"Comprehensiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... introduces, as the first of his topics, the prevailing money pressure, which he treats at considerable length, with some degree of truth, but without originality or comprehensiveness of view. He profiles to inquire into the causes of the unfortunate disasters of trade, and into the remedies which may be devised against their recurrence; but on neither head is he remarkably profound ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the crude carvings on the stick merely indicated an attempt to give verisimilitude to the intelligence—the wavy line indicating the creek, and the notch the fatal waterhole. If not, then a black's message-stick is a model of literary condensation, their characters marvels of comprehensiveness and exactitude. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... repeated to Abraham in Gen. xviii. 18. Instead of the [Hebrew: mwpHvt hadmh] (the families of the earth), the [Hebrew: gvii harC] (the nations of the earth) are there mentioned; the family-connection is lost sight of, and the comprehensiveness only—the catholic character of the blessing—is prominently brought out. This promise is a third time repeated to Abraham in chap. xxii. 18, on a very appropriate occasion, even that on which, by his endurance of the greatest ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... sale of which has already necessitated a second edition, far excels all previous treatises on the subject in comprehensiveness and practical value to the refractionist. It not only explains the test, but expounds fully and explicitly the principles underlying it—not only the phenomena revealed by the test, but the why and wherefore of ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... first by the comprehensiveness of the plot in the Miracle Play, the writers of the early Moralities were satisfied with the compression of action effected by the change from the general to the particular theme. This had brought about a reduction in the time required for the acting; and along with these gains had come the further ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... that Unity which consists not in his own singleness or separation, but in the necessity of his inherence in all things that be, without which no creature of any kind could hold existence for a moment. Which necessity of Divine essence I think it better to speak of as comprehensiveness, than as unity, because unity is often understood in the sense of oneness or singleness, instead of universality, whereas the only Unity which by any means can become grateful or an object of hope to men, and whose types therefore in ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... Known, while occupied exclusively in the details of his proper avocation, for skill, promptness, and enterprise, he has also been distinguished, since his sphere of usefulness has been extended to the national councils, for the scope and accuracy of his general information, the comprehensiveness of his mind, the richness of his imagination, and the effective energy of his eloquence. He early manifested an interest in politics, which was intensified by the agitation of questions nearly affecting his own business interests. The celebrated ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... up-to-date facts and opinions on modern agricultural methods. It is safe to say that many years must pass before it can be surpassed in comprehensiveness, accuracy, practical value, and mechanical excellence. It ought to be in every library in ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... in silence. Abdul was now convinced that the harlot—or, in other words, Mohammed Ali's "golden lady"—had wreaked her vengeance on his master. He had taken into his camp the fever-stricken saint; she had slipped away in the night and discovered the treasure. With a comprehensiveness which would have astounded the impurest of Western ears, he cursed Millicent and her vile offspring into the third and ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... In particularity and comprehensiveness of news-collecting, it may be admitted that the American newspapers for a time led the world. I mean in the picking-up of local intelligence, and the use of the telegraph to make it general. And ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... not tired of praising the Augsburg Confession, which has been called Confessio augusta, Confessio augustissima, the "Evangelischer Augapfel," etc. They have admired its systematic plan, its completeness, comprehensiveness, and arrangement; its balance of mildness and firmness; its racy vigor, freshness, and directness; its beauty of composition, "the like of which can not be found in the entire literature of the Reformation period." Spalatin exclaims: "A Confession, the like of which was never made, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... religion. It laughs to scorn that suspicious vigilance, that trembling sensibility, that is the very characteristic of virtue. It represents those faults of which a man may be guilty without malignity, as innocent. And it endeavours to appropriate to itself all comprehensiveness of view, all true ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... numerous, and whom he more than once advised the King to bridle and keep "in awe." Bacon presented his scheme to the King in a Proposition, or, as we should call it, a Report. It is very able and interesting; marked with his characteristic comprehensiveness and sense of practical needs, and with a confidence in his own knowledge of law which contrasts curiously with the current opinion about it. He speaks with the utmost honour of Coke's work, but he is ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... could contemplate his pictures without rapture. By their comprehensiveness and amplitude they filled the imagination. I was unwilling to believe that in no region of the world, or at no period could these ideas be realized. It was plain that the nations of Europe were tending to greater depravity, and would be the prey of perpetual ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... most prominent characteristic of our present language, therefore, is its dual character. Its best qualities—strength, simplicity, directness—come from Anglo-Saxon sources; its enormous added wealth of expression, its comprehensiveness, its plastic adaptability to new conditions and ideas, are largely the result of additions from other languages, and especially of its gradual absorption of the French language after the Norman Conquest. It is ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... educated soul, so we gratefully accept Correggio for his grace, while we approach the consummate art of Michelangelo with reverent awe. It is necessary in aesthetics as elsewhere to recognise a hierarchy of excellence, the grades of which are determined by the greater or less comprehensiveness of the artist's nature expressed in his work. At the same time, the calibre of the artist's genius must be estimated; for eminent greatness even of a narrow kind will always command our admiration: and the amount of his originality has also to be taken into account. What is ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... improvements, as unanimously resolved on there. First that the men of Montelimart do federate with the already federated men of Etoile. Second, that, implying not expressing the circulation of grain, they 'swear in the face of God and their Country' with much more emphasis and comprehensiveness, 'to obey all decrees of the National Assembly, and see them obeyed, till death, jusqu'a la mort.' Third, and most important, that official record of all this be solemnly delivered in to the National Assembly, to M. de Lafayette, and 'to the Restorer of French Liberty;' who shall all take ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... was change, place; accordingly they prefer to give a perfect exposition of their subject, rather than blindly respect a law never very essential in itself. The pieces of Shakspeare violate in the highest degree the unity of time and of place; but they are full of comprehensiveness; nothing is easier to grasp, and for that reason they would have found favor with the Greeks. The French poets tried to obey exactly the law of the three unities; but they violate the law of comprehensiveness, as they do not expound dramatic ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... justified by the public acts and recorded labours of Lord Grenville, we must turn to his correspondence with Lord Temple for the complete development of that sagacity and sound judgment, that intimate knowledge of public affairs, and that remarkable comprehensiveness of view and lucidity of statement, by which he was distinguished above his contemporaries in an age of great political characters. This correspondence, extending over a long period of years, is not less remarkable for the constancy with which it ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... described as Spirit or 'Geist,' is really impersonal. The minds of men are to be regarded as one mind, or more correctly as a succession of ideas. Any comprehensive view of the world must necessarily be general, and there may be a use with a view to comprehensiveness in dropping individuals and their lives and actions. In all things, if we leave out details, a certain degree of order begins to appear; at any rate we can make an order which, with a little exaggeration or disproportion in some of the parts, will ...
— Sophist • Plato
... record in politics would have been as noble as his record in poetry. Happily or unhappily, however, he lived on, a worse politician and a worse poet. His record as both has never before been set forth with the same comprehensiveness as in Professor Harper's important and, after one has ploughed through ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... that most of the deadly encounters with the white whale had taken place; there the waves were storied with his deeds; there also was that tragic spot where the monomaniac old man had found the awful motive to his vengeance. But in the cautious comprehensiveness and unloitering vigilance with which Ahab threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering hunt, he would not permit himself to rest all his hopes upon the one crowning fact above mentioned, however flattering it might be to those ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... types"—that is to say, they possess characters in combination such as we nowadays only find separately developed in different, groups of animals. Now, this permanent retention of embryonic characters and this "comprehensiveness" of structural type are signs of what a zoologist considers to be a comparatively low grade of organisation; and the prevalence of these features in the earlier forms of animals is a very striking phenomenon, though they are none the less perfectly organised so far as their own type is concerned. ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... again into torment and horror, and again into the Olympic warfare of unknown supermen. No doubt there is confusion because of the complexity of motives depicted and the multiplicity of impressions created, but there is also a final message of the greatness and comprehensiveness of human souls. In this world of sin and weakness and death, it is human beings, however mocked or maltreated by circumstance or by themselves, that are still triumphant and interesting. Out of his strifes and failures, the individual man yet emerges, ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... surface. The pleasantness of that bossy condition to the eye is irrespective of imitation on one side, and of structure on the other." The more one considers this statement, the more he is convinced of its comprehensiveness. If the lights and shadows fall pleasantly, how little one stops to inquire, "What is the subject? Do I consider that horse well proportioned, or do I not? Is that woman in good drawing?" Effectiveness is almost independent of detail, except as that ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... clearness, its comprehensiveness, seem to me to mark the author as a genuine critic of the broader and the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... lines—and were we not assured that they are better lines, far more musical, than any to be found in BULWER'S SIAMESE TWINS, we should blush much nearer scarlet than we do—to give an idea of the utility and beautiful comprehensiveness of our plan. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... conclude by calling attention to the comprehensiveness of Christ's authority. After His crucifixion and resurrection—in His last conference with His followers—He announces His boldest claim to power universal ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... deliberations-to the unfolding of the plan of warfare which Wallace had conceived. As he first sketched the general outline of his design, and then proceeded to the particulars of each military movement, he displayed such comprehensiveness of mind; such depths of penetration; clearness of apprehension; facility in expedients; promptitude in perceiving, and fixing on the most favorable points of attack; explaining their bearings upon the power of the enemy; and where the possession of such a castle would compel the neighboring ones ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... chapter;[1167] for example, in 1806, after the battle of Austerlitz, or, still better, in 1809, after his return from Spain, up to the peace of Vienna; whatever our technical shortcomings may be, we shall find that his mind, in its comprehensiveness and amplitude, largely surpasses all known or ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... is, further, highly desirable, in order to avoid the possibility of an occasional failure in such provision for the immediate wants of the Indians, and for their advancement in the arts of life and industry, and also to secure comprehensiveness and consistency in the general scheme, that the endowments for the several tribes and bands should be capitalized and placed in trust for their benefit, out of the reach of accident or caprice. Annual appropriations for such purposes, according to the humor of Congress, will of necessity ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... subdivision of topics, the most striking merit of the new cyclopaedia is, perhaps, comprehensiveness. Among its faults, very few faults of omission can fairly be charged; and, indeed, it seems to us rather to err in giving too many articles, especially on American second-rate preachers, politicians, and literary men, all of whom are no doubt ticketed for immortality ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... "CASSELL'S BOOK OF THE HOUSEHOLD is another book, of a class of which many have been issued, and good books too; but this one, by the thoroughness and comprehensiveness of its arrangement, will go far to render the housewife who possesses it independent of all the rest.... Many a housewife will find the articles interesting enough to be taken up at ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... nice in his personal habits, he had the practical democracy of a good-natured young prince; he had never yet seen a human being who awed him, nor one whom he had the slightest wish to awe. His courtesy, had, therefore, that comprehensiveness which we call republican, though it was really the least republican thing about him. All felt its attraction; there was really no one who disliked him, except Aunt Jane; and even she admitted that he was the only person who knew how ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the theory of literature and of the processes of thought analogous to it, which, in the essays "On the Pleasures of the Imagination,'' Addison prosecuted, not, indeed, with much of philosophical depth, but with a sagacity and comprehensiveness which we shall undervalue much unless we remember how little of philosophy was to be found in any critical views previously propounded in England. To Addison, further, belong those essays which (most frequently introduced in regular alternation ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and perfect recognition of the brotherhood of man,' as 'the highest conceivable by humanity.' [27:4] He speaks of the 'purity of heart which alone "sees God.'" [27:5] He enforces the necessity of 'rising to higher conceptions of an infinitely wise and beneficent Being ... whose laws of wondrous comprehensiveness and perfection we ever perceive in operation around us.' [28:1] All this is well said, but is it consistent? This universal 'brotherhood of man,' what is it but a 'dogma' of the most comprehensive application? This 'Love to God' springing from the apprehension of a ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... with a shy comprehensiveness, then, to Cynthia, like a child, "I thought maybe you would like ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... defects so acutely as he, or saw so distinctly how much yet remained to be effected: he alone appeared to look upon his works with superiority and indifference. One of the features that most eminently distinguished him was a perpetual suavity of manners, a comprehensiveness of mind, that regarded the errors of others without a particle of resentment, and made it impossible for any one to be his enemy. He pointed out to men their mistakes with frankness and unreserve, his remonstrances produced astonishment and ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... some years been Miss Cinderella, with a chignon and a lover on Sundays; and Bill, who weeds in the garden, is Mr. Groundsell with a betting-book and a bad cigar. A quotation from the newspapers will exemplify the comprehensiveness of those terms "ladies and gentlemen," which had once such definite and narrow restrictions. A witness, giving evidence at a trial, says: "When I see that gentleman in the hand-cuffs a-shinning and a-punching that lady ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... and a capacity for hard work and patient research. In each of these qualities they were supreme. Marx possessed a colossal mind; no thinker upon social subjects, not even Herbert Spencer, has been his superior, for the lonely socialist could claim a comprehensiveness, a grasp of relations and a power of generalization, together with a boldness of conception, which place him in a class by himself. Engels was the able co-adjutor and co-worker with Marx. He was a deep and acute thinker, a most patient investigator, a careful writer. More practical than his friend, ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... a sure thing—I almost wish it wasn't; I mean if I can work it—" He had a sudden vision of the comprehensiveness of the temptation. If only he had been less sure of Dinslow! His assurance gave the situation ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... been sitting up late reading some papers on modern Italian history, and in the course of said reading had met with the text of the anathema maranatha pronounced by Pius IX. against disbelievers in his infallibility. The directness, force, and comprehensiveness of the expressions used in this composition made a deep impression upon Lodloe, and as it was not very long he had committed it to memory, thinking that he might some time care to use it in quotation. Now it flashed upon him that the time had come to quote this anathema maranatha, ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... on this part of the subject, only, after quoting thus much at present from the Letter of Mr. SWAN, to add, that I entirely agree with him, I believe, as to the force, clearness, and comprehensiveness of intellect manifested by this ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... on Clothes: Strange freedom of speech: transcendentalism; force of insight and expression; multifarious learning: Style poetic, uncouth: Comprehensiveness of his humour and moral feeling. How the Editor once saw him laugh. Different kinds of Laughter and their significance ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... just so much time; and for a man who, as he said, has not a moment of waste time on him anywhere, five minutes a day are something in the course of a year. Simple, clear, bold, and straightforward in mind and action, Colonel Silas Lapham, with a prompt comprehensiveness and a never-failing business sagacity, is, in the best sense of that much-abused term, one of nature's noblemen, to the last inch of his five eleven and a half. His life affords an example of single-minded application and unwavering perseverance ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... often inconsistent, positively incompatible, with power of another kind. For example, the dramatic mind is incompatible with the epic. And though we should consent to suppose that some intellect might arise endowed upon a scale of such angelic comprehensiveness, as to vibrate equally and indifferently towards either pole, still it is next to impossible, in the exercise and culture of the two powers, but some bias must arise which would give that advantage to the one over the other which the right arm has ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... him within two weeks, calmly wrote several documents, then turned his untroubled face to me, and said, in a very confidential, winning tone:—'Monsieur Valmont, you have stated the case with that clear comprehensiveness pertaining to a nation which understands the meaning of words, and the correct adjustment of them; that felicity of language which has given France the first place in the literature of nations. Consequently, I think I see very clearly the ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... that a subject is treated with the profound investigation, vigorous analysis, and intelligent comprehensiveness which are exhibited in the discussion of the interesting literary topics to which the present work is devoted. The authoress, whose name is concealed in the mystic word Talvi, is understood to be the lady of Rev. Professor Robinson, and her ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... revolutionary a doctrine could not fail to meet with violent opposition, but it was confirmed by Willis, and in 1681, we owe to the genius of Sydenham a picture of hysteria which for lucidity, precision, and comprehensiveness has only been ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the most various, and transcends all gathered together. Every type of excellence is in Him. We cannot say that His character is any one thing in special, it falls under no classification. It is a pure white light in which all rays are blended. This all-comprehensiveness and symmetry of character are remarkably shown in four ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren |
