils of the pretence that our institutions represent abstract principles of justice instead of being mere social scaffolding is that persons of a certain temperament take the pretence seriously, and when the law is on the side of injustice, will not accept the situation, ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... several parts. I am myself as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking obscurity, as those critics found themselves to unravel my logic. Possibly I may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according to my own original design, and then leave the reader to judge how far this design is kept in sight through the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... defect. She was quick to learn, but forgetful and dreamy, and not disposed to take the matter seriously. Ethan had an idea that if she were to marry a man she was fond of the dormant instinct would wake, and her pies and biscuits become the pride of the county; but domesticity in the abstract did not interest her. At first she was so awkward that he could not help laughing at her; but she laughed with him and that made them better friends. He did his best to supplement her unskilled efforts, getting up earlier than usual ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... Aristotelian studies[4] and the example of Venice are apparent. At the same time it is noticeable that no account whatever is taken of the remaining 95,000 who contributed their wealth and industry to the prosperity of the city.[5] The theory of the State rests upon no abstract principle like that of the divine right of the Empire, which determined Dante's speculation in the Middle Ages, or that of the divine right of kings, with which we Englishmen were made familiar in the seventeenth century, or ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... to solve the Trentino question from the point of view of abstract right as to solve any other iridescent question in that way. The Trentino question, which was long a question of national, historical, and ethnological idealism, has now become a real question of power. The European war and its developments ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... abstract ideas of pugnacity, and conceived myself bound to indulge them on the first head and shoulders I should meet. This spirit brought me at once into the thick of the fight, and, before I was well aware of my proximity, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... Common-sense—seems to vanish quite, and we walk within the fair haven of our dreams, where Imagination meets, and kisses us upon the brow. And, at his touch, the Impossible straightway becomes the Possible; the Abstract becomes the Concrete; our fondest hopes are realized; our most cherished visions take form, and stand before us; surely, at such an hour, the gods come down to ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... the glow of a common emotion. Sound was the first instinctive language, one for man and winds and waters; and music, which is the development of this primeval converse, leaving to grammars the expression of cold and abstract thought, has gathered about her in her mountain caverns the echoes of all sighs sad or passionate, of all inarticulate cries born of aspiration or desire, and there blended them into eternal harmonies which at her word flow forth and join the hearts ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... have religion, God is a familiar being, a substantial truth existing in our subjective consciousness. But, scientifically considered, God is a general and abstract term. The philosophy of religion it is which develops and grasps the divine nature and which teaches us what God is. God is a familiar idea, but an idea which has still to ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... myself, to find arguments to persuade to, or commend marriage? behold a brief abstract of all that which I have said, and much more, succinctly, pithily, pathetically, perspicuously, and elegantly delivered in twelve motions to mitigate the miseries of marriage, by ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... genius of my state, thou perfect model Of heaven itself, and abstract of the angels, Forgive the late disturbance of my soul! I'm clear by nature, as a rockless stream; But they dig through the gravel of my heart, And raise the mud of passions up to cloud me; Therefore let me conjure you, do not go; 'Tis said, the Guise will come in spite of me; ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... time, so as to bring these extraordinarily separated relatives into connection? The evidence which may be brought to bear upon this question is various and widely scattered. I bespeak your patience while I endeavor to bring together, in an abstract, the most ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... of an exciting and somewhat disturbing sort into Roschen's little head. If one young girl might get married, so might another, no doubt she thought; and it is conceivable that from this mental statement of a rational abstract possibility her thoughts may have passed on to consideration of the concrete possibilities involved in her own relations with the good-looking Gustav Strauss, son of the rich bird-dealer, or with the good-looking young shoemaker, ...
— An Idyl Of The East Side - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... as limiting the sphere of the will, and, consequently, of moral accountability, opens a very wide range of speculation. I can give you only a brief abstract of my own opinions on this delicate and difficult subject. Crime and sin, being the preserves of two great organized interests, have been guarded against all reforming poachers with as great jealousy as the Royal Forests. It ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... separation on the following morning that the captain and his men ascertained the secret of all this loving-kindness. In the course of their fraternal caresses, the Crows had contrived to empty the pockets of their white brothers; to abstract the very buttons from their coats, and, above all, to make free with ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... without subjecting yourself to remark, or offending the nice sense of propriety pertaining to conventional life. You are not responsible for what you say or do, provided always that you do not offend against the abstract rules of decency, or the requirements of natural decorum. You can lay around loose; the lazier you are the better the boatman in your employ likes it. If you choose to drift leisurely and quietly under the shadow of the ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... attribute—swell the power and amplify the character of a Jupiter, a Mars, a Venus, or a Pan. It is in the nature of man, that personal divinities once created and adored, should present more vivid and forcible images to his fancy than abstract personifications of physical objects and moral impressions. Thus, deities of this class would gradually rise into pre-eminence and popularity above those more vague and incorporeal—and (though I guard myself from absolutely solving in this manner the enigma of ancient ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... copy; mine, which is large paper, and therefore most commodious for illustrating, cost me sixteen guineas. I see you suppose me to carry my objections to the apologetic language of the Courier to a greater extent than is in my contemplation. Undoubtedly, the abstract right of Parliament to call upon Ministers as responsible for their advice in the exercise of the Royal prerogative, cannot be denied; but the more or less apologetic tone taken by them upon such questions is often of the highest importance. Their ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... of simple mind. You, Sweet, his Mistress, Wife, and Muse, Were you for mortal woman meant? Your praises give a hundred clues To mythological intent! And, severing thus the truth from trope, In you the Commentators see Outlines occult of abstract scope, A future for philosophy! Your arm's on mine! these are the meads In which we pass our living days; There Avon runs, now hid with reeds, Now brightly brimming pebbly bays; Those are our children's ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... years, and was at length terminated by Muda Seti's withdrawing from the contest and returning to his province. About five years after this event Juhan shah died, and his son, Pochat-bangta, succeeded him, but not (says this writer, who here concludes his abstract) with the general concurrence of the chiefs, and the country long continued ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... books I should take if I were contemplating a visit to the Dark Continent, like Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL. The question, in the abstract, and without reference to my own personality, is an interesting one, and no doubt human fallibility would, in the case you suppose, induce me to take several volumes of my own Gleanings with me,—not so much for their intrinsic merits, as because perhaps they might form a new kind of literature ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... States, and on to the shores of the Pacific, this knowledge grew more clear and melancholy. Emigration, from a word of the most cheerful import, came to sound most dismally in my ear. There is nothing more agreeable to picture and nothing more pathetic to behold. The abstract idea, as conceived at home, is hopeful and adventurous. A young man, you fancy, scorning restraints and helpers, issues forth into life, that great battle, to fight for his own hand. The most pleasant stories of ambition, of difficulties overcome, and of ultimate success, are but as episodes to this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 1252-1284) could write prose in Castilian, but he must needs employ Galician for his Cantigas de Santa Maria. The Portuguese nobles, with King Diniz (reigned 1279-1325) at their head, filled the idle hours of their bloody and passionate lives by composing strangely abstract, conventional poems of love and religion in the manner of the Provencal canso, dansa, balada and pastorela, which had had such a luxuriant growth in Southern France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. A highly elaborated metrical system mainly distinguishes ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... mistiness and speculation in his mind was gone now. Good stamp of man, would give a capital account of themselves! Their faces, flushed by a day in the open, were masked with passivity, or, with a half-aggressive, half-jocular self-consciousness; they were clearly not troubled by abstract doubts, or any visions ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Parliamentary Committee appointed to inquire into the condition of intermediate and higher education in Wales and Monmouthshire, Mr. Davies gave evidence relating to this and other remarkable cases, of which the following is an abstract, condensed ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... the speech of January 11, 1792, against the war, or that of May 1794 against atheism. The logic is stringent, but the premises are arbitrary. Robespierre is as one who should iterate indisputable propositions of abstract geometry and mechanics, while men are craving an architect who shall bridge the gulf of waters. Exuberance of high words no longer conceals the sterility of his ideas and the shallowness of his method. We should say of his speeches, as of so much of the speaking and writing ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... not judge a man on an abstract basis. He takes him because he thinks he will be useful to his business. This is why most places like to get men when they are young. ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... right in the abstract, but might is the winning card in the lottery of Fate, and that nation having the most brave men, money and guns ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... characteristics of Greek tyrannies and Greek democracies. For while, in his account of the method of forming an ideal state, he says that the political artist is indeed to fix his gaze on the sun of abstract truth in the heavens of the pure reason, but is sometimes to turn to the realisation of the ideals on earth: yet, after all, the general character of the Platonic method, which is what we are specially concerned with, is essentially ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... greater calamity could befall our people. Colonization and separation must go hand in hand with the emancipation of these children of Africa. I incorporated this principle in my act of emancipation. I have set my life on the issue of its success. As a matter of theory and abstract right we may grant the suffrage to a few of the more intelligent negroes and the black soldiers we may enroll ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... pretense of knowledge, that Anglo-Saxon was "excepting some few variations in the orthography... the same in most original words with our present English, as well as with German and other northern dialects." But in An Abstract of the History of England (probably revised in 1719) he says that the English which came in with the Saxons was "extremely different from what it is now." The two statements are not incompatible, but the emphasis ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... and I to the office, and there I made an end of my book of contracts which I have been making an abstract of. Dined at home, and spent most of the day at the office. At night ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the way with all your sex. One asks you to be suspicious, and you ask whom you shall suspect. You can do nothing in the abstract. I should like to be suspicious for ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... with public good (for public good binds together states, but private only distracts them); and that both the public and private good as well of individuals as of states is greater when the state and not the individual is first considered. In the second place, although a person knows in the abstract that this is true, yet if he be possessed of absolute and irresponsible power, he will never remain firm in his principles or persist in regarding the public good as primary in the state, and the private good as secondary. Human nature will be always drawing him into ...
— Laws • Plato
... collated the list with the Population Returns (Parish Register abstract) 1831, and noted any difference. In addition to the list given from Sir Geo. Nayler's MS. the following early registers were ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... who was endued with the Spirit of discerning what should afterwards come to pass, as is evident from some of his prophetical expressions, particularly that letter which he wrote to John Lord of Kirkcudbright dated February 20th, 1649, a little before his death, an abstract of which may not be improper, and is ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... far as the unconditioned ([Greek: mechri tou anypothetou]), to the first principle of the universe, and having grasped this, may then lay hold of the principles next adjacent to it, and so go down to the end, using no sensible aids whatever, but employing abstract forms throughout, ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... influenced in the way we take a certain thing; for there is no one who will deny that he contains within himself a thousand germs which might render him absolutely wretched. The question is whether he will allow them free course, or whether he will abstract himself from them. We are only happy on the sly, my dear friend, but what is to be done? Happiness is not so sacred a thing that it should only be accepted ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... was not a bad woman, only an utterly mistaken and misguided one. She meant no harm—very few people do deliberately mean harm—they only do it. She had set herself against her brother-in- law's marriage—not in the abstract, she was scarcely so wicked and foolish as that; but against his marrying this particular woman, partly because Christian was only a governess, with somewhat painful antecedents—one who could neither bring money, rank, nor position to Dr. Grey and his family, but ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... used to it, found it difficult to abstract his sympathy from his fellow-creatures, by whatever name they were called; and he could not exclusively command his attention, to admire the houses and churches, which his Abbe continually pointed out to ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... the tutor at last, his hands in the pockets of his short gray coat, his brow bent and thoughtful. 'Well, the process in you has been the typical process of the present day. Abstract thought has had little or nothing to say to it. It has been all a question of literary and historical evidence. I am old-fashioned enough'—and he smiled—'to stick to the a priori impossibility of miracles, but then I am a philosopher! You have come to see ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... standpoint, is not only the foundation of Oriental physics, but the very essence of Oriental metaphysics—its starting-point and corner-stone. To one who carries with him, consciously or unconsciously, the concrete knowledge of the physics, the abstract teaching of the metaphysics presents no difficulty; it is as clear as crystal. But without the physical teaching the metaphysical ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... had been mentioned, even discussed, a dozen times while Smith was waiting at table. Very good servants—and Smith was one of the best—are able, it is believed, to abstract their minds from the conversation of their masters, will actually hear nothing of what is said in their presence. Yet it seemed to Phillips as if Smith were overdoing his ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... passage has been transcribed for me through the kindness of A. E. Winship, Esq., librarian, who has also sent me a photograph of a woodcut representing the lonely woman shooting at a bear. A briefer abstract of the story is in Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History" (IV. p. 66, note), but it states, perhaps erroneously, that Thevet knew Marguerite only through the Princess of Navarre, whereas that author claims—though ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... 'impossibles' whom revolutions throw into ridiculous power. When he began his campaign the Republican South was at his feet. Planters and legislators donned caps of liberty and danced themselves so crazy over the rights of abstract man that they had no enthusiasm left for such concrete instances as Loyalists, Englishmen, and their own plantation slaves. Then Genet made his next step in the new diplomacy by fitting out French privateers in American harbours and seizing ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... houses for oxen, cows, and horses hereabouts, and it is not behindhand in its public buildings; but there are very few halls for free worship or free speech in this county. It should not be by their architecture, but why not even by their power of abstract thought, that nations should seek to commemorate themselves? How much more admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta than all the ruins of the East! Towers and temples are the luxury of princes. A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince. Genius ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... that is not mine. You are weakening and chaining me. France looks for me and does not find me. Public opinion was excellent: now it is execrable. France is asking what has come to the Emperor's arm, this arm which she needs to master Europe. Why speak to me of goodness, abstract justice, and of natural laws? The first law is necessity: the first justice is the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... great love of truth in the abstract, but, at least, he never deceived himself. He saw through his own unscrupulousness, and rather despised it just as he despised his own work as a painter. He had grown really fond of Van Buren for ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... told him otherwise, but he and Saltash never spoke of abstract things. Saltash might have seen the deep content in the man's eyes, but if he had, he would probably have scoffed at it. In any case there was certainly no denying that he and Bolton had been cast in different moulds, and that ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... an illusion. On the contrary, it is rather an inner reality. Man is inside all men. In a real sense any man may be inside any men. But to travel is to leave the inside and draw dangerously near the outside. So long as he thought of men in the abstract, like naked toiling figures in some classic frieze, merely as those who labour and love their children and die, he was thinking the fundamental truth about them. By going to look at their unfamiliar manners and customs he is inviting them to disguise themselves in fantastic masks ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... studied in foreign universities, or, studying at home, imbibed revolutionary ideas through foreign literature. Coming together in small groups, they began to formulate ideas of their own especially adapted to Russian conditions. At first these ideas were of a nonpolitical character and extremely abstract. They wished to go among the ignorant peasants and educate them in the Western sciences. "Going among the people" was a phrase among them which assumed the significance of a program. But with its antipathy toward all forms of learning the Government soon showed its determination ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... or bounds or dimentions, but it all ends in vagueness and confusion. As for me, and I think I am not so different from other men,—for me to be able to think of God, I must have some image of Him. I cannot think of love or good, or power or glory in the abstract. These must be expressed to me by symbols at least as eminating from, or inherent in, or exercised by some person. Love cannot exist alone: there must be one who loves and one who is being loved. God is love. That means to me that a person, a beautiful, glorified, ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... tell you what is Latin for Constitution, will not make you a particle the wiser; I will, therefore, explain it in the vernacular tongue.—Constitution then, in its primary, abstract, and true signification, is a concatenation or coacervation of simple, distinct parts, of various qualities or properties, united, compounded, or constituted in such a manner, as to form or compose a system or body, when viewed in its aggregate or general nature. In ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... consequence of the utter poverty of reason and argument, which could otherwise be presented against the principle of the address. But such an obligation led to a novel difficulty and bitterer conflict. A discussion involving principles of the greatest moment narrowed into a technical disquisition of abstract law. Mr. O'Hea was driven from his position by the unanimous and unqualified opinion of every barrister present, and even by his own silence, when dared to allow the address to pass in the negative, and assume the responsibility of its rejection on the avowed ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... hypothesis of an abstract entity produces psychological phenomena by playing upon the brain as a musician upon his instrument be rejected, and these phenomena be held to be the result of cerebral actions, an objection is made that the latter view is "materialistic" and adverse to the notion of an independent, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... should be now communicated to the French Government. Lord John had informed him of the fact, and had requested him to communicate with the Queen on the subject. Lord Palmerston then read to me a well-written memorandum on the abstract question of giving advice, which he had sent to Her Majesty. He told me that he had been to Osborne; that the Queen had expressed a wish through Sir Charles Wood that he should not discuss the whole matter with her; that he had had a satisfactory conversation ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... favorite with the Manager, sir, and the Property Man, and all of them at the Hilarity, you can't think, sir," said Mrs. Gullick, not in the least meaning to impugn Maitland's general capacity for abstract speculation. "A regular little genius that child is, though I says it as shouldn't. Ah, sir, she takes it from her poor father, sir." And Mrs. Gullick raised her ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... "New York Spirit of the Times", or as lately transferred to the pages of an interesting and valuable sporting work, about being published by our esteemed friend, Wm. A. Porter, and from which we now abstract our remarks upon ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... worth on definite dates through several succeeding years. Here again the specimen bond is not actually the thing he buys but it is a facsimile and an excellent one in that it puts in concrete form an abstract article. ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... buildings of Bedford College, Homer, and sky-blue. Evidently these are very different sorts of things; and it is likely that statements which are made about one kind of entity will not be true about other kinds. If human thought proceeded with the orderly method which abstract logic would suggest to it, we might go further and say that a classification of natural entities should be the first step in science itself. Perhaps you will be inclined to reply that this classification ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... to my sorrow, than even his friend Shakespeare, whom he thinks a greater philosopher than Aristotle, and who calls the murder of an individual sleeper the murder of sleep, confounding the concrete with the abstract, and then talks of taking arms against a sea of troubles; query, a cork jacket ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... last happened was that his way of looking at her, on occasion, seemed a perception of the presence not of one idea, but of fifty, variously prepared for uses with which he somehow must reckon. She knew herself suddenly, almost strangely, glad to be coming to him, at this hour, with nothing more abstract than a telegram; but even after she had stepped into his prison under her pretext, while her eyes took in his face and then embraced the four walls that enclosed his restlessness, she recognised the virtual identity of his condition ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... same things which he said in the same paper when we first heard our father reading it to our mother. Farther on the old subscriber proceeded to 'maintain', and recalled attention to the fact that it was just exactly as he had said. After which he made a few abstract, incoherent remarks about the 'surrounding district', and concluded by stating that he 'must now conclude', and thanking the editor for trespassing on the aforesaid ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... resulted in a drainage of the fluid myths and the exteriorisation of a being entirely abstract. Designated first as Brahmanaspati, Lord of Prayer, afterward more simply as Brahma, he was assumed to have been asleep in the secret places of the sky, from which, on awakening, he created ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... exaggeration of solicitude Hilda sprang to the gas-jet. Suddenly she was drenched in the most desolating sadness. She could not bear to look at Miss Gailey; and further, Miss Gailey seemed unreal to her, not an actual woman, but an abstract figure of sorrow that fancy had created. A few minutes previously Hilda had been taking pride in the tact and the enterprise of George Cannon, who possessed a mysterious gift of finding an opportunity for ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... gone she rose, a trifle excited in the glow of abstract happiness, and walked erratically about, smiling to herself, touching and rearranging objects that caught her attention. Then an innocent instinct led her to the mirror, where she stood a moment looking back into the lovely reflected ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... at the highest, there flourished in the city of London an ingenious but whimsical and self opinioned mechanic, much devoted to abstract studies, David Ramsay by name, who, whether recommended by his great skill in his profession, as the courtiers alleged, or, as was murmured among the neighbours, by his birthplace, in the good town of Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... of red (hoist side), blue, and red; centered on the hoist-side red band in yellow is the national emblem ("soyombo" - a columnar arrangement of abstract and geometric representation for fire, sun, moon, earth, water, and the ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Bob. "I will give my life to it. Everybody hates war in the abstract, but no one seems to throw himself heart and soul into a great peace crusade. Even the Peace Society is half-hearted. The cause of Peace hasn't been voiced of late years. That's it," and Bob rose to his feet excitedly; "I see my work, Nancy. Neither your father nor any ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... the hall ticking in competition with the small clock on the landing. Mr. Hilbery's study ran out behind the rest of the house, on the ground floor, and was a very silent, subterranean place, the sun in daytime casting a mere abstract of light through a skylight upon his books and the large table, with its spread of white papers, now illumined by a green reading-lamp. Here Mr. Hilbery sat editing his review, or placing together documents by means of which it could be proved that Shelley had written "of" instead of "and," or that ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... than to parade abstract theorems,—true in the abstract,—in political economy; nothing harder than to reduce them to practice. That an individual will understand his own interests better than the government can, or, what is the same thing, that trade, if let alone, will find its way into the channels on the whole ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... that characterized the delivery of this abstract truth, Bill did not see that the young man's face flushed slightly as ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... work. There is a deep and beneficent guile in the simplicity of his style, as limpid as a brook, and yet, as over a brook, in its overtones hover a myriad of sparkling dragon-flies and butterflies; in its depths lie a plethora of trout. He deals with the most obstruse and abstract subjects with such ease and grace, without for one moment laying aside the badge of authority, that they assume a mysterious fascination to catch the eye of the passerby. In his fictions he has sometimes cultivated a more hectic style, but that in itself constitutes one of the bases ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... looked up from his pudding. He was very spiritual, but he had had poor pickings in his previous boarding place, and he could not help a certain abstract enjoyment over ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... following up of his profession,—'the source,' according to his own remark, 'of thirty years' uninterrupted enjoyment and prosperity to him.' It is only those who never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to brood incessantly on abstract ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... them. Boys perform wonderful feats of this kind in England too. However, I once heard a German professor say that the English boy outdid the German in gesunder Menschenverstand (sound common sense), but that the German wins in the race when it comes to the abstract knowledge (Wissen) that he and his countryfolk prize above all the treasures of the earth. No one who knows both countries can doubt for a single moment that the professor was right, and that he stated the case ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... Steve realized a telling difference between men and women is that a woman demands a specific case—you must rush special incidents to back up any theory you may advance—whereas men, for the most part, are content with abstract reasoning and supply their own incidents if they feel inclined. Also that a finely bred fragile type of woman such as Beatrice inspires both fear and a maudlin sort of sympathy, and that man is prevented from crossing such a one to any great extent since men are as easily conquered ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... about nothing," Jason said emphatically. "He plays word games. He takes a word, gives it an abstract and unreal value, then proves this value by relating it to other words with the same sort of nebulous antecedents. His facts aren't facts—just meaningless sounds. This is the key point, where your universe ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... peculiar green color—in order to get the jewels, and thus secure money for his Egyptian expedition. All through, it seems, the Professor was actuated by purely scientific enthusiasm, as in the abstract he cared very little for hard cash. Bolton told Mrs. Jasher that Braddock explained how much he desired to get the mummy, but he did not mention about the jewels. For a long time Sidney was under the impression that his master ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... comprehensive study of the export business. He wrote to the president of the corporation, gave a brief outline of articles and books he had read; then complimented the great company by declaring that he realized the knowledge he had acquired was theoretical and abstract, and that he wished to gain practical, concrete ideas by studying the methods of the corporation. He enclosed with his letter ten cents in postage stamps, and requested that he be sent any forms, instruction sheets, sales bulletins, etc., the president was willing to let him ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... indeed!" cried he; "to abstract myself from all, is all that enables me to get on." And then, with his native candour, he cast aside prejudice, and very liberally praised several points in this poor persecuted great ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... told us, and from what I was told by others personally concerned, and from a paper of information which Rasay was so good as to send me, at my desire, I have compiled the following abstract, which, as it contains some curious anecdotes, will, I imagine not be uninteresting to my readers, and even, perhaps, be of some use to ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... plum-trees. The name by which he is now known signifies "old master," probably because he was older than Confucius. The latter is said to have paid him a visit to inquire about rites and ceremonies; but Lao-tse, with his love of solitude and abstract speculation, seems not to have exerted much influence on the mind of the rising philosopher. In allusion to him, Confucius said, "Away from men there ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... sat by the open window overlooking the woods, gray in the universal twilight grayness, and she read Victor Cousin's 'History of Philosophy,' which was a great deal more comforting than fiction or poetry wou'd have been, as it carried her into regions of abstract thought where human troubles ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... to write some pieces on human life and manners, such as (to use my Lord Bacon's expression) come home to men's business and bosoms, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering man in the abstract, his nature and his state; since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... jeopardized? No; help'd, braced, concentrated, rather. We are all too prone to wander from ourselves, to affect Europe, and watch her frowns and smiles. We need this hot lesson of general hatred, and henceforth must never forget it. Never again will we trust the moral sense nor abstract friendliness of a single government of the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the earth with humanity is only an insignificant part. The evils and imperfections of our small world are negligible in comparison with the happiness and perfection of the whole cosmos. Leibnitz, whose theory is deduced from the abstract proposition that the Creator is perfect, does not say that now or at any given moment the universe is as perfect as it could be; its merit lies in its potentialities; it will develop towards ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... is capable of influencing human nature—except through this medium. We may hold that just because it is Divine, it must be eternally true, omnipresent in its gracious power; but even granting this, it is not known as an abstract or eternal somewhat; it is historically, and not otherwise than historically, revealed. It is achieved by Christ, and the testimony to Christ, on the strength of which we accept it, is in the last resort the ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... the gang pretend to have a violent quarrel, on which all the people in the vicinity collect to watch, including probably the owner of the stall. In this case the Chauwa or boy, who has posted himself in a position of vantage, will quickly abstract the article agreed upon and make off. Or if there are several purchasers at a shop, the man will wait until one of them lays down his bundle while he makes payment, and then pushing up against him signal to the Chauwa, who snatches up the bundle and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... These several kinds of persons are foul objects steeped skin and all in lewdness. The lustful love, for instance, which has sprung to life and taken root in your natural affections, I and such as myself extend to it the character of an abstract lewdness; but abstract lewdness can be grasped by the mind, but cannot be transmitted by the mouth; can be fathomed by the spirit, but cannot be divulged in words. As you now are imbued with this desire only in the abstract, you are certainly well fit to be a trustworthy friend in (Fairyland) ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... cunning eyes which nothing could escape; curtains were taken down, mattresses explored, every bone in bed dislocated and washed as soon as a lodger took his departure. And as for cribbing meat or sugar, Sally might occasionally abstract a lump or two, or pop a veal-cutlet into her mouth while bringing the dishes downstairs:—Sallies would—giddy creatures bred in workhouses; but Hannah might be entrusted with untold gold and uncorked brandy; and Miss Honeyman would as soon think of cutting a slice off Hannah's nose and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... toad of a man, and the soul of her shuddered at the sight of him combining with the thing that he suggested. But her glance was steady and her lips maintained their smile, just as if that ugliness of his had been invested with some abstract beauty existing only to her gaze; a little colour crept into her cheeks, and red being the colour of love's livery, ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... contribute; nor will they assist the medical practitioner in the attainment of his object, which is to ascertain the competence of an individual's MIND, to conduct himself in society, and to manage his affairs. By the abstract term MIND, is to be understood the aggregate of the intellectual phenomena, which are manifested or displayed to the observer by conversation and conduct; and these are the only tests by which we can judge ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam
... good Galeotti? and didst thou think thy speaking it would offend me?" said the King. "Alack, I know that thou art well sensible that the path of royal policy cannot be always squared (as that of private life ought invariably to be) by the abstract maxims of religion and of morality. Wherefore do we, the Princes of the earth, found churches and monasteries, make pilgrimages, undergo penances, and perform devotions with which others may dispense, unless it be because the benefit of the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Nameh, Translation by Goerres, with Von Hammer's Review, Vienna Jahrbuch von Lit. 17, 75, 77. Malcolm's Persia, 8vo. ed. i. 503. Macan's Preface to his Critical Edition of the Shah Nameh. On the early Persian History, a very sensible abstract of various opinions in Malcolm's Hist. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... meditative fashion, and not very much to the point. He lay back in his easy-chair, his hands clasped behind his head, and talked; and his talk was not at all about the selling of Hill Beeches in Buckinghamshire, but of much more abstract matters. He spoke of the divine wrath of the reformer—what a curious thing it was, that fiery impatience with what was wrong in the world; how it cropped up here and there from time to time; and how one abuse ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... not this felicitous delineation of circumstances and visible scenes that constitutes our principal enjoyment. The faculty of penetrating through obscurity and confusion, to seize the characteristic features of an object, abstract or material; of producing a lively description in the latter case, an accurate and keen scrutiny in the former, is the essential property of intellect, and occupies in its best form a high rank in the scale of mental gifts: but the creative ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... not to honour you and your brother; besides, it may make you more at ease to hear that my father was an apparitor, and I went to Oxford as a servitor, so that in birth you have the advantage of us. Of course, I do not mean that every one does not in the abstract prefer prosperous matches, but John has a fair independent competence, and can afford to do as he pleases; and, for my part, I should be very sorry if this were not ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stand on our dignity. We deny and we are ready to fight. But we will not argue. As an abstract proposition in ethics or economics, Slavery does not admit of argument. It is a curse. It's on us and we can't throw it off at once. My quarrel with the North is that they do not give us their sympathy and their help in our dilemma. Instead they rave and denounce and insult us. They are ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... the penalties for taking part in the political agitations and subsequent insurrection of 1849. Though it manifests a still further advancement in the development of his system, it was far from being composed according to the abstract rules he had laid down. He says explicitly on this point, in his "Music of the Future:" "The first three of these poems—'The Flying Dutchman,' 'Tannhaeuser,' and 'Lohengrin'—were written by me, their music composed, and all (with the exception of 'Lohengrin') performed ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... the universe; but, whereas in Egypt they were, on the whole, friendly to man, in Chaldaea they for the most part pursued him with an implacable hatred, and only seemed to exist in order to destroy him. Whether Semite or Sumerian, the gods, like those of Egypt, were not abstract personages, but each contained in himself one of the principal elements of which our universe is composed—earth, air, sky, sun, moon and stars. The state religion, which all the inhabitants of the same city were ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... and pleasure, he can make or unmake all,—create or annihilate—to whom nothing is impossible. Which three, if they were pondered by us till our souls received the stamp of them, they would certainly be powerful to abstract and draw our hearts from the vain changeable, and empty shadow of the creature, and gather our scattered affections that are parted among them, because of their insufficiency, that all might unite in ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... moment you'll realize for yourself it's true: you can't drift on forever the way you're doing now. If you weren't engaged it would be different; but you are engaged. Such being the case it implies a responsibility and a big one. To dangle so is unjust to the girl. Let this apply in the abstract. It's damnably unjust!" ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... has always approv'd your self a true Friend to our Country; I though it my Duty to inscribe, or, as it were, to consecrate this Abstract of our History to your Patronage. That being guarded by so powerful a Protection, it might with greater Authority and Safety come abroad in the World. Farewel, most illustrious Prince; May the great God Almighty ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... for the savage to choose from. Plainly to call his tribe "The Wayfarers" or "The Pioneers" or the "Pacifists" or the "Invincibles," or by any of the thousand and one names which modern associations adopt, would have been impossible, since such abstract terms had little or no existence in his mind. And again to name it after an animal was the most obvious thing to do, simply because the animals were by far the most important features or accompaniments of his own life. As I am dealing ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... ladies at the millinery shop and while selling cigarettes at the Ritzmore, when she had been modeling her manners, and had believed herself just as fine a lady as they. But that had been in the abstract. Now she was face to face with a situation that was painfully concrete—a real test: she had to place herself into close contrast with, and under the close observation of, a real lady, and in that lady's own home. And in all her life she had not once been in a fine home! In fine hotels, ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... all. This reiterative character of Empathy, this fact that the mountain is always rising without ever beginning to sink or adding a single cubit to its stature, joined to the abstract (the infinitive of the verb) nature of the suggested activity, together account for art's high impersonality and its existing, in a manner, sub specie aeternitatis. The drama of lines and curves presented by the humblest design on bowl or mat partakes indeed of the strange immortality ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... Synod at Eisenach, 1556, adopted seven theses which Menius was required to subscribe. The first declared: "Although the proposition, Good works are necessary to salvation, may be tolerated hypothetically and in an abstract way in the doctrine of the Law (in doctrina legis abstractive et de idea tolerari potest), nevertheless there are many weighty reasons why it ought and should be avoided no less than this one: Christ is a creature." (Preger 1, 383.) While Flacius, Wigand, and Moerlin defended the thesis, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... translate his internal thoughts into the external shapes of the Mythus before he could grasp fully his own mind. His conception of the world was mythical; this form he understood and not that of abstract reflection. We may well exclaim: Happy Homeric man, to whom the world was ever present, not himself. Yet both sides belong to the full-grown soul, the mythical and the reflective; from Homer the one-sided modern mind can recover a part ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... given up to cowardice than he had ever been before, was not to be endured! And yet, with what utmost stretch of courage,—even though he were willing to devote himself certainly and instantly to the worst fate that he had pictured to himself,—could he immediately rush away from these abstract speculations, encumbered as they were with personal flattery, into his own most unpleasant, most tragic matter! It was the unfitness that deterred him and not the possible tragedy. Nevertheless, through it all, he was sure,—nearly sure,—that she was playing her game, and ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... wonder if this eternal Crabbe is relished in America (I am not looking to my Edition, which would be a hopeless loss anywhere): he certainly is little read in his own Country. And I fancy America likes more abstract matter than ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... [This is an abstract of an essay four times as long written many years ago. Although so much has been struck out, the substance is unaltered, and the conclusion is valid for the ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... be easily repelled, but yet sufficiently precise to bring into discredit the conduct and motives of the Executive. But whatever it may have been intended to accomplish, it is obvious that the vague, general, and abstract form of the resolution is in perfect keeping with those other departures from first principles and settled improvements in jurisprudence so properly the boast of free countries in modern times. And it is not too much to say of the whole of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... indicated by Dean Milman in his History of Christianity. He says: "This Being [the Word or the Wisdom] was more or less distinctly impersonated, according to the more popular or more philosophic, the more material or the more abstract, notions of the age or people. This was the doctrine from the Ganges, or even the shores of the Yellow Sea, to the Ilissus; it was the fundamental principle of the Indian religion and the Indian philosophy; it was the basis of Zoroastrianism; it was pure Platonism; ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... auspices, and had soon come to a decision that it would be a good thing and a just to lock up all the Brownbies in the great jail of the colony at Brisbane. He probably knew nothing of law or justice in the abstract, but he greatly valued law when exercised against those he hated. The western fence of which mention has been made ran down to the Mary River, hitting it about four miles west of Medlicot's Mill; so that there was a considerable portion of the Gangoil run having a frontage to the water. As has been ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... acquires a just idea of beautiful forms; he corrects nature by herself, her imperfect state by her more perfect. His eye being enabled to distinguish the accidental deficiencies, excrescences, and deformities of things from their general figures, he makes out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any one original; and what may seem a paradox, he learns to design naturally by drawing his figures unlike to any one object. This idea of the perfect state of nature, which the artist calls the ideal ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... an abstract from the 'Demonomagie' of Horst (founded on Hauber's original work), of the 'Hexenhammer,' under its three principal divisions. The third part, which contains the Criminal Code, and consists of thirty-five ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... he loved Turgenev, the singer of virginal love and purity, of youth, and of the melancholy Russian landscape; but he loved virginal love, not from knowledge but from hearsay, as something abstract, existing outside real life. Now he assured himself that he loved Anna Akimovna platonically, ideally, though he did not know what those words meant. But he felt comfortable, snug, warm. Anna Akimovna seemed to him ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... notion of the mischief done to British commerce in India, by ships from Mauritius, an abstract of all the captures made in the first sixteen months of the war, so far as they came to our knowledge in the Garden Prison, is subjoined. There are probably several omissions; and the supposed values annexed to them are the least that can be estimated, perhaps not exceeding ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... relief. To say that they are lukewarm is only to fairly indicate a state of feeling which is rapidly degenerating into frigidity. They declare that the Bill is unworkable, and while maintaining their abstract right to demand whatever they choose, believe that, taking one consideration with another, the lot of autonomic Ireland would not be a ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... purpose. To protect the book, we have none but farcical means. Place a few bricks one atop the other; join them with mortar; and the law will defend your wall. Build up in writing an edifice of your thoughts; and it will be open to any one, without serious impediment, to abstract stones from it, even to take the whole, if it suit him. A rabbit-hutch is property; the work of the mind is not. If the animal has eccentric views as regards the possessions of others, we have ours ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... known to be fallacious, as most of the poetry that has come down to us in the West Saxon dialect is certainly of Northumbrian origin. Since, however, we learn from Baeda that already in his time Caedmon had had many imitators, the abstract probability is rather unfavourable than otherwise to the assumption that a collection of poems contained in a late 10th century MS. contains any of his work. Modern criticism has shown conclusively that the poetry of the "Caedmon MS." ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... dull, very frequently, when he was only balancing between jealous and sensitive tastes;—and ignorant of the actual, when, in fact, his ignorance simply arose from the decided preference which he gave to the foreign and abstract. He was contemplative—an idealist; I was impetuous and devoted to the real and living world around me, in which I was disposed to mingle with an eagerness which might have been fatal; but for that restraint ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... consisted not of mere teaching but of help—which touched not only the issues of the sin-sick soul, but the weakness and want of the body. To the demoniac, to the leper, to the impotent man by the pool, he brought not abstract truths, but words of healing and works of practical deliverance. How striking is the fact that the freshest and noblest charities of this nineteenth century are only developments of the manner in which the Redeemer soothed the sorrows ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... painting of a landscape does not attempt to imitate the scene; it uses colors and forms as symbols which serve for expression. The meaning attaching to these symbols derives from common acceptance and usage, Japanese painting, rendering the abstract spirit of movement of a wave, for example, rather than the concrete details of its surface appearance, differs fundamentally from the painting of the western world; it is none the less pregnant with meaning for those who know the convention. ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... pounds of the finest coffee to be had in the tropics. The bag burst and spilled the priceless brown mass of the ground berries among the dense vines and weeds of the swampy land. Mala suerte! When you take away from an Esperandan his coffee, you abstract his patriotism and 50 per cent. of his value as a soldier. The men began to rake up the precious stuff; but I beckoned Kearny back along the trail where they would not hear. The limit had ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... which he excelled in early life were in this direction, and at no time in his career did he display any emotional enthusiasm on subjects of general concern. But, on the other hand, he was unflinching in his adherence to abstract principle. Though not carried away by the extravagance of Rousseau, he was thoroughly discontented with the political state of Geneva. He was by early conviction a Democrat in the broadest sense of the term. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a more perfect example ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... was particularly agreeable to me; I at first worked with him sometimes for my amusement, and afterwards occasionally for a short time as his journeyman. I was constitutionally vigorous; and, by the experience thus attained, I added to the abstract possession of power, the skill of applying it, when I pleased, in such a manner as that no part should ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin |
