"Ascribe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... did not, as far as might be judged by results, affect my actual performances. But I am, nevertheless, in a chronic state of what the B.E.F. calls "wind up" on account of this exam. I am so eager to do well that the mere thought of failing is abhorrent. I am inclined to ascribe these feelings at ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... we ascribe some intrinsic power of judging about spiritual and moral matters to the ordinary human intellect, it would be a grievous mistake to assume that all men have an equal measure of this power. Because we assert that all moral and spiritual truth comes to men by {142} ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... that roamed over mountain and plain have become wards of the Government, debased and denuded of whatever dignity they once possessed, ascribe what cause you will for their present condition. But the Pueblo Indian has absolutely maintained the integrity of his individuality, and is self-respecting and self-sufficient. He accepted the form of religion professed ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... Those who ascribe to him a cold heart have judged him unfairly. It is not cold hearts in princes which give the most offense by their harshness. Such hearts are almost always gifted with the art of satisfying those about them by uniform graciousness and ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... melancholia. In Heine's, on the other hand, the question of heredity has apparently only an indirect bearing upon his Weltschmerz. To what extent was his long and terrible disease of hereditary origin, and in what measure may we ascribe his Weltschmerz to the sufferings which that disease caused him? The first of these questions has been answered as conclusively as seems possible on the basis of all available data, by a doctor of medicine, S. Rahmer, ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... act has some religious significance. Animals, elements, every observable thing of the solar system, all natural phenomena, are deified and revered. Like all primitive people, not understanding the laws of nature, the Apache ascribe to the supernatural all things passing their understanding. The medicine-men consider disease evil, hence why try to treat evil with drugs? Disease is of divine origin, so to the beneficent and healing gods the Apache naturally ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... Pius IX. considered that it was his duty to complete what his predecessor had begun. He does not disclaim having taken the initiative on certain other points. He had pardoned extensively, and he congratulates himself on this clemency. He repels the calumny which would ascribe to the reforms which he had inaugurated the general movement of Italy towards its enfranchisement. This agitation he attributes to events that occurred elsewhere, and which became facts of overwhelming influence for the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... qualities been tempered by his well known benevolence to the poor, and his staunch, yet, unostentatious, support of the deserving and the well intentioned. And, as his life was a continuous illustration of the principles he inculcated, no one could be unjust enough to ascribe to intolerance or oppression, the rigour with which he exacted obedience, to those laws which he so well obeyed himself. It was remarked, moreover, that, while his general bearing to those who sought to place themselves in the scale of arrogant superiority, was proud and ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... beneath their guide, (Unhappy women) to the brothers' tomb, — And by the sacrifice knife have died. Death, sure, is worse, and more disastrous doom Than showing that which modesty would hide; And they who can to force ascribe the blame, Extinguish this and ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... by a common culture-language, written and spoken,—and by the fact that they have been, off and on during the last two thousand years, but most of the time, under the same government. As to Corea, though in the days of Confucius it was unknown to the Chinese, the legends of both countries ascribe the founding of its civilization and monarchy to a Chinese minister exiled there during the twelfth century B. C. Japanese legendary history goes back to 600 B. C.;—that is, to the closing of the Age of the Mysteries, and the opening of that of the Religions:— I imagine that means ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... from their top and bottom members, it is evident that they add to the strain upon them, and consequently to that extent reduce the ultimate strength of the beams. "I admit," he added, "that there is no formula for valuing the solid sides for strains, and that at present we only ascribe to them the value or use of connecting the top and bottom; yet we are aware that, from their continuity and solidity, they are of value to resist horizontal and many other strains, independently of the top ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... upon a nature so calm and stately, and without a visible cause; when she recalled all these symptoms of a heart not now at rest, it was not possible for her to reject altogether a certain vague and dreary apprehension. Nor did she herself, although to Ellinor she so affected, ascribe this cloudiness and caprice of mood merely to the result of a solitary and meditative life; she attributed them to the influence of an early grief, perhaps linked with the affections, and did not doubt but that one day or another she should ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sadly enough. 'It is as I feared. And now let me ask you, as one whose happiness has long been dearer to me than my own, do you ever expect to be happy with such a man as Geoffrey Westbourne? Do not ascribe my motive to jealousy, for, believe me, I am incapable of a base action. It is only out of the deepest solicitude for your welfare that I ask this question, for I fear for your future happiness, and that you may be ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... more and more of those baser elements which they had been instituted for the very purpose of suppressing. Such spiritual decadences are inevitable. The world cannot live at the level of its great men. Yet it would be unfair to the generality of our kind to ascribe wholly to their intellectual and moral weakness the gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity from their primitive patterns. For it should never be forgotten that by their glorification of poverty and celibacy both these religions struck straight at the root ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... shores of Lake Tahoe, I was not able to discover that any rhythmical oscillations of the level of its waters have ever been noticed. Some residents declared that they had observed sudden fluctuations of level, which, from their suddenness, they were disposed to ascribe to disturbances of the bottom of the Lake due to volcanic agencies, although they were unable to coordinate such oscillations with any earthquake manifestations ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... preparations for conflict, of which the average union and employers' association is the embodiment, naturally, real capacity is not increased, but is rather decreased, under this form of management, and we may ascribe ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... pounds each), and he was told that the quantity of goods for the Indian Department which had been sent over this year exceeded that of common years by twenty thousand pounds sterling. It is impossible to ascribe this profusion to any other motive than that of instigating the Indians to take up the tomahawk. It cannot be to secure their trade, for all the peltries collected on the waters of the Wabash in one year, if ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... came last night. I appreciate the kind things Mr. Anagnos has said about Helen and me; but his extravagant way of saying them rubs me the wrong way. The simple facts would be so much more convincing! Why, for instance, does he take the trouble to ascribe motives to me that I never dreamed of? You know, and he knows, and I know, that my motive in coming here was not in any sense philanthropic. How ridiculous it is to say I had drunk so copiously of the noble spirit of Dr. ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... 63. would be thought of one, who after making a collection of passages which ascribe these attributes of royalty and conquest to God, such as Mr. English has made of those which ascribe such attributes to the Messiah, should infer as he does, that God is a just, beneficent; wise and mighty monarch reigning ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... which he governeth and ordereth any of his actions. Whatsoever God doeth, it is good because he doeth it; whether it be to give grace or to detain it, whether in choosing or refusing. The consideration of this made the holy men of old ascribe righteousness to their Maker, even when yet they could not see the reason of his actions; they would rather stand amazed and wonder at the heights and depths of his unsearchable judgments, than quarrel at the most strange and obscure ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... forbidden the Indians to trade and traffic, they sell at whatever price they wish. Formerly the Indians brought their produce to the gates, and sold it at very low-prices; for they are satisfied with very little gain, which is not true of the Spaniards. But, not to ascribe all the guilt to men, but to our sins, the cause of this dearness has in part been that these years have not afforded as good weather as others. This is the state in which the country has thus far been up to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... Vaughan of Damariscotta advised Governor Shirley to attack with fifteen hundred raw New England militia. [Footnote: Smollett says that the proposal came from Robert Auchmuty, judge of admiralty in Massachusetts. Hutchinson, Douglas, Belknap, and other well-informed writers ascribe the scheme to Vaughan, while Pepperrell says that it originated with Colonel John Bradstreet. In the Public Record Office there is a letter from Bradstreet, written in 1753, but without address, in which he declares that he not only planned the siege, ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... in his Natural History of Selborne, philosophising on the fact which had fallen under his own notice of this indiscriminate suckling of the young of one animal by the parent of another, is disposed to ascribe it to a selfish feeling; the pleasure and relief of having its distended teats drawn by this intervention. He notices the circumstance of a leveret having been thus nursed by a cat, whose kittens had been recently drowned: and observes, that "this strange affection ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... us, has been obliged to face the various social problems that arise from original sin, but which vote-getters are pleased to ascribe to industrial progress. In our country, with a population of some thirty to the square mile, while in the kingdom of Saxony the density of the population is 830.6 to the square mile, it is hard to believe that we suffer ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... cases, and conscious and unconscious sex factors are slight or absent in most normal cases, that these patients and their doctors alike are sex-intoxicated, and that the Freudian psychology applies only to perverts and erotomania or other abnormal cases. To ascribe all this aversion to social or ethical repression is both shallow and banousic, for the real causes are both manifold and deeper. They are part of a complicated protest of normality, found in all and even in the resistance of subjects of analysis, which ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... acquainted with their mode of life find that savages are not absolutely devoid of intellectual activity of an empirical kind, since they partly understand the natural causes of some phenomena, and are able, in a rational, not an arbitrary manner, to ascribe to laws and the necessities of things many facts relating to the individual and to society. They are, therefore, not without the scientific as well as the mythical faculty making due allowance for their intellectual condition; and these primitive and natural instincts are due to the ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... those biographers who, like the monkish historians mentioned by Fuller, in his "Church History of Britain," swell the bowels of their books with empty wind, in default of sufficient solid food to fill them,—who, according to Addison, ascribe to the unfortunate persons whose lives they pretend to write works which they never wrote and actions which they never performed, celebrate virtues which they were never famous for and excuse faults ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... to be the lamentable condition of man. When rolling in the calm tide of uninterrupted prosperity, and rejoicing in the vigor of health, he forgets there is a God, or becomes thoughtless that the heavens do rule, and begins, like the king of Babylon, to ascribe all his success to his own power, foresight and management, and is practically an atheist. But however thoughtless men may be, yet there is a God who governs the world, and will so order and direct ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... a deeper impression than at other times, either because the contrast makes us more keenly susceptible, or rather perhaps because our senses are then more open to impressions, and the shock is consequently stronger. To this cause I must ascribe the fright and shrieks of the ladies. One sagaciously sat down in a corner with her back to the window, and held her fingers to her ears; a second knelt down before her, and hid her face in her lap; a third threw herself ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsmen's two hundred ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... longer appears, by your letter of the 13th, that you consider the enemy's operations on the Niagara frontier indicative of active operations. If the government of America inclines to defensive measures, I can only ascribe the determination to two causes: the first is, the expectation of such overtures from us as will lead to a suspension of hostilities, preparatory to negociations for peace; the other arises from having ascertained, ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... it took Lionel by surprise, and his voice faltered as he pressed the hand held out to him. He answered, "I don't deserve your praise, Vance, and I fear the pride you tell me to put under lock and key has the larger share of the merit you ascribe to better motives. Independent? No! I have ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... absurd to ascribe to Arthur even the main credit of these results: they were the effect of that spirit of industry which ever characterises the native of Great Britain, and which nothing can wholly extinguish. Nor was this prosperity without alloy. The ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... to the second extract.—Who wrote the Prologue to Julius Caesar? To what master-hand are we to ascribe this twofold specimen of psychologic portraiture? Take up the dramatic histories of Langbaine and Baker; take up the Theatrical register of the reverend Charles Burney; take up the voluminous Some account of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... particles of quicksilver forming themselves into spheres, as water rising in capillary tubes, the solution of salts and sugar in water, and the cohesion with which all hard bodies are held together, that we are not surprised at the attractions of bodies in contact with each other, but ascribe them to a law affecting all matter. In similar manner when two bodies in apparent contact repel each other, as oil thrown on water; or when heat converts ice into water and water into steam; or ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... ignoring Mary, ascribe his symptoms to their true cause? By dragging out the horror of that moonlit night, he could account for any vagary of nerves. But that way of escape was equally impossible. He could not let that shadow fall across her path of new-found ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... a trace of coldness in his tone, and she knew perfectly why it was there, but she chose to ascribe it to ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... you to ascribe some better reason to all my conduct. Can you think of nothing, in the present ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the gold. and silversmiths are highly regarded, but that the ironworkers are looked upon with contempt, as an inferior grade of beings. Their kinsmen even ascribe to them the power of transforming themselves into hynas, or other savage beasts. All convulsions and hysterical disorders are attributed to the effect of their evil eye. The Amhara call them Buda, ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... SCRIB: ascribe', to impute to; circumscribe', to draw a line around, to limit; describe'; inscribe'; prescribe', to order or appoint; pro-scribe' (literally, to write forth), ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... Japan and all the East tremble! But to-day we see a feeble and rather gentle race, eccentric in customs and dress and ideals, with odd rites and ceremonials chiefly intended to placate demoniacal beings to whom they ascribe supreme control over human events. Nothing may be done by the King or his humblest subject without consulting the sorcerers and exorcists, who alone know the propitious moment and place for every important act. With no recognition of a Supreme Being, no sacred ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... the venerable founder of the Institution, which now commences its beneficent career, our congratulations on the completion of his work; and in expressing the conviction, that the remotest posterity will point to it as a crucial instance of the wisdom which natural piety leads all men to ascribe to their ancestors. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... that every man possesses indefeasible worth is the basis of public morality, and at the same time the moral principle by which our private relations to our fellow-men are regulated. What does it mean to ascribe indefeasible worth to every man? It means, for instance, that human beings may not be hunted and killed in sport as hunters kill birds or other game; that human beings may not be devoured for food as they ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... eleven times that of the earth, it will follow that the speed of the equator on Jupiter must be about twenty-seven times as great as that on the earth. It is no doubt to this high velocity of rotation that we must ascribe the extraordinary ellipticity of Jupiter; the rapid rotation causes a great centrifugal force, and this bulges out the pliant materials of which ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... a good estate, possessed the office of a lord of the bed-chamber to his Majesty. Historians do not ascribe much importance to the situation, or to the talents of nobles in this department, nor shall this little history. A lord of the bed-chamber is a personage well known in courts, and in all capitals where courts reside; with this advantage ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... these infinite obligations to the Great Ruler of Times and Seasons and Events, let us humbly ascribe it to our own faults and frailties if in any degree that perfect concord and happiness, peace and justice, which such great mercies should diffuse through the hearts and lives of our people do not altogether and always and everywhere ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... natures of the things themselves, not allegorically, but properly, then does the phrase increase and multiply, agree unto all things, that come of seed. But if we treat of the words as figuratively spoken (which I rather suppose to be the purpose of the Scripture, which doth not, surely, superfluously ascribe this benediction to the offspring of aquatic animals and man only); then do we find "multitude" to belong to creatures spiritual as well as corporeal, as in heaven and earth, and to righteous and unrighteous, as in light and darkness; ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... from the truth," writes Magenta, in his history of the "Castello di Pavia," "than that Giangaleazzo died of poison." And Delaborde, Porro, Cantu, as well as those able and learned scholars, Signor Luzio and Signor Renier, all endorse these statements, and ascribe the duke's death to natural causes. Even Paolo Giovio, who hated the Moro as the man who had betrayed his country to the French, owns that there is much reason for doubting the truth of the accusation brought against him in this instance. ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... to ascribe their origin to so recent a date, but to derive it from a mere mechanic was more than our author's patience could endure. Accordingly he is not sparing of invective against those ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... that Elephanta is of much later date, he will scarcely be able to solve this dilemma, because the two styles are exactly the same, and the carvings of the latter are still more magnificent. To ascribe the temples of Elephanta and Kanari to the Buddhists, and to say that their respective periods correspond to the fourth and fifth centuries in the first case, and the tenth in the second, is to introduce into history a very strange and unfounded anachronism. ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... sentence be spoken, I know that my fate will meet with sympathy, and that my memory will be honoured. In speaking thus, accuse me not, my lords, of an indecorous presumption. To the efforts I have made in a just and noble cause, I ascribe no vain importance—nor do I claim for those efforts any high reward. But it so happens, and it will ever happen so, that they who have tried to serve their country, no matter how weak the effort may have been, ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... state, was an imposture. But nobody now doubts the similar oblivion of what has passed that sometimes follows the analogous hypnotic sleep. Of a remarkable cure, which the school of the Salpetriere or Nancy would ascribe, with probable justice, to 'suggestion,' a savage example ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... to "protect Southern womanhood," despite the plain fact that only a very small proportion of the blackamoors hanged and burned are even so much as accused of molesting Southern womanhood. On the other hand, some of the negro intellectuals of the North ascribe the recurrent butcheries to the Southern white man's economic jealousy of the Southern black, who is fast acquiring property and reaching out for the prerogatives that go therewith. Finally, certain white Northerners seek a cause in mere political animosity, ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... engaged myself in a bold epilogue to this play, wherein I have somewhat taxed the former writing, that it was necessary for me either not to print it, or to show that I could defend it. Yet I would so maintain my opinion of the present age, as not to be wanting in my veneration for the past: I would ascribe to dead authors their just praises in those things wherein they have excelled us; and in those wherein we contend with them for the pre-eminence, I would acknowledge our advantages to the age, and claim no victory from our wit. This being what I have ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... Cuzco, on the Sacsahuaman Hill, was well described by Cieza de Leon and in greater detail by Garcilasso de la Vega, ii. pp. 305—318. Both ascribe it to Inca Yupanqui or his son Tupac Inca, as does Sarmiento. The extensive edifices, built of masonry of his period, were no doubt the work of Tupac Inca who thus got credit for the whole. These later edifices were pulled down by the Spaniards, ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... part of the story, however, is that though they ascribe moral defects to the effect of misfortune either in character or surroundings, they will not listen to the plea of misfortune in cases that in England meet with sympathy and commiseration only. Ill luck of any kind, or even ill treatment at ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... of such acts and such a life, we ascribe to Mrs. Eliot no small share in the success of those heroic labors by which five thousand "praying Indians" in New England were brought to bear testimony to the truths of the Bible and ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Darwin conceived that the religious feeling of man might have grown out of the natural emotions of fear,[1] love, gratitude, &c., when once men began to question as to the explanation of the phenomena of life, and to ascribe the forces of nature to the possession of a spirit such as he himself was conscious of: and with much more positive intent, Mr. H. Spencer has also, after most painstaking inquiries, formulated what he conceives to be the origin of religious ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... the air present in my lungs, I respired this newly compounded air as many times as possible. I then found that it contained very little aerial acid in it, and when this was separated from it, it extinguished fire. I believe that one must ascribe to the blood present in the pulmonary veins, the effect which animals endowed with lungs have upon the air. The following experiment ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... the fashion nowadays to ascribe hatred to non-co-operationism. And I regret to find that even Col. Wedgewood has fallen into the trap. I make bold to say that the only way to remove hatred is to give it disciplined vent. No man can—I cannot—perform ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... mind.' This is the charitable view to take. But some who knew him long and well put another construction upon this facile self- deception. There were, and are, honourable men of the highest standing who failed to ascribe disinterested motives to the man who suddenly and secretly betrayed his colleagues, his party, and his closest friends, and tried to break up the Empire to satisfy an inordinate ambition, and an insatiable craving for ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... had experience of many men, know that you can hardly over-estimate the extent and depth of human vanity. Never be afraid but that nine men out of ten will swallow with avidity flattery, however gross; especially if it ascribe to them those qualities of which they are ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... remarkable tunnel excavation. The whole region in the immediate neighborhood of San Francisco mountains appears, therefore, to have been populated in ancient times by an agricultural people, and legends ascribe some of these ruins to ancestors ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... filled with ideas of irresistible fate. Some Arabs and Moors ascribe only the good things to God, whilst others all things, the evil and the good. When this anecdote was being ended, a Moor came in, and being in a disputing humour, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... ascribe our opposition to their doctrines to depravity, and call our objections to it "impious cavillings," as does Dr. Musgrave, we offer this apology, that our objections are not alleged against what we understand ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... no difficult matter to ascribe most of the differences which we observe between the English and French character to the differences in the habits of the people, occasioned by form of government and various assignable causes: and the ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... side of Marx must be considered if we would understand the man. It is not necessary, however, to ascribe the influence of Saint-Simonian thought upon him to a predisposing spiritual temperament. Marx, with his usual penetration, saw in Saint-Simonism the hidden germ of a great truth, the embryo of a profound social theory. Saint-Simon, as we have seen, had vaguely indicated ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... each other. It was miserable to hear these men—I am sure they were good men—prattling like bib-and-tucker babies about Irish affairs, and speaking of Gladstone as possessing a quality which we Catholics only ascribe to the Pope. Ha! ha! They think that vain old cataract of verbiage to be infallible. He knows nothing of the matter, does not understand the tools he is working with, any one of whom could buy and ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... well established as any axiom of political science. This must be borne in mind if we would fully understand the prevailing apathy—the seeming indifference to corruption and ring rule which has so long characterized a large class of intelligent and well-meaning American citizens. To ascribe the evils of our party system to their lack of interest in public questions and their selfish disregard of civic duties, is to ignore an important phase of the problem—the influence of the system itself. In the long run an active general interest can be maintained only in those institutions from ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... in my household, neither the letter in question nor another to Y.R.H. was ever sent. In it I begged Y.R.H.'s indulgence, having some works on hand that I was obliged to dispatch with all speed, owing to which I was, alas! compelled to lay aside the Mass also.[1] I hope Y.R.H. will ascribe the delay solely to the pressure of circumstances. This is not the time to enter fully into the subject, but I must do so as soon as the right moment arrives, that Y.R.H. may not form too severe or ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... disposed, and some rich foliage and green pasture give an English character to the scenery, and are very refreshing, after continually looking at the everlasting paddy fields, which constitute the principal features of the sea coast of China. It is to this circumstance that I ascribe the exaggerated accounts we have of the beauty of the island of Ku-lang-so. It forms, however, a very pleasant promenade, and may be enjoyed without interruption from the inhabitants. The city of Amoy is built on a low neck of land. The houses are of a dusky tint, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... a vessel gives the illusion that it has come by a shining road. Missions are not discovered till they are already in action. Not unlike those archers of whom the Talmud wittily says, they first shoot the arrow and then fix the target, nations ascribe to themselves purposes of which they were originally unconscious. First comes the tingling consciousness of achievement and power, then a glamour of retrospective legend to explain and justify it. Thus it is that that great struggle for sea-power to which Spain, Portugal, Holland, ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... disputed, by several nations, who first informed Ceres where her daughter was, and thence acquired the reward, which was the art of sowing corn. Some ascribe the intelligence to Triptol{)e}mus, and his brother Eubul{)e}us; but the generality of writers agree in conferring the honor on the nymph Areth{u}sa, daughter of Nereus and Doris, and companion of Diana, who, flying from the pursuit of the river Alph{e}us, saw Proserpine ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... opinion that woman is no trouble-maker, and I must admit that I agree with your premise in general, although occasionally she may cause a—a slight annoyance. Undeniably, there is a lot of trouble in the world. To whose efforts do you ascribe it?" ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... Toscanelli, evolved and matured the thought, until Columbus came to realize it. When dramatists, poets, and romancers expatiate upon the supposed spontaneous or independent character of the discovery of America, and ascribe the achievement exclusively to the genius of a single man, they adopt a theory which is discouraging ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... cruel and barren nature. Decoyed by a mirage, he had gone too far—so far that there was no going back. His strength was at an end. For the first time in his life he had to give up, and with a sort of despairing self- possession he tried to understand the cause of the defeat. He did not ascribe it to that ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... distress. In such circumstances, therefore, it was urged, that it would be most unwise to adopt a measure, which besides injuring an individual class, would tend to increase public calamity. The resolution was supported by Messrs. Huskisson, Peel, and Canning, who denied that to ascribe much of the distress which had prevailed to the issues of the country banks, was to attack the character of the country bankers, or that anything had occurred to justify the extreme sensibility which had been manifested on ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sediment in six out of the nine rivers does not vary widely. The mean is 2,730 to 1. But this is not the required average. The water-discharge of each river has to be taken into account. If we ascribe to the ratio given for each river the weight proper to the amount of water it discharges, the proportion of weight of water to weight of sediment, for the whole quantity of water involved, comes ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... but one hope: to ascribe the unavertible death of her husband to some accident, some heedlessness. And so she directed her ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... city of his kingdom," says the Scripture,(962) "was Babylon." Most of the profane historians ascribe the founding of Babylon to Semiramis,(963) others to Belus. It is evident, that both the one and the other are mistaken, if they speak of the first founder of that city; for it owes its beginning neither to Semiramis nor to Nimrod, but to the foolish vanity ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... is silence and grandeur, would suggest to the dweller on the fringe of the ice fields—his deity. The sun, in like manner shedding forth its genial warmth, the agriculturist would learn to welcome, and to ascribe to its power the increase of his crop, and just as the limitation of reason holds the untutored man in bondage, so the myth, the outcome of his ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... inventive music is the most arbitrarily distributed, and the most evanescent. But it is the more important to dwell on its necessity, inasmuch as both good and bad poets are tempted to ignore it. The good poet prefers to ascribe his success to higher qualities; to his imagination, elevation of thought, descriptive faculty. The bad poet can more easily urge that his thoughts are too advanced for mankind to appreciate than that his melody is too sweet for their ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... the Vedas and Brahmanas and Upanishads. To none of these books, which have, for the most part, reached us in various recensions often showing considerable discrepancies and obviously later interpolations, is it possible to ascribe any definite date. But in them we undoubtedly possess a genuine key to the religious thought and social conceptions, and even inferentially to the political institutions of the Aryan Hindus through the many centuries that rolled by between their first southward migrations ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... that looms in the future, the shadow of death upon life. "None can escape his destiny" we often exclaim when we hear of death lying in wait for the traveller at the bend of the road. But were the traveller to encounter happiness instead, we would never ascribe this to destiny; if we did, we should have in our mind a far different goddess. And yet, are not joys to be met with on the highways of life that are greater than any misfortune, more momentous even than death? May a happiness not be encountered ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... species of habits, since the falsehood of affirmations and negations is made known by the same knowledge, and it is the same ignorance which errs in either way, since negatives are proved by affirmatives, according to Poster. i, 25. Again to ascribe to creatures things that are proper to God, seems to amount to the same as affirming something unfitting of Him, since whatever is proper to God is God Himself: and to ascribe to a creature, that which is proper to God, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... over, the gallant young king was the first to ascribe the honor of the victory to Bayard, and the nobles and captains agreed with ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... aroused during this long experience, and to the depression of spirits which followed the final issue, we may perhaps partially ascribe Angelina's indifference to the excited state of feeling throughout the country on the subject of that institution which "owned no ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... not see among them a single woman whom I could call handsome. They have, indeed, a soft sleepiness about the eyes, which may be fascinating to some, but I should rather ascribe the celebrity their charms have obtained among navigators to their cheerfulness and gaiety. Their figures are bad, and the greater part ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... may differ in our view of the relationship between God and man there is general agreement about the attributes of the Supreme Being. All ascribe to him unlimited power, wisdom, love and, of course, the perfection of all those desirable qualities we see in human beings. The theosophical view is that all we know in man of power, wisdom, love, justice, beauty, harmony, ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... syllables, as in echoes and doggrel rhymes; sometimes of words, as in puns and quibbles; and sometimes of whole sentences or poems, cast into the figures of eggs, axes, or altars; nay, some carry the notion of wit so far as to ascribe it even to external mimicry, and to look upon a man as an ingenious person that can resemble the tone, posture, or ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... souls, which are primarily self-motive, and contain the fountains and principles of the life which is attributed about bodies, and through which bodies participate of renewed immortality. And prior to all these is the immortality of the gods: for Diotima in the Banquet does not ascribe an immortality of this kind to demons. Hence such an immortality as this is separate and exempt from wholes. For, together with the immortality of the gods, eternity subsists, which is the fountain of all immortality and life, as well that ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... be surpassed in feats of bravery, scandalous to his followers to fail in matching the bravery of the Prince. But it is infamy during life, and indelible reproach, to return alive from a battle where their Prince was slain. To preserve their Prince, to defend him, and to ascribe to his glory all their own valorous deeds, is the sum and most sacred part of their oath. The Princes fight for victory; for the Prince his followers fight. Many of the young nobility, when their own community comes to languish in its vigour by long peace and inactivity, ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... fire, turned to Weissmann in truculent mood. "Well, Dr. Weissmann, how do you account for these phenomena? To whose agency do you ascribe these marvels?" ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... and 46 deg., the summer is in no respect hotter than at Rochelle; but we find the frosts harder, and a more plentiful fall of snow. This difference of climate from that of Africa and Europe, I ascribe to two causes: the first is, the number of woods, which, though scattered up and down, cover the face of this country: the second, the great number of rivers. The former prevent the sun from warming the earth; and the latter diffuse a great degree of humidity: not to mention the continuity ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... then?" Ross did not ascribe the present blotting out of the landscape to any real manipulation of nature on the part of the all-powerful Foanna. Too many times the reputations of "medicine men" had been so enhanced by coincidence. ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... events, and under all administrations, discoveries ought ever to be attempted and encouraged, because they carry in themselves such incitements for their completion, that they hardly ever fail to prove beneficial at the end, whatever mistakes or mismanagements may occur at their commencement. Some ascribe this to chance, and others, with more sense and decency, to Providence. However this may be, great occasions are certain to bring forth great spirits, if they do not produce them; and when once the way is laid open, and a few instances have shewn ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... "it is too universal. You find it everywhere; and to ascribe it everywhere to education would be but shifting the ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... reason that is tricking him. She had gone into the bedroom not only homely but commonplace, not only commonplace but common, a dingy washed-out blonde girl whom it would be a humiliation to present as his wife. She was standing there, in the majesty of such proud pale beauty as poets delight to ascribe to a sorrowful princess. Her wonderful skin was clear and translucent, giving her an ethereal look. Her hair reminded him again of what marvels he had seen in the sunlight of Sunday afternoon. And looking at her form ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... Mary! cause me to be truly troubled for my sins.' These, Mistress Blanche, be from the book that is the Common Prayer of the Papistical Church: and all these words be spoken unto Mary. As you well see, I cast no doubt, they do ascribe unto her divinity. For none can effectually work upon man's heart—save the Holy Ghost only. None other can cause his heart to be 'truly troubled for sin;' none other can make his heart to burn. Now what think you of this, Mistress Blanche? ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... colonies by the success of the expedition against Louisbourg was unbounded. Even those who had refused to participate in its hazards and expense, were sensible of its advantages, and of the lustre it shed on the American arms. Although some disposition was manifested in England, to ascribe the whole merit of the conquest to the navy, colonel Pepperel received, with the title of baronet, the more substantial reward of a regiment in the British service, to be raised in America; and the same mark of royal favour was bestowed on governor ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Observe these horrid walls, this rueful waste! Here some refresh the vigour of the mind With contemplation and cold penitence: Nor wonder while thou hearest that the soul Thus purified hereafter may ascend Surmounting all obstruction, nor ascribe The sentence to indulgence; each extreme Has tortures for ambition; to dissolve In everlasting languor, to resist Its impulse, but in vain: to be enclosed Within a limit, and that limit fire; Severed from happiness, from eminence, And flying, but hell bars us, from ourselves. ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... circumstance the lake owes its appellation. We afterwards learned that the only bear in this part of the country is the brown bear and that this by no means possesses the ferocity which the Indians, with their usual love of exaggeration, ascribe to it. The fierce grizzly bear which frequents the sources of the Missouri is not found on ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... of opinion quite distinct from the general temper of the English nation, such as that of the ultra-scientific school, which thinks it unscientific philanthropy to ascribe the attributes of humanity to the negro,—a school some of the more rampant absurdities of which had, just before I left England, called down the rebuke of real science in the person of Mr. Huxley. And I might note, if the time would allow, many fluctuations and oscillations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... of divination, by the consultation of the entrails (haruspicina), which was of secondary importance compared to augury; and the most depraved form of Roman public sport, the gladiatorial games. The only fundamental institution of Rome which it is the habit to ascribe to Etruria, the idea of the so-called templum or division of the sky into regions as an axiom of augury, seems to have been quite as much a general Italic idea as a specifically Etruscan one. Even ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... reflecting criticisms may lay at his door; whatever share in the ruin of the South, the future historians may ascribe to his unswerving self-will and unvarying faith in his own power—no one who traces his career from West Point to the New Saint Helena—will call them failings ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... apparatus on the spit. Imagine her surprise when she beheld her worsted and stockings at the fire, knowing, at the same time, that four hungry stomachs were waiting for their dinners! At last, fearing that she was going to ascribe the metamorphosis to some hallucination of her own, I went up to her, threw my arms round her neck, told her the whole story, and we both of us enjoyed a hearty ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... not say what honour I ascribe Unto your friendship, nor in what dear state I hold your love; let my continued zeal, The constant and religious regard, That I have ever carried to your name, My carriage with your sister, all contest, How much I stand affected ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... the vicinity of Lake Tahoe ascribe its origin to a great natural convulsion. There was a time, they say, when their tribe possessed the whole earth, and were strong numerous, and rich; but a day came in which a people rose up stronger than they, and defeated and enslaved them. Afterward ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... who are born blind, the misfortune is due to the father's sins, the consequences of which transmitted themselves to the wife, and from her to the child. Weak-minded and idiotic children may frequently ascribe their infirmity to the same cause. Finally, what dire disaster may be achieved through vaccination by an insignificant drop of syphilitic blood, our own days can ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... The fact is, that a man of genius is always far more ready to work than other people, and gets so much more good from the work that he does, and is often so little conscious of the inherent divinity in himself, that he is very apt to ascribe all his capacity to his work, and to tell those who ask how he came to be what he is: "If I am anything, which I much doubt, I made myself so merely by labor." This was Newton's way of talking, and I suppose it ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... wife take care how she ascribe supererogatory merit to herself; so as to take the faults of ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... Vseslavitch had said nothing of her family or her home. Beyond the fact that she was Russian, and a friend of the Dalmatian Ambassador's wife—herself a Slav—Paul was still ignorant. Indeed, for all he knew, she might be some poor relation—lack of fortune was the only possible reason he could ascribe for her being unmarried. Beautiful and attractive women, of good family—if they were rich—did not wander over the Continent long without husbands. Well—that mattered nothing. Thank heaven, he was not bound ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... general, however, there prevailed a want of confidence in their efficacy, and then the sacred rites had as little power in arresting the progress of this deeply-rooted malady as the prayers and holy services subsequently had at the altars of the greatly-revered martyr St. Vitus. We may therefore ascribe it to accident merely, and to a certain aversion to this demoniacal disease, which seemed to lie beyond the reach of human skill, that we meet with but few and imperfect notices of the St. Vitus's dance in the second half of the fifteenth century. ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... one who knew Sir Alexander Galt would waste time in seeking to account for his actions, which often could only be accounted for by his constitutional inconstancy. In saying this I do not for a moment wish to ascribe any sordid or unworthy motive to Galt, who was a man of large and generous mind and of high honour. He was, however, never a party man. He could not be brought to understand the necessity for deferring sometimes to his leader. That spirit of subordination without which all ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... chastened mood. The little man had not shown me before the pathetic side of the freak's life. By asking him to dinner as if he were normal I had earned his eternal gratitude. And yet, with a smile, which I trust the Recording Angel when he makes up my final balance-sheet of good and evil will not ascribe to an unfeeling heart, I could not help formulating the hope that his gratitude would not be shown by presents of China fowls sitting on eggs, Tyrolese chalets and bottles with ladders and little men ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... nearly the same, whether in or out of Birmingham; and as enormities seem more prevalent out than in, we may reasonably ascribe the cause to the extraordinary industry of the inhabitants, not allowing time to brood over, and bring forth mischief, equal to places of ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet; if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... this was an occasion to deceive the world: for men, serving either calamity or tyranny, did ascribe unto stones and ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... had their Odin, Vile, and Ve, who are described as the three sons of Bura, the offspring of the mysterious cow, and the Celts had their three bulls, venerated as the living symbols of the triple Hu or Menu. To the same class we must ascribe the triads of the Orphic and Pythagorean and Platonic schools; each of which must again be identified with the imperial triad of the old Chaldaic or ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... revolutionaries refers not so much to the policy of Socialists in control of municipalities, which is often beyond criticism, as to the value of municipal activity generally for Socialist purposes. None deny that it has value, but reformists and revolutionaries ascribe ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... And because there was need of more pay for the shouters and marchers, They disbanded in face of their foemen their bowmen and archers. They replied to their well-wishers' fears—to their enemies' laughter, Saying: 'Peace! We have fashioned a God Which shall save us hereafter. We ascribe all dominion to man in his factions conferring, And have given to numbers the Name of the Wisdom unerring.' They said: 'Who has hate in his soul? Who has envied his neighbour? Let him arise and control both that man and his labour.' They said: 'Who is ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... to descend alone and wring from Hagen a confession of his crimes, while they lingered within earshot inside the building. Volker, seeing the queen approach, proposed to Hagen to rise and show her the customary respect; but the latter, declaring that she would ascribe this token of decorum to fear alone, grimly bade him remain seated, and, when she addressed him, boldly acknowledged that ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... he was repeating such passages of Scripture as ascribe the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Whether these were strung together in a prayer, or whether he merely gave them forth to the night air as the poetry on which he fed his soul, they could not tell. The night was much lighter now than ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... off, wondering vaguely how he should explain the lie when it was found out, but not caring much. After all, he could easily ascribe the episode to the trick ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... be some uncertainty whether Romulus gave his name to the city, or derived his own from it; the latter is asserted by several historians, but those who ascribe to the city a Grecian origin, with some show of probability assert that Romus (another form of Romulus) and Roma are both derived from the Greek [Greek: rome], strength. The city, we are assured, had another name, which the priests were forbidden to divulge; ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... their means and according to their usage—I mean the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Matthew, but that which Mark published may be affirmed to be Peter's, whose interpreter Mark was. For even the Digest of Luke men usually ascribe to Paul. And it may well seem that the works which disciples publish belong to ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... them without ransom. See De Officiis, i. 12] the other because of his cruelty our people must always hate. [Footnote: It may be doubted wheter Hannibal deserved the reproach here implied. The Roman historians ascribe to him acts of cruelty no worse than their own generals were chargeable with: while nothing of the kind is related by either Polybius, or Plutarch. It is certain that after the battle of Cannae he checked the needless slaughter of the Roman fugitives, and Livy ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... fears of men had made them throw themselves absolutely into all measures of Government to secure the government itself; and that temporary strength of Pelham has my Lord Granville contrived to fix to him: and people will be glad to ascribe to the Merit and virtue of the ministry, what they would be ashamed to Own, but was really the effect of their own apprehensions. It was a good idea Of somebody, when no man would accept a place under the new system, that Granville and Bath ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... a public man must generally know and observe. But those that are compelled to praise themselves do so less offensively if they do not ascribe all the honour to themselves, but, being aware that their glory will be tiresome to others, set it down partly to fortune, partly to the deity. So Achilles ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... disposed to think, with fear or joy according to their predilection, that modern discovery is gradually putting the Bible out of date. A feeling, if not a judgment, has in some quarters arisen, that in view of the vastness of creation, the Scriptures ascribe to this globe and its concerns a share of ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... alliteration; words that echo the sense, and just four strokes to paint a picture which has an atmosphere that whisks you into its own world incontinently. It is no wonder that writers of later days who have tried similar imitations ascribe to Thomas ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... hollow was at the bottom of a great rock, where by mere accident (I would say, if I did not see abundant reason to ascribe all such things now to Providence,) I was cutting down some thick branches of trees to make charcoal; and before I go on, I must observe the reason of my making this charcoal, which was thus: I was afraid of making a smoke about my habitation, as I ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... him, under protest, appointing Gloucester, Arundel, and twelve other Peers and prelates, a permanent council to inquire into the condition of all the public departments, the courts of law, and the royal household, with absolute powers of redress and dismissal. We need not ascribe to Chaucer's Parliamentary exertions in his patron's behalf, nor to any malpractices in his official conduct, the fact that he was among the earliest victims of the commission. In December 1386, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... he did not know his own parents after he had passed the adolescent stage and had been turned out upon the world to care for himself. If, then, certain of his fellow-beings showed those evidences of infirmity which we ascribe to age, it did not necessarily follow that he saw any association between such infirmities and the length of time which those persons had lived. The very fact that some barbaric nations retain the custom of killing the aged and ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... 177. I have often been induced to believe from observation, that the twilight of the evenings is lighter than that of the mornings at the same distance from noon. Some may ascribe this to the greater height of the atmosphere in the evenings having been rarefied by the sun during the day; but as its density must at the same time be diminished, its power of refraction would continue the same. I should rather suppose that it may be owing to the phosphorescent ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... perfunctory regrets; and, truth to tell, Hazel cared little to know the real cause. Any one of a number of reasons might have been sufficient. But she realized how those who knew her would take it, what cause they would ascribe. It did not matter, though. The very worst, she reasoned, could not be so bad as what had already happened—could be no more disagreeable than the things she had endured in the past two weeks. Losing a position was a trifle. But ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... against the violence and lawlessness of the Jacobin club. "Your own brothers," Bernadotte replied, "were the founders of that club. And yet you reproach me with favoring its principles. It is to the instructions of some one, I know not who , that we are to ascribe the agitation which now prevails." "True, general," Napoleon replied, most vehemently, "and I would rather live in the woods, than in a society which presents no security against violence." This conversation only strengthened the alienation already ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... all the world believes and asserts even as I do. Only, when they describe these premonitions under the name of birds and utterances, tokens [24] and soothsayers, I speak of a divinity, and in using that designation I claim to speak at once more exactly and more reverentially than they do who ascribe the power of the gods to birds. And that I am not lying against the Godhead I have this as a proof: although I have reported to numbers of friends the counsels of heaven, I have never at any time been shown to ...
— The Apology • Xenophon
... one another in its various modifications is a kind of culture varying with the degree of directness with which it is carried out, but we should be careful not to ascribe to such culture any improving qualities upon those on whom it is brought to bear. The water-ousel plucks moss from the riverbank to build its nest, but is does not improve the moss by plucking it. We pluck feathers from birds, and less directly wool from wild ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... number of copies of the Boston Port Bill were sent with great rapidity all over the colonies. In the fine phrase which we must needs believe to be Burke's, these had the effect which the poets ascribe to the Fury's torch; they set the countries through which they passed in a flame. At Boston and New York "the populace had copies of the Bill printed upon mourning paper with a black border, which they cried about the streets ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... it all. I have no wish to owe a handsome abode to having made of the beauty you are pleased to ascribe to me a man-trap and ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... listless attention to the prayer, were thinking of the scandalous and aristocratical conduct of Mr. Warren, in "goin' out o' meetin' just as meetin' went to prayers!" Few, indeed, were they who would be likely to ascribe any charitable motive for the act; and probably not one of those present thought of the true and conscientious feeling that had induced it. So the world wags! It is certain that a malignant and bitter feeling was got up against the worthy rector on that occasion, ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... should be inclined to interpose here with a remark, that after such a reference, we have little right to ascribe to those classes, as if it were peculiarly one of their characteristics, the insensibility to the sufferings of the brute creation, and to number it formally among the results of the "lack of knowledge," we can only reply, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... insects to take up their evening-song! One of these extraordinary musicians is distinguished as the trumpeter; another produces a tinkle like a bell; and a third gives forth a sound which the imagination may ascribe to any instrument, or band of instruments, it pleases. This species of cricket buries himself in a centre, to which converge seven holes, which he has drilled in a circle; and from these seven tubes a sound ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... glorious name, Title that age which they would have the best; Thou being the best of things: and far transcending All style of joy, in children, parents, friends, Or any other waking dream on earth: Thy looks when they to Venus did ascribe, They should have given her twenty thousand Cupids; Such are thy beauties and our loves! Dear saint, Riches, the dumb God, that giv'st all men tongues; That canst do nought, and yet mak'st men do all things; The price of souls; even hell, with thee to boot, Is made worth heaven. ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... 'What chain?' I asked, and you answered,—oh, sir, with a practised readiness,—'The chain he wore about his neck.' Do you remember that? The chain linked your hand-locks, Mr. Wogan. It was your own escape of which you told me. Why did you ascribe ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... said you would much oblige me by giving me, if only a few days' work, as I have just arrived. After a few moments thought, during which mayhap charity and gain held conference, which succumbed, it is needless to premise, for we sometimes ascribe selfish motives to kindly acts, he said that if I choose to come for nine dollars a day I might. It is unnecessary for me to add that ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... accomplished anything better than the attainment of the mountain-top that commanded a view of the Promised Land. It is solely and entirely to the occasion and the circumstances of his death that we are to ascribe the peculiar and universal interest in his character that has ever since continued to hold its seat in the bosom of friend and of foe. To this day, the most distinguished American and English historians are at issue ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... conflict exterminating the darkness, those people assert to be Saint Malachy, who presided first in Dunum, afterward in Ardmachia, and reduced the island unto the Christian law. On the other hand, the people of Britain ascribe this light to their coming, for that then the church seemed under their rule to be advanced unto a better state; and that then religion seemed to be planted and propagated, and the sacraments of the church and the institutes of the Christian law to be observed with more ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... message seemed to you peremptory," he said, "will you not ascribe it to my desire to taste the full measure of my powers? I know nothing of the privileges of a king save what I have read in books. But it seems to me that included amongst them must surely be the privilege of choosing one's ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... them, but they refused to see the real cause, and preferred to ascribe it to the approaching reparation. From time to time the father or the mother made a fresh attempt to re-open the sources of intimacy, but each time came the same disappointment. Maxime saw that he had no longer any way of communicating with ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... very one—Son of God. Now, in the 5th chapter, when the Jews accused Jesus "of making himself equal to God," by calling himself Son of God Jesus even hastens to protest against the inference as a misrepresentation —beginning with: "The Son can do nothing of himself:" and proceeds elaborately to ascribe all his greatness to the Father's will. In fact, the Son is emphatically "he who is sent," and the Father is "he who sent him:" and all would feel the deep impropriety of trying to exchange these phrases. The Son who is sent,—sent, not ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... could not be expected to understand, the new union of the Peelites with a peace party, in direct opposition to whose strongest views and gravest warnings they had originally begun the war. 'In Gladstone,' Cornewall Lewis said, 'people ascribe to faction, or ambition, or vanity, conduct which I believe to be the result of a conscientious, scrupulous, ingenuous, undecided mind, always looking on each side of a question and magnifying the objections which belong to ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... now realised the loss she suffered, and saw no way of redressing or even of alleviating it. Her whole being was before me; I continually felt the want of her; and, which is worse, I could not forgive myself my own unhappiness." We may ascribe it either to delicacy of feeling or to the consideration that their further intercourse was undesirable, that he ceased to communicate directly with her. A drawing by his own hand, which he thought would give ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... of honour and justice, but which were occasionally warped according to circumstances; with all the virtues and vices so heterogeneously jumbled and heaped together, that it was almost impossible to ascribe any action to its true motive, and to ascertain to what point their vice was softened down into almost a virtue, and their virtues from mere excess degenerated into vice. Their names were O'Connor, Mills, and Gascoigne. The other shipmates of our hero ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... cultivated people in Berlin were quite the same as those of cultivated people in New York. Each of the parties to the discovery disclaimed any superiority for their respective civilizations; they wished rather to ascribe a greater charm and virtue to the alien conditions; and they acquired such merit with one another that when the German ladies got out of the train at Franzensbad, the mother offered Mrs. March an ingenious folding footstool which she ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to do with Napoleon's career, with Wellington's, or Grant's, or Von Moltke's? Every battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylae, Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... branching in all directions over the land,[197] presumably on the authority of local tradition. And these traditions may be not wholly unfounded; for the same motives which made the English immigrants of one district ascribe the handiwork of by-gone days to mythological powers might operate to the like end ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... as he heard and saw; but he had now schooled himself to accept what he called his "fate," and was able to maintain a calm, indifferent demeanour before his men. Of course he never for a moment, during all that time, thought of crying to God for mercy, for as long as a man continues to ascribe his sins and their consequences to "fate," he is a rampant and wilful, besides being an unphilosophical, ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne |
