"Attribute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sensitiveness to insult or contradiction. By these means they sought to prepare the judges to interpret every thing in favor of the Count, and, even if it should prove that he had inflicted the mortal blow on the usurer, to attribute it to access ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... of a work, to which all the minor canals in the world are like the rods of the magicians to Aaron's rod which swallowed them up, it is expected that everything shall move without difficulty, and that no oversight will have been committed. Truly this would be to attribute a power of prevision to M. Lesseps beyond what is human. The world can afford to wait a little till this huge machine gets oiled. Great enterprises move slow at the outset. We have yet unshaken faith in the ultimate ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... scandalised that any one should attribute the possibility of such wayward behaviour to the venerable Earl. In his agitation he ate another muffin. After all, if the nobleman did go jumping in the winter why should this young and horsey man presume ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... its own charges, but would afford an increased dividend to the proprietors of India stock, and large relief to the English finances. These absurd expectations were disappointed; and the directors, naturally enough, chose to attribute the disappointment rather to the mismanagement of Mahommed Reza Khan than to their own ignorance of the country entrusted to their care. They were confirmed in their error by the agents of Nuncomar; for Nuncomar had agents even in Leadenhall ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... time will show. Moreover, I would have you remark that the lady in question is not suffering at all, and that the 'untold agony of soul' you attribute to Isaacs is a wholesome medicine for one with such a soul as his. And now I am going, for you are not the sort of person with whom I can enjoy talking very long. You are violent and argumentative, though you are sometimes amusing. I am rarely violent, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... inherent attribute of all savages to be far in advance of the whites in the alertness and acuteness of two or three of the senses, the baby Pawnee was wonderfully so. He could hear the footsteps of a bear or the scratching of a panther, or even the tramp ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... herself back on her sofa, laughed merrily. She little recked how those who heard her would, in their own imaginations, fill up the little history of Mr. Slope's first love. She little cared that some among them might attribute to her the honour of his earlier admiration. She was tired of Mr. Slope and wanted to get rid of him; she had ground for anger with him, and she chose to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... sound system of Logic; including under that title, a portion—that which relates to the "Laws of Evidence"—of what is sometimes treated under the head of "Rhetoric." But the full and complete accomplishment of such an object would confer on Man the unattainable attribute ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... were prone to attribute their ill success to the incompetency of their generals. Lord North, with his quaint humour, would say, 'I do not know whether our generals will frighten the enemy, but I know they frighten me whenever I think of them.' ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... absolutely unconscious of their own fatal gift, until awakened to it by the results. Why, therefore, should there be any thing to shock, or even to surprise, in the power claimed by my brother, as an attribute inalienable from primogeniture in certain select families, of conferring knightly honors? The red ribbon of the Bath he certainly did confer upon me; and once, in a paroxysm of imprudent liberality, he promised me at the end of certain ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... of pulv. Digital. to be taken every other night for a week, and fifteen grains of mild fixed vegetable alkaly to be swallowed twice a day in barley water. He soon lost all his complaints; but we must not in this case too hastily attribute the cure to the Digitalis, as the alkaly has also been found a very useful medicine ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... edition, p. 112), in referring to the greater frequency of sexual anesthesia in women, remarks that it is often associated with neuropathic states, as well as with anomalies of the genital organs, or general troubles of nutrition, and is usually acquired. Some authors attribute great importance to amenorrhea in this connection; one investigator has found that in 4 out of 14 cases of absolute amenorrhea sexual feeling was absent. Loewenfeld, again (Sexualleben und Nervenleiden), referring to the common misconception ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... suddenly rises again in full possession of his faculties. I have watched such cases for hours, and always with increasing marvel. The loss of consciousness is complete, and often lasts but a fraction of a second. How account for such phenomenon! If consciousness were a diffused attribute of the whole brain, what spasm of blood-vessels or other physical process familiar to us could act and be adjusted with such speed? If, however, the 'seat' of consciousness be limited to some very small portion of the brain, some physical process such as is suggested could easily account for the ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... attribute all the evils of universal suffrage to the ignorant vote but said: "It may be that an investigation would reveal the fact that a very important source of difficulty is to be found in the failure of intelligent ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... I wasn't shrill. I spoke in a very ordinary voice. And I don't know why you should attribute such ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... twenty-two pounds. She was received into the Government service at Wheeling, Virginia, and when shipped or transferred to this depot, with four hundred others, was but two years old, rising three. She was worked, at least a year or more, too young; and to this cause I attribute certain injuries which I shall speak of hereafter. This mule, with two hundred others, was transferred to the Army of the Potomac, and went through its campaigns from 1864 up to the fall of Richmond. She is an excellent worker, and her neck, head, and fore shoulders are as fine as can ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... position, Mr. Dale. It would aptly apply to our humanity of the present generation; and were these the days when I sermonized, I could propose that it should afford me an illustration for the pulpit. For my part, when doors are closed I try not their locks; and I attribute my perfect equanimity, health even, to an uninquiring acceptation of the fact that they are closed to me. I read my page by the light I have. On the contrary, the world of this day, if I may presume to quote you for my purpose, is heard knocking at those ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bowed to the commander.) "As I was saying to Barker, as matters stand in this regiment, some half a dozen at least of the men referred to as its 'representative officers' are apparently resentful of my arrest of Lieutenant Lanier, and attribute my course to pique, because he saw fit to show himself at the hop I declined to permit him as officer-of-the-guard to attend. You think, possibly, that because men like Captain Snaffle, Lieutenant Crane, and one or two of that set have been in consultation with me, the matters at issue are ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... this prosperity, we could hardly call it a blessing for which we had a right or ground to thank God. The true prosperity of the nation consisted not so much in the fact that the nation was growing in wealth—though wealth was a necessary attribute of prosperity—but that it was growing in virtue; and that there was a more equable distribution of comfort, contentment, and the things of this ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... it in her by inheritance and by training to meddle with the lightning as safely as human being might; and Lady Merrifield owned with a sigh that she must accept as a fact that what even the heathens owned as a Divine mystery and awful attribute, had come to be treated as a commonplace business messenger and scientific toy, though (as Mrs. Gatty puts it) the mystery had only gone deeper. So much for the peril; and for the other scruple, it was set at rest by a hospitable letter from ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... apprentice system to modern conditions. The term of service and rates of pay have changed but slightly over a long period of years. As a result only a small proportion of the boys who begin as apprentices finish the apprenticeship term of three or four years. Employers attribute this to the relatively high wages paid for machine operating, and the slight advantage, from a wage standpoint, of the "all-round" man over the machine operator. After a year or two the apprentice finds that he can double his pay by taking a job as operator, and ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... together is impossible, and that the Anglican can be as little said to tend to the Roman, as the Roman to the Anglican. The spirit of the Volume is not so gentle to the Church of Rome, as Tract 71 published the year before; on the contrary, it is very fierce; and this I attribute to the circumstance that the Volume is theological and didactic, whereas the Tract, being controversial, assumes as little and grants as much as possible on the points in dispute, and insists on points of ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... know what to make of it. I should at once have concluded it caused by prelusive illness, but for my remembrance of what both my uncle and myself had seen, so long before, in the thunderstorm; while John, willing enough to attribute its recurrence to that cause, found it impossible to concede that he was anything but well when crossing the moor. I thought, however, that excitement, fatigue, and lack of food, might have something to do with it, and with his illness too; while, if he was in a state to ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... Gaul—In Ulteriore Gallia C. Muraena. All the editions, previous to that of Cortius, have in citeriore Gallia. "But C. Muraena," says the critic, "commanded in Gallia Transalpina, or Ulterior Gaul, as appears from Cic. pro Muraena, c. 41. To attribute such an error to a lapse or memory in Sallust, would be absurd. I have, therefore, confidently altered citeriore into ulteriore." The praise of having first discovered the error, however, is due, not to Cortius, but to Felicius Durantinus, ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... what's England made for except to find poor Paddy a wife and money? Ah, ye may laugh, but I'd buy me a chapel at the West-end: me talents are thrown away here intirely, wasting me swateness on the desert air, as Tom Moore says' (Panurgus used to attribute all quotations whatsoever to Irish geniuses); 'and I flatter meself I'm the boy to shute the ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... establishment of large forest reserves near the headwaters of our streams, which are to serve also the purpose of national parks. In assigning a cause for the lowering of our streams, and the drying up of many of our lakes, in a former part of this work, I attribute it to the plowing up of their valleys and watersheds, and not to the destruction of the forests, because I do not think that the latter reason has sufficiently progressed to produce the result, although it is well known that the destruction of growing ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... To attribute to Douglas, from this time on, as many writers have done, a purpose to pander to the South, is not only to discredit his political foresight, but to misunderstand his position in the Northwest and to ignore ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... kept with the most scrupulous care during the voyage, having never been trusted for a moment into any other hands than those of Captain Cook and mine. No accident could therefore have happened to it, to which we could attribute its stopping; nor could it have arisen from the effects of intense cold, as the thermometer was very little below the freezing point. As soon as the discovery was made, I consulted with Captain Clerke what course it was best to pursue; whether to let it remain as it was, entirely useless ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... possible?" scoffed Percival. "No motive is too base for me, allow me to tell you, my dear child. I am the true designing villain of romance. Go on: what is the one bad motive which you attribute to me?" ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... "That attribute of my character I fancy I inherit from daddy-professor's side of the family," the ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... of some English public libraries will bear us out. We may therefore be thankful that, on the whole, such literature has been of a vastly purer and healthier character than of yore, reflecting that higher and better tone of public feeling which we may attribute, in part at least, to the influence of the "pure court and serene ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... between God and man, we rub out all moral distinctions as well. If we are not other than He is, how can we act other than He wills? If we hold that the soul is only "a finite mode of God's infinite attribute of thought," part of "the necessary expression of the infinite attributes of eternal Being," the sense of sin can be no more ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... marvellous adventures which succeeding poets and romancers have accumulated around the names of Charlemagne and his Paladins, or Peers. But Ariosto and the other Italian poets have drawn from different sources, and doubtless often from their own invention, numberless other stories which they attribute to the same heroes, not hesitating to quote as their authority "the good Turpin," though his history contains no trace of them; and the more outrageous the improbability, or rather the impossibility, of their narrations, the more attentive are they to cite ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... time they reached the clearing, for there the going was perilous, and besides, it was just as well that his father should not witness any signs on Billy Jack's part of the folly that he was inclined to attribute to the rising generation. So steadily enough the bays trotted up the lane and between long lines of green cordwood on one side and a hay-stack on the other, into the yard, and swinging round the big straw-stack that faced the open shed, and was flanked on the right by the ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... business-like side that can't bear to let anything go. All religion begins, it seems to me, by an outburst of moral force, an attempt to simplify, to get a principle; and then the people who don't understand it begin to make it technical and defined; uncritical minds begin to attribute all sorts of vague wonders to it—things unattested, natural exaggerations, excited statements, impossible claims; and then these take traditional shape and the poor steed gets hung with all sorts ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... squirrels are more or less birdlike in speech and movements; but the Douglas is preeminently so, possessing, as he does, every attribute peculiarly squirrelish enthusiastically concentrated. He is the squirrel of squirrels, flashing from branch to branch of his favorite evergreens crisp and glossy and undiseased as a sunbeam. Give him wings ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... some. Charles Hayter seemed aware of being slighted, and yet Henrietta had sometimes the air of being divided between them. Anne longed for the power of representing to them all what they were about, and of pointing out some of the evils they were exposing themselves to. She did not attribute guile to any. It was the highest satisfaction to her to believe Captain Wentworth not in the least aware of the pain he was occasioning. There was no triumph, no pitiful triumph in his manner. He had, probably, never ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... great Head of the body in which we all are members. To accept a primacy in St. Peter, and yet hold it immaterial to the organisation of the Church. To acknowledge one Church, and then divide the unity into fragments. To attribute to the Church the power of the keys, and then deny the force of her indulgences while admitting her absolutions. To approve confession, and practically set it aside. To do and hold these and many other contradictions—what ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... clearing his throat, "is quite remarkable for the time of year. As I was observing to Mrs. Fossell, a moment ago, we might be in August month. Whether we attribute it or not to the influence of the Gulf Stream, in the matter of temperature ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... way of reading a man's thoughts. She did not attribute to Peak the penetration which would make him uneasy. In spite of masculine proverbs, it is the habit of women to suppose that the other sex regards them confidingly, ingenuously. Marcella was unusually endowed with analytic intelligence, but in this case she believed ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... that aught, for the furious incitements that have been used, hath issued by your appointment that might give the least interruption or disrepute either to the Author or the Book. Which he who will be better advised than to call your neglect, or connivance at a thing imagined so perilous, can attribute it to nothing more justly than to the deep and quiet stream of your direct and calm deliberations, that gave not way either to the fervent rashness or the immaterial gravity of those who ceased not to exasperate without cause. For which uprightness, and incorrupt refusal of what ye were incensed ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... be regretted that the nobility of nature which was really and truly Beethoven's attribute should have been so constantly overshadowed and dominated by something else which, without being a superior force, seemed by a strange perversity to be always to the fore. Whilst, however, we would wish to give to every instance of his goodness of heart its fullest weight, it would be useless, ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... his comrade must see to it that he is content with the wide liberal air of the common day. The poetic alchemist may turn a sword into pure gold: the playwright will concern himself with the due usage of the weapon as we know it, and attribute to it no transcendent value, no miraculous properties. What is permissible to Blake, painting Adam and Eve among embowering roses and lilies, while the sun, moon, and stars simultaneously shine, is impermissible to the portrait-painter or the landscapist, who has to idealise actuality to the ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the air on the approach of a storm, and exhibits unmistakable signs of exultation when it is going to thunder. It is not a bird of song, but is unsurpassed as a screamer. To the common Kite, a plebeian member of the genus, has been ascribed an attribute which in fact belongs exclusively to this Banner species. The Kite, according to Dr. FRANKLIN, draws the lightning from the clouds, but this, in reality, is the proud prerogative of the Great American Eagle, the noblest of the falcon tribe, which ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... No one ever tires of pleasure. It is the pursuit of pleasure, the trouble to grasp it, that makes us old. Only the soldiers who enter Capua with wounded feet leave it demoralised. And yet George, who never had to wait or fight for a pleasure, fell enervate long before his death. I can but attribute this to the constant persecution to which he was subjected by duns ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... doctrines. The insurrection was attended with the bloodshed, destruction, and ferocity natural to such outbreaks. The Archbishop of Canterbury and many gentlemen were murdered; and a great part of London sacked and burnt. It would be absurd to attribute this disaster to Wycliffe, nor was there any desire to hold him responsible for it; but it is equally certain that the doctrines which he had taught were incompatible, at that particular time, with an effective repression of the spirit which ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... of hot ashes and of scalding water that will frizzle up in a few seconds every green blade and leaf upon his tiny domain, for which he pays an enormous rental, sometimes as much as L12 sterling an acre. Yet the contadino takes his chances with a seraphic resignation that we do not usually attribute to the southern temperament. After the eruption of 1872, which covered the rich Paduli with a deep coating of grey ashes, a young peasant girl was heard deploring the loss of her carefully tended gourds and melons; "Oh come volimme fa? Addio, pummarole! addio, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... compelled to eat, drink, and breath it very freely. my pocket watch, is out of order, she will run only a few minutes without stoping. I can discover no radical defect in her works, and must therefore attribute it to the sand, with which, she seems plentifully charged, notwithstanding her ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... at that time, down at South Kensington, some remaining court or outstanding building which had belonged to the Great International Exhibition, and here the bazaar was to be held. I do not know that I can trace the way in which the idea grew and became great, or that anyone at the time was able to attribute the honour to the proper founder. Some gave it all to the Prince of Wales, declaring that his royal highness had done it out of his own head; and others were sure that the whole business had originated with a certain philanthropical ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... he would do it all in one process, giving his blot an irregular edge and allowing the color to accumulate where the shadows required it. His elaborative touches elsewhere were of the same nature. They were brush blots as distinct from washes. To this, I think, we may attribute on analysis the freedom of handling which—though each man has his distinctive method—is characteristic of both Cox and DeWint. If we add to these two methods of using the brush a third—its manipulation as though it were a pen—we shall have all ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... The English rider was in harmony with the English steed. Darrell at this moment was resting his arm lightly on the animal's shoulder, and his head still uncovered. It has been said before that he was, of imposing presence; the striking attribute of his person, indeed, was that of unconscious grandeur; yet, though above the ordinary height, he was not very tall-five feet eleven at the utmost-and far from being very erect. On the contrary, there was that habitual bend in his proud neck which men who ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... colleagues died, English comedy took to her bed. 'The Comic Muse, long sick, is now a- dying,' wrote Garrick in his prologue to She Stoops to Conquer, and she had not to apologise, like Charles the Second, for the unconscionable time she was about it. It is a little crude to attribute her demise to Jeremy Collier and his Short View—a block painted to look like a thunderbolt. It is not a matter of decency, of alteration or improvement in manners. A comedy might be wholly Congrevean ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... have not only heard the koel calling there, but have seen a young koel being fed by crows. Now, at Almora alone of the hill stations does Corvus splendens, the Indian house-crow, occur, and this is the usual victim of the koel. I would therefore attribute the presence of the koel at Almora and its absence from other hill stations to the fact that at Almora alone the ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... the lower attribute which man has in common with the animals; spirit ([Greek: pneuma]) the higher one which they do not possess, and which makes man ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... dearlings, to tell you wherefore I am sad and sorrowful may cause you grief, still there is no help but I explain the matter to you twain. This mansion, which our dear father (who hath found ruth) builded for us, is perfect in every attribute nor lacketh it any condition of comfort or completion. Howbeit I have found out by chance this day that there are yet three things which, were they set within these walls, of the house and grounds, would make our place beyond compare, and in the wide world there would be naught ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... could assume the manners of a gentleman when he chose, and moreover, be a lively and agreeable companion; and this, perhaps, quite as much as the attribute, made him somewhat of a favourite among many of the surrounding gentry. He was, however, more intimate at Brown Hall than at any other house; and he had now been asked over there, to spend the few days previous to his final ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... secretly agreeable to Wegg, but he veils his feelings, and observes, 'Strange. To what do you attribute it?' ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... of these is the apparent incapacity of the majority of mankind to accept a purely monotheistic creed. It is a demonstrable fact that the primitive religions now open to observation attribute specific events and results to distinct supernatural beings; and there can be little doubt that this is the initial step in every creed. It is a bold and somewhat perilous revolution to attempt to overturn this doctrine and to set up monotheism ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... purpose of all this? Why the disaster? Why this man saved and that man lost? Who has arranged that my husband should live a few short happy years in the world, and the happiest days in those years with me these last few weeks, and then be taken from me?" I heard no one attribute all this to a Divine Power who ordains and arranges the lives of men, and as part of a definite scheme sends such calamity and misery in order to purify, to teach, to spiritualize. I do not say there were not people who thought and ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... murder and superstition. Since that day, the belief in witchcraft has fled from the populous abodes of men, and taken refuge in remote villages and districts too wild, rugged, and inhospitable to afford a resting-place for the foot of civilisation. Rude fishers and uneducated labourers still attribute every phenomenon of nature which they cannot account for, to the devil and witches. Catalepsy, that wondrous disease, is still thought by ignorant gossips to be the work of Satan; and hypochondriacs, uninformed ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... is so; and any one but you, possessing a less noble ignorance of evil, would long since have discovered the truth. To what do you attribute Sarah's implacable enmity? To the memory of your offences on the occasion of her wedding? Poor child! If that had been all, her indifference would have given you back your place months ago. Jealousy alone is capable of that fierce and insatiable hatred which cannot be disarmed ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... is inclined to attribute to Socialism all the discontent now prevalent among the laboring classes of this country, would carefully read Mr. Laurence Gronlund's remarkable book, entitled, The Cooeperative Commonwealth,—an exposition of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... at it,—I could not help it,—her eye was on me, and I could not even prepare my mind for the shock of seeing it like or totally unlike the writing of the warning. It was totally unlike; so distinctly unlike that it was no longer possible to attribute those lines to her which, according to Mr. Durand's story, had caused Mrs. Fairbrother to take ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... application in the model of a sanitarily perfect house which has been placed opposite to it. To establish this comparison two very simple models of construction have been selected, proving that healthfulness is not merely an attribute of luxury, but that the most modest houses can present all possible guaranties from this point of view. The healthfulness of houses, and consequently of cities, depends amongst other multiple but relatively simple ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... express the quantity. And very often the vine-grower is so ignorant of his business that he shows one wine which is 'tart' and 'sour,' and even praises it. I find those wines are generally exceeding three years old, and I attribute it to the lack of cellar knowledge and treatment, because in the same cellar where I find large quantities of bad wine I find this year's and last year's wine good, and promising well; but if longer kept, and so treated, after a few years it will ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... Ireneus, that you do not become dazzled by the prestige of a sentiment, generous and noble it is true, but which may result in misfortune to yourself, without benefiting others. How many men thus neglect their advantages, and attribute the blame to Providence, which places happiness within their grasp, but which they do not see, so dazzled are they by some imaginary attraction. If this attraction fades away, they tell how they looked behind; they regret what ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... which he was about to pass Professor Maxon's evening meal to him could not be blamed for overhearing the conversation, though it may have been culpable in him in making no effort to divulge his presence, and possibly equally unpraiseworthy, as well as lacking in romance, to attribute the doctor's avowal to his knowledge of ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... remedy had insidiously crept on to the market. Wholesale houses wanted impossible discounts, and retail chemists could not be inveigled into placing any but the most insignificant orders. He gave dismaying details, terribly anxious all the while lest his chief should attribute to his incompetence the growing unpopularity of the Cure. But to his amazement Sypher listened smilingly to his story of disaster, and ordered ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... not even guess what she might be thinking, or what effect such "an arrangement" of red and yellow would have upon her imagination and judgment. She could not think or receive what was not true, he felt sure, but she might easily enough attribute truth where it did ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... not dream that she would attribute the article to him—the last thing he could wish would be that she should think it had emanated from ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... influence, one arising in the life of Jesus, and the other in the reasonings of theologians, legends of miracles grew luxuriantly. It would be utterly unphilosophical to attribute these as a whole to conscious fraud. Whatever part priestcraft may have taken afterward in sundry discreditable developments of them, the mass of miraculous legends, Century after century, grew up mainly in good faith, and as naturally as elms along water-courses or ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... wholesale expropriations and bequests the experiment has been many times tried, and always with the same results. The wealth that could not be assimilated and administered has always left the receiver or grasper in all essentials poorer than he was before. Wealth is an attribute of personality. It is not interchangeable like the parts of a standardized machine. The futility of dispossessing the middling rich would be as marked ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... left the camp in the night-*time, on his own private business, only a few hours before a battle, which all agree will be a bloody and perhaps a decisive one? His advancement, although nobly deserved, has been rapid. There are many who envy him, and such will not fail to attribute his absence to causes by which his friends well know he is incapable of being influenced. It will be pleasant for those friends to hear slanderous tongues ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... they are tempted to do wrong by this evil spirit; their own hearts are bad. It would be impossible to put any limit to the number of spirits in whom the Dahcotahs believe; every object in nature is full of them. They attribute death as much to the power of these subordinate spirits as to the Great Spirit; but most frequently they suppose death to have been occasioned by a spell having been cast ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... all that Tolstoy says—some of his facts are not accurately stated—to realize the central truth of his indictment of the present system, which is to understand and act upon the irresistible power of the soul over the body, of love, which is an attribute of the soul, over the brute or body force generated by the stirring in us ...
— A Letter to a Hindu • Leo Tolstoy
... station"; and a letter from the British Resident at Oude, transmitted to the said Court, represents him "to have wholly lost, by his oppressions, the confidence and affections of his own subjects"; and whose distresses, and the known disorders in his government, he, the said Hastings, did attribute solely to his own bad conduct and evil character; admitting also, in a letter written to Edward Wheler, Esquire, and transmitted to the Court of Directors, "that many circumstances did favor suspicion of his [the said Nabob's] fidelity to the English interest, the Nabob being surrounded ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "Master, he says he is sorry for it, and that he will not do it again." In short, they have done that which I could not do—they have so won the child over by kindness, that it has caused the offender not only to be fond of them, but equally as fond of his master and the school. To these things I attribute the reclaiming of the children I have mentioned, and so far from punishment being productive of the "worst effects," I have found it ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... texture of the skin, it was entirely removed from coarseness. The might of its size was chiefly by the shoulder; the wrist was not large, nor the hand. Colossal, white, sunlit, bare—among the trees and the meads around it was a living embodiment of the limbs we attribute to the first ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... are regarded with superstitious awe by the Japanese, who attribute to them the power of assuming the human shape in order to bewitch mankind. Like the fairies of our Western tales, however, they work for good as well as for evil ends. To do them a good turn is to secure powerful allies; but woe betide him who injures them!—he and his ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... what is true being found no longer consistent with what we have been accustomed to call beauty, the latter would cease to be an object of desire, though something widely alien to it might usurp its name. If beauty be devoid of independent right to be, and definable only as an attribute of truth, then undoubtedly the cynosure to- day may be the scarecrow of to-morrow, and vice versa, according to our varying conception of ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... these places were shams, invented to please Frenchmen who could not endure the things of their own country. A French merchant must call his discoveries English to make them fashionable, just as in England the druggists attribute theirs ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... influence and credit for the advantage of his allies, whenever a negotiation should render their interests a subject of discussion. That if he did not obtain for every State all they wished, they must attribute the sacrifice he might be compelled to make of his inclinations, to the tyrannic rule of necessity. That, however, he had no reason to believe, that the events of the campaign would make an unfavorable change in the situation of affairs; and that from the present view of them, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... one should consult the "Mornings in Florence," where the wilful discerning enthusiast is, like his revered subject, also at his best. Giotto's thoughtfulness could not be better illustrated than in S. Croce. One sees him, as ever, thinking of everything: not a very remarkable attribute of the fresco painter since then, but very remarkable then, when any kind of facile saintliness sufficed. Signor Bianchi, who found these paintings under the whitewash in 1853, and restored them, overdid his part, there is no doubt; but as I have said, their interest ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... cause, Stanley and Graham standing out against the majority of the Cabinet with regard to the Appropriation clause. Stanley, they think, would have knocked under if Graham had not been very fierce and urged him on to resistance. They attribute all the present bother to Graham, who pleads conscience and religious feelings. It is impossible to guess how it will end, and there is a terrible turmoil. Stanley was with the King for two hours yesterday. The violent party ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... nature of the world of plants which we began by considering, is far from possessing the attribute of permanence. Rather its very essence is impermanence. It may have lasted twenty or thirty thousand years, it may last for twenty or thirty thousand years more, without obvious change; but, as surely as it has followed ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... life, Weismann finally states: "Reproduction is, in truth, an essential attribute of living matter, just as the growth which gives rise to it.... Life is continuous, and not periodically interrupted: ever since its first appearance upon the Earth in the lowest organism, it has continued without break; the ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... curiosity of the village about this new visitor. Among the rest, Miss Vincent, not wanting in an attribute thought to belong more especially to her sex, became somewhat interested to know more exactly who this inquiring, note-taking personage, who seemed to be everywhere and to know everybody, might ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... This new suggestion required no weighing and fine balancing. You could attribute no villainy whatever to one of the old man's enemies that he would not admit the extreme likelihood of your being right. "Stephen ain't that sort; she's got him by the nose, hell take her! She's drivin' him to it, an' it's Temple drivin' her. An' ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... this first conviction was only the preparation for a second. Speaking again of his Candid Examination of Theism, he says: "In that treatise I have since come to see that I was wrong touching what I constituted the basal argument for my negative conclusion ... Reason is not the only attribute of man, nor is it the only faculty which he habitually employs for the ascertainment of truth. Moral and spiritual faculties are of no less importance in their respective spheres, even of everyday life; faith, trust, taste, etc., are {52} as needful in ascertaining ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... consequence dies, a number of karabows (buffaloes) pigs, and ponies are killed and placed over his grave, as an offering to the evil spirit. Some, in case of sickness, imagine, that by eating a whole buffalo, even the horns and hoofs, by degrees, they can appease the anger of the demon to whom they attribute all ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... be found. They knew there was a heavy price upon his head. The cursed Russians." Carter started in surprise at this information regarding his friend. Josef pointed a triumphant finger at him. "See," he said, "it is true as I have said." Turning to Her Grace he continued, "If you attribute your fall from your horse to an accident, there are others who do not. It was part of their plan. Had not the highways been so well guarded they would have carried you to the Russian salt mines, a prisoner." Josef's vehemence ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... moral guilt annexed to such conduct as that which we attribute to Le Sage, is an invidious topic, not necessarily connected with our subject, and upon which we enter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... however, and I was determined to share my home and my life with Jane Gray. Sentimental and visionary as she was, with the funny little twist in her tongue, the poor excuse of a body seemed the last place power of any kind would choose for a habitation. I was not disposed to attribute the supernatural to my companion, but from the day of her arrival unusual events popped ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... our notion of the posture of respect, and this among people whose manners in general struck one as so good and, in particular, as so cultivated. The office of the saint—of which the festa is but the annual reaffirmation—involves not the faintest attribute of remoteness ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... angel. She had not that lofty calmness which we attribute to the angelic character. She was very young, utterly inexperienced and ignorant of the world. The idea which over- towers all other ideas was the first which had taken hold upon her, and under its strength she was like a flower before ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... said in a loud whisper, "come here! take care! keep on the grass!—don't step where the cows have been!" he added, pointing to a peninsula of dry grass, with trodden mud on each side of it; for Tom's contemptuous conception of a girl included the attribute of being unfit to walk in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... To be sure, his best and earlier work has all of that delightful extravagance and amorous colouring peculiar to the age. But there is reflected a homely dignity and mobile, felicitous vein in which the poet seems endowed with every attribute of a melodist. Exquisite, graceful and diverse he, at times, would soar to flights of highest inspiration and bedeck the page with gems of rarest worth. In the heptasyllabic couplet ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... one other illustration with a view to showing how extensively this moral attribute of time is ascribed and emphasized in the serious affairs of life in India. For instance, when a man is engaged in the performance of religious duties, it is regarded as of supreme moment that he know when certain acts ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... country in the world where charities, both public and private, are practised on so noble a scale, especially by the women under the direction of the priests. I am inclined to believe that, generally speaking, charity is a distinguishing attribute ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... twenty-six, and he had been an FBI agent for three years. In that time, he had, among other things, managed to break up a gang of smugglers, track down a counterfeiting ring, and capture three kidnappers. For reasons which he could neither understand nor explain, no one seemed willing to attribute his record to luck. ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... A peculiar attribute of this sect is the character of many of its members: bankers, civil service officials, navy officers, army officers and others of the finest professions. Leroy-Beaulieu, in discussing their methods of obtaining converts says: "they prefer boys and youths, whom ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... been otherwise; I secretly prided myself on acting in good faith, although this lowered me in the eyes of others. As a matter of fact the world has a considerable respect for cleverness, whatever form it takes, and success justifies everything. So the world was pleased to attribute to me all the good qualities and evil propensities, all the victories and defeats which had never been mine; credited me with conquests of which I knew nothing, and sat in judgment upon actions of which I had never been guilty. I scorned to contradict the slanders, and self-love led ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... attribute the circumstance that there has always been a small section of the population to which the ordinary methods of constitutional agitation have appeared feeble and unavailing, but to understand to the full the reason for it one must realise that if there have been three insurrections ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... witnesses who appeared on the Court-martial be themselves tried, they would also suffer for the very same and only crime of which I have been found guilty. But I am to be the victim. Alas! my youthful inexperience, and not depravity of will, is the sole cause to which I can attribute my misfortunes. But so far from repining at my fate, I receive it with a dreadful kind of joy, composure, and serenity of mind; well assured that it has pleased God to point me out as a subject through which some greatly useful ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... because it separated him from friends whose staunch support had contributed to his strength. Moreover, in a few weeks he was compelled to abandon the President for reasons that had long existed. "We have tried hard," he wrote, "to hold our original faith in his personal honesty, and to attribute his disastrous action to errors of judgment and infirmities of temper. The struggle has often been difficult, and we can maintain it no longer."[1061] But the change came too late. He had followed too far. It added to the sadness, also, because ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... see himself obliged to give up the task through sickness, misfortune or other good causes. He has given all he has, he cannot give more. Even though liabilities were stacked up mountain-high against him, he cannot be held morally responsible, and his creditors must attribute their losses to the misfortune of life—a rather unsubstantial consolation, but as good a one ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... goat's skin), the shield of Zeus, made of the hide of the goat AMALTHEA (q. v.), representing originally the storm-cloud in which the god invested himself when he was angry; it was also the attribute of Athena, bearing in her ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the child was five years old and the poet forty, and one is not surprised to learn that Prior was admired by Thomas Moore, who more than once caught his note. A reader familiar with Moore and ignorant of Prior would without hesitation attribute the following stanzas, from the Answer to Chloe Jealous, to the ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... where he is wrong; where I must be permitted to differ from him. As you would find, my dear sir, by following carefully the history of mankind, that the religious sentiment is implanted, a true and legitimate attribute of the human soul—with peremptory right to its existence. Whatever may be faulty in the creeds—that makes no difference, the foundation is there and not to be dislodged. Homeyer, as I understand him from your former not infrequent references, is an Iconoclast, ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... "originated" Reincarnation. In spite of the decided opinions, and the differing theories of the various writers on this subject, who would give Egypt, or India, or the lost Atlantis, as the birthplace of the doctrine, we feel that such ideas are but attempts to attribute a universal intuitive belief to some favored part of the race. We do not believe that the doctrine of Reincarnation ever "originated" anywhere, as a new and distinct doctrine. We believe that it sprang into ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... examination of these three stories reveals the fact that one attribute is beyond dispute in each. Something happens, all the time. Every step in each story is an event. There is no time spent in explanation, description, or telling how people felt; the stories tell what people did, and what they said. And the events are the links ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... inspiring air. Such facts must be considered, though they diminish the poetry which rhetoricians and sentimentalists have cast over the melancholy of Lincoln's temperament. Yet they fall far short of wholly accounting for a gloom which many have loved to attribute to the mysticism of a great destiny, as though the awful weight of his immense task was making itself felt in his strange, brooding nature long years before any human prophet could have forecast any part of that which was to come. In this apparent vague consciousness of the oppression of a great ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... looked up in is face as they met; and the passionate tenderness of the look, the sudden lighting of lip and eye, racked the poor, unwilling spy for days. To suit this abrupt descent from the pedestal, he was obliged to carve a new attribute to his idol, and ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Lane. I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... color. These withered mushrooms do not occur singly here and there over the face of the bed, but in patches; generally all or nearly all of the very small mushrooms in a clump will turn brown and soft, and there is no help for them; they never will recover their plumpness. Some writers attribute fogging off to unfavorable atmospheric conditions,—the temperature may be too cold, or too hot, or the atmosphere too moist, or too dry. I am convinced that fogging off is due to the destruction of the mycelium ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer |
