"Definition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... courageous who remains at his post.' But some nations fight flying, after the manner of Aeneas in Homer; or as the heavy-armed Spartans also did at the battle of Plataea. (2) Socrates wants a more general definition, not only of military courage, but of courage of all sorts, tried both amid pleasures and pains. Laches replies that this universal courage is endurance. But courage is a good thing, and mere endurance may be hurtful and injurious. Therefore (3) the element of intelligence must be added. ...
— Laches • Plato
... Definition and Boundaries.—For reasons which depend mainly on the distribution of animal life, I consider the Malay Archipelago to include the Malay Peninsula as far as Tenasserim and the Nicobar Islands on the west, the Philippines on the north, and the Solomon Islands, beyond ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the worst show that life is present. Intermitting pulses are dangerous. David and Peter had an intermitting pulse, in reference to this fear-(Bunyan on the Fear of God, vol. 1, pp. 487, 489). [298] Mark well Christian's definition of "fear." It is one of those precious passages in which our author gives us the subject matter of a whole treatise in a few short and plain sentences. Treasure it up in your heart, and often ponder it there. It will prove, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... us as we top the last rise to the Aghil Pass. Across the deep valley is arrayed in bold and jagged outline a series of pinnacles of ice glistening in the brilliant sunshine, showing up in clearest definition against the intense blue sky, and rising abruptly and incredibly high above the rock-bound Oprang River. They are the mighty peaks which group around K2—the noblest cluster in the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... [inept at definition] It's a—well, it's a copper's nark, as you might say. What else would you call it? ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... long enjoyed the advantages of a definite scale and notation. Should not the art of coloring gain by similar definition? The musical scale is not left to personal whim, nor does it change from day to day; and something as clear and stable would be an advantage in ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... DEFINITION: In the male the intestines pass through the wide Inguinal Canal, through which the cord of the testicle passes. It is not difficult to recognize this form of rupture, as the scrotum that normally retains only the testicles is usually enlarged by the ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... foreigner, I understand by it a collection or union of human beings—men, women, and children, under one general government, and for mutual interest. But Mr. Roebuck, being a native Briton and a member of Parliament, gave us a parliamentary definition, namely; society means the male sex only; for in his solicitude to consult "the happiness of society," he enumerated the benefits man enjoys from keeping woman from her rights, without even dreaming that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... seen a hurricane in a cloud no bigger than a hand at the very edge of the horizon, and will run into the first harbour. No lines can be laid down for civil or political wisdom. They are a matter incapable of exact definition. But, though no man can draw a stroke between the confines of day and night, yet light and darkness are upon the whole tolerably distinguishable. Nor will it be impossible for a Prince to find ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... confounded with that mere verbal opulence of style, which mistakes the glare of words for the glitter of ideas, and, like the Helen of the sculptor Lysippus, makes finery supply the place of beauty. The figurative definition of eloquence in the Book of Proverbs—"Apples of gold in a net-work of silver"—is peculiarly applicable to that enshrinement of rich, solid thoughts in clear and shining language, which is the triumph of the imaginative class of writers and orators,—while, perhaps, the net-work, without the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... you say, is not civilized. Not, perhaps, according to your definition of"—he used the English word—"cifiliced. No. Not cifiliced—but it works." Again he smiled. "I said that I have become soft since I have been here, but I fear that your civilization ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... limit of a species, the size and habit of plants undergo great change; in the case of trees, to which this book is restricted, often very noticeable. There is no fixed, absolute dividing line between trees and shrubs. In accordance with the usual definition, a tree must have a single trunk, unbranched at or near the base, and must be at least fifteen ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... The earliest legislation upon this subject is found in the act of August 29, 1842, section 3; and the only legislation upon the subject is found in this section and in section 11, of the act of March 2, 1861. The definition of the subject matter, or, in other words, of a "design," is the same in both acts. ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... such as are intangible: rights, for instance, such as inheritance, usufruct, and obligations, however acquired. And it is no objection to this definition that an inheritance comprises things which are corporeal; for the fruits of land enjoyed by a usufructuary are corporeal too, and obligations generally relate to the conveyance of something corporeal, such as land, ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... to this same order of objects, M. Arago says:—"The forms of very large diffuse nebulae do not appear to admit of definition; they have ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... he had a dispute in Kucha with a Mahayanist doctor who maintained that the books called Tsa-hsin, Chu-she, and P'i-sha were sufficient for salvation, and denounced the Yogasastra as heretical, to the great indignation of the pilgrim[523] whose practical definition of Mahayanism seems to have been the acceptance of this work, reputed to have been revealed by Maitreya to Asanga. Such a definition and division might leave in the Hinayana much that we should not ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... enact the ludicrous blunders of Astley's clown aping the affected pomposity of the master; as v.g. in the "demon rising from the Thames with an Act of Parliament in his hands." Mr Alderman Cobden is, withal, a very ostentatious declaimer about "great first principles;" but into the nature and the definition of those principles he is the most abstemious of all men from entering. The subtlety of a principle escapes the grasp of his intellect; he can deal with it only as a material substance clear to sight and to touch, like a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... ripened by years; of course I do not wish it much known. The fragment beginning "A little upright, pert, tart," etc., I have not shown to man living, till I now send it you. It forms the postulata, the axioms, the definition of a character, which, if it appear at all, shall be placed in a variety of lights. This particular part I send you merely as a sample of my hand at portrait-sketching; but, lest idle conjecture should pretend to point out the original, please to let it be ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... still another great danger which one may beware of, optima fide,—the danger of knowing something untrue. This danger also is greatest for the greatest talent and the greatest courage among us, because they are the readiest hands at synthesis, inference, and definition of possibilities, and see as indubitable and shut to contradiction things that at best are mere possibilities. It is indifferent to the outcome whether a lie has been told purposely or whether it has been the mere honest explosion of an over-sanguine temperament. It ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... air of deference scarce supported perhaps by its sketchiness—kept her deep eyes on this definition. "But ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... as though the other had encouraged him. "That's what I mean. You or any other politician. Industry should be run by trained, competent technicians, scientists, industrialists—and to some extent, maybe, by the consumers, but not by politicians. By definition, politicians know about politics, not industry. But somehow, in the modern world, governments seem to be taking over the running of industry and even agriculture. They aren't doing such ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Southern city, say in Georgia; and I have one in my mind's eye. There the people do not live so fast as to have no time to enjoy their life, while they have all that makes life enjoyable. Successful effort is my nearest approach to a definition of what constitutes happiness. There, there is every scope for various effort. The city and country around are still in process of active growth. "Fecundity" is writ large across the surface of the State, on fields, in mills, in mines. All the men are busy the livelong day. Here it is different ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... more careful definition of the laws of war must aid powerfully in that evolution of mercy and right reason which has been going on for hundreds of years, and especially since the great ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... did not develop new ideas. It was a literary duel, each leader aiming to restate himself in the most telling, popular way. For once that superficial definition of art applied: "What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed." Nevertheless the debates contained an incident that helped to make history. Though Douglas was at war with the Administration, it was not certain that the quarrel might not be made up. There was no other leader who would be so formidable ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... not one to take my civic duties lightly," I replied with some hauteur, "but observe that I merely said I had reason to suspect the imminence of the peril. I should like to know the legal definition of infestment, if you please. I cannot definitely say that house-breaking has taken place as yet. I do not know that there has even been petty larceny. There may have been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... not know whether any better definition of imagination can be given than that of Ruskin in his Modern Painters. "Imagination is the power of seeing anything we describe as if it were real, so that, looking at it as we describe, points may strike us which will give a vividness to the description that would not have occurred to vague ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... decision. Moreover, you have given me examples to illustrate this 'reasonable right,' but you have not defined it. Now I want to know precisely how far it extends, and where it ceases. Does Ranjitsinhji provide this definition?" ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Webster gives a general definition of a nut as "a fruit consisting of a kernel or seed enclosed in a hard woody or leathery shell that does not open when ripe, as in the hazel, beech, oak, chestnut." Technically speaking, it is a hard, indehiscent, one-seeded dry fruit resulting from a compound ovary. In horticultural language ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... of Architecture," gives the following definition of the miserere, patience or pretella. "The projecting bracket on the underside of the seats of stalls in churches; these, when perfect, are fixed with hinges so they may be turned up, and when this is done the projection of the miserere is sufficient, without actually forming a seat, to ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... venerable person, who occupied a raised chair, continually partook. This discriminating individual spoke so confidently of the beneficial action of the fluid, and so unswervingly described my own feelings at the moment—as of head giddiness, an inexactitude of speech, and no clear definition of where the next step would be arrived at—as the common lot of all who did not consume regularly, that when that same Helena had passed on to speak to another, I left the hall unobserved and drank successive portions, in each case, as the night was cold, prudently adding ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... Cloud-Messenger an elegiac poem, though it would not perhaps meet the test of a rigid definition. The Hindus class it with The Dynasty of Raghu and The Birth of the War-god as a kavya, but this classification simply evidences their embarrassment. In fact, Kalidasa created in The Cloud-Messenger a new genre. ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... spend their money in. The Melbourne races attract three or four times the number of visitors that the Sydney races do; all public amusements are far better attended in Melbourne; the people dress better, talk better, think better, are better, if we accept Herbert Spencer's definition of Progress. There is far more 'go' and far more 'life,' in every sense of these rather comprehensive words, to be found in Melbourne, and it is there that the visitor must come who wishes to see the fullest development of Australasian civilisation, ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... Reviewer's new definition of reason be correct, the majority of men, even among the most civilised nations, are devoid of that supreme characteristic of manhood. And if it be as absurd as I believe it to be, then, as reason is certainly not self-consciousness, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... either by persuasion or by compulsion. As we shall see, in practice they tend to involve a coercive element. Only in their rejection of violence are all these terms in agreement. Perhaps we are justified in accepting opposition to violence as the heart of the pacifist philosophy. Under the definition of violence which has been suggested, this would amount to virtually the same thing as saying that the pacifist has such respect for every human personality that he cannot, under any circumstances whatsoever, ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... policeman into sausages," said John Crook. "It's a better definition of Socialism than some recently given. But surely the get-up would ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... mountain at the head of Canandaigua Lake, and that mountain they still venerate as the place of their birth; thence they derive their name, "Ge-nun-de-wah," [Footnote: This by some is spoken Ge-nun-de-wah-gauh.] or Great Hill, and are called "The Great Hill People," which is the true definition of the ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... beauty," said Bacon in a subtle definition, "which has not some strangeness in its proportions." The playing of Pachmann escapes the insipidity of that beauty which is without strangeness; it has in it something fantastically inhuman, like fiery ice, and it is for this reason that it remains a thing uncapturable, a thing whose secret ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... that is enough. When Eve arrived the trouble began; when telephones were invented it came to a head. Think what literature might have achieved had it not always been obsessed by its desire to find some brief definition good enough for woman! I think it is our chief difficulty in appreciating the supposed greatness of VERGIL that he couldn't do any better than "Varium et mutabile semper." If VERGIL had been a butcher or a grocer or any other unhappy shopkeeper liable to the daily insult ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... defined as consisting in the acquisition of those habits that effect an adjustment of an individual and his environment. The definition expresses an essential phase of growth. But it is essential that adjustment be understood in its active sense of control of means for achieving ends. If we think of a habit simply as a change wrought in the organism, ignoring the fact that this change consists in ability to effect subsequent ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... and all objects seemed to stand out in sharp definition, a condition seldom seen by dwellers on our Earth except in ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... wit, 'you're very welcome, I'm sure. The honour is reciprocal, sir, as I usually say when I dramatise a book. Did you ever hear a definition ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... upon you that this is not the time for religious controversy or for nicely calculating the scope and the extent of our service. The temper of the times requires unity of action and definition of purpose. Our people respect us. Whatever restrictions were lodged against us in the past have been broken down now before the battering ram of public opinion. The guarantees for the future given by our own brethren, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... that you have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... individual defeat by death, into the Kingdom of God, and damnation can be nothing more and nothing less than the failure or inability or disinclination to make that escape" (p. 148). On the next page we have another definition of damnation (borrowed, it would seem, from Mr. Clutton Brock), with which I hasten to express my cordial and enthusiastic agreement: "Satisfaction with existing things is damnation." I have always thought that hell was the headquarters of conservatism, and am delighted ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... to yield. With De Maistre there was no peradventure. Again, no speculative mind of the highest order ever mistakes, or ever moves systematically apart from, the main current of the social movement of its time. It is implied in the very definition of a thinker of supreme quality that he should detect, and be in a certain accord with, the most forward and central of the ruling tendencies of his epoch. Three-quarters of a century have elapsed since De Maistre was driven to attempt to explain the world to himself, and ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... moment to glance at his own name, in three-foot letters of red, before the doors of the theater. He could read, and the large block type always pleased him. "THIS WEEK: GIDEON." That was all. None of the fulsome praise, the superlative, necessary definition given to lesser performers. He had been, he remembered, "GIDEON, America's Foremost Native Comedian," a title that was at once boast and challenge. That necessity was now past, for he was a national character; any explanatory qualification would have been an insult to the ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... religious sentiment ever contains these same elements and depends upon them for its vigor and growth. It everywhere springs from a desire whose fruition depends upon unknown power. To give the religious wish a definition in the technic of psychology, I define it as: Expectant Attention, directed toward an event not under known control, with a concomitant idea of ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... strictly circumscribed within the boundaries of the Crau and the Camargue, and its originality consists in this limitation, in the fact that a poet of this century has written a work that comes within the definition of an epic, with all the primitive simplicity of Biblical or Classic writers, without any agitation of the problems of modern life, without any new thought or feeling concerning love or death, or man's relation ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... we shall before conclusion notice some other considerations which lead the ordinary "pantheist" to the true foundation of morality. Happiness has been defined by John Stuart Mill as the state of absence of opposition. Manu gives the definition in more ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... with much satisfaction that everything went off so well in the House of Commons last night. Lord John Russell's speech is a most useful one, and he has given a most lucid definition of the constitutional position of the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary opposite to the Crown. Lord Palmerston's speech is a very weak one, and he in no way makes out a case for himself. This seems to ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... planting usually employed are known as "drills," "rows" and "hills." I do not remember ever seeing a definition giving the exact distinctions between them; and in horticultural writing they seem to be used, to some extent at least, interchangeably. As a rule "drills" refer to the growing of plants continuously in rows, such as onions, carrots ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... in these Celtic folk-tales is the light they throw upon the relation of hero-tales and folk-tales (classes 2 and 3 above). Tales told of Finn of Cuchulain, and therefore coming under the definition of hero-tales, are found elsewhere told of anonymous or unknown heroes. The question is, were the folk-tales the earliest, and were they localised and applied to the heroes, or were the heroic sagas generalised and applied to an unknown ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... not a declaration that all mankind are His sheep. The previous verses have distinctly defined a class of men as possessing the name, and the succeeding ones reiterate the definition, and with equal distinctness exclude another class. 'Ye believe not, because ye are not My sheep as I said unto you.' His sheep are they who know Him and are known of Him. Between Him and them there is a communion of love, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... "chiffons," and given an imperfect definition of the term, as a sign-post of warning to masculine readers,—a hint that this is a chapter to be lightly skimmed, or altogether skipped, for it unavoidably treats of "chiffons," which the necessities of the narrative will ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... farther, the reports of the parliamentary debates, when a "Blue Book" happens to furnish matter for discussion, amply confirm Richardson's definition, that to garble is to pick out what may serve a purpose. In this sense, however, E. S. T. T. must admit that it would be as much garbling to quote all the good passages of a work as to quote all the bad ones. May we not then assume the present meaning of the word garble to be this—to quote ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... dictionary definition is a ravine or gulch, but it also means a high bluff or cliff and in that sense is used ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera
... that women have been largely debarred from these conditions as a sex, and in so far there is some meaning in the phrase "Women's rights." But otherwise we all agree that men and women alike have the right which has just been stated in terms that are a paraphrase of Herbert Spencer's definition of liberty. Men's rights and women's rights are the rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." If any one disputes the application of this principle to women as unreservedly as to men, I will not argue with him. I write ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... observer of Nature recognizes in almost every instance that comes under his notice in every-day life, without the aid of logical definition, the broad distinctions between an animal, a plant, and a stone. To him, the old definition that an animal is possessed of life and locomotion, a plant of life without locomotion, and a mineral deficient in both, seems to be sufficient, until ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... give you a straight definition. Old man Sim Gallman was my old missus' brother; she was Miss Viny Cannon. My boss was overseer for Mr. Geo. Gallman. We was on Mr. George's place. When Mr. Gallman started overseeing, Mr. Sim Gallman come over dar for dem to take his place ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... lawyer of more than average ability, is realized Pope's definition of an honest man—"the noblest work of God." Those who think that all lawyers are a set of unscrupulous and unprincipled men are sadly mistaken. There are in our midst men of the legal profession who follow the paths of high-souled honor and integrity with as ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... such terms cannot always be found; for as nothing can be proved but by supposing something intuitively known, and evident without proof, so nothing can be defined but by the use of words too plain to admit a definition. ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... fully to understand this definition we must know exactly what is meant by 'thought,' by a 'law of thought,' by the term 'formal,' and ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... tragedy. The play of humour at least suggests these alternatives. Life is Janus-faced, and the humourist invests his characters with a double mask; they stand for comedy as well as for tragedy; Don Quixote wears the buskin as well as the sock. Humour, whose definition has always eluded analysis, may, perhaps (to attempt a definition currente calamo), be that subtle flashing from one aspect to another, that turning the coin so rapidly that one seems to see simultaneously the face and the reverse, the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... gentleman just mentioned is an example of many others, and it meets every element in a definition of despotism. If it should occur in England it would be righted, or it would overturn the British Empire. He is a citizen and native of Kentucky. As a member of the Legislature, Speaker of the House, Representative in ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... difference between create and make, let him turn to his dictionary, and Webster will inform him that the primary literal meaning of create is, "To produce; to bring into being from nothing; to cause to exist." The example he gives to illustrate his definition is this verse, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." But the primary meaning of make is, "To compel; to constrain;" thence, "to form of materials;" and he illustrates the generic difference between these two words by a quotation from ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the principles of arithmetic. He had shown that if there are certain things called 'integers', defined as he had defined them, the whole of arithmetic follows. But he had not shown that there is any object answering to his definition of an integer, and the logical researches of Russell had thrown some doubt on the point. This proved that some restatement of the initial assumptions of the theory was needed. Since the date of Frege's appendix (1903), Mr. Russell and ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... and the past. For this purpose it must be observed, that the views of a past age are easily ascertainable, in matters of law, from theoretical writings, history, and judicial decisions; and these views may be reduced to definition. Modern universal intelligence will either agree or disagree in these views. In the mass of instances it will agree, as progress on such points is at all times slow; and not only will the points of disagreement be few, but they will be salient, striking, ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... perhaps, in regard to melody of words and grandeur of sentiment, never been beaten. I give the orator's words below in his own language, because in no other way can any idea of the sound be conveyed.[17] There is, too, a definition made very cleverly to suit his own point of view between the conservatives and the liberals of the day. "Optimates" is the name by which the former are known; the latter are ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... him Caenum: and, in general, limus seems to have involved the notion of something adhesive, and rather to express plaister, or artificially prepared cement, &c., than that of filth or impure depositions. Accordingly, our own definition differs from the Parrian, or Birmingham definition; and may, nevertheless, be a Birmingham definition also. Not having room to defend it, for the present we forbear to ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... On the contrary, A definition is convertible with the thing defined. Now some define a sacrament as being "the sign of a sacred thing"; moreover, this is clear from the passage quoted above (A. 1) from Augustine. Therefore it seems that every sign of a sacred thing ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... function, a mode of activity proper to man during a certain period of his development. Later, the mythic creations seem absurd, often immoral, because they are survivals of a distant epoch, cherished and consecrated through tradition, habits, and respect for antiquity. According to the definition that seems to me best adapted for psychology, the myth is "the psychological objectification of man in all the phenomena that he can perceive."[51] It is a humanization of nature according to processes peculiar ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... events. The movement reached its height at the beginning of the reign of Charles IV (1788-1808) and produced such efforts as a poem to the gout, a nature-poem depicting barn-yard sounds, and even Iriarte's La musica (1780), in which one may read in carefully constructed silvas the definition of diatonic ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... work I take the broadest possible definition of religion, conceiving it as any institutionalized activity or attitude which reflects the Washo view of the cosmos. In so doing I have included a number of categories which may not generally be considered ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... is a much-abused word. It is frequently applied to all the mental actions of animals without much thought or care as to its meaning. Let us gain a definition from the study of a typical case lest we use the word as a cloak for ignorance or negligent thoughtlessness. Watch a spider building its wonderful geometrical web. The web is a work of art, and every motion of the spider beautifully adapted to its purpose. But the spider is ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... puzzles: Find for each picture a word, or words, that will correctly describe it, and then transpose the letters of the descriptive word or words so as to form another word, which will answer to the definition given below the picture. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... naively detailed as the pictures of those early painters contemporary with Dante, who has shown a similar care for minute and definite imagery in his verse; there, too, in the very midst of profoundly mystic vision. Such definition of outline is indeed one among many points in which Rossetti resembles the great Italian poet, of whom, led to him at first by family circumstances, he was ever a lover—a "servant and singer," faithful as Dante, "of Florence and of Beatrice"—with some ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... Schoelcher, Rochefort and Lockroy. Rochefort was unable to come. After dinner we went to Gent's, Quay des Chartrons, to attend a meeting of the Left. My sons accompanied me. The question of the chief executive was discussed. I had the following added to the definition: appointed by the Assembly and revokable by ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... philosophical, indeed mutinous, stubbornness; but the chief thing he was ever heard to wish for was that Homer had been alive. He well found he received more bravery of mind by the pattern of Achilles, than by hearing the definition of fortitude. And, therefore, if Cato misliked Fulvius for carrying Ennius with him to the field, it may be answered that if Cato misliked it the noble Fulvius liked it, or else he had not done it; for it was not the excellent ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... lover of religion itself—not in any precise, dogmatic form, but in its righteousness, reverence, and charity. He was not a dogmatist, but preferred practical piety and working virtue to all modes of faith."[8] It would be difficult to give a better definition of Unitarianism itself; and it was the large humanity of it, and its generous outlook upon the lives of individuals and nations, that made of Bryant a ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... 1918, I have proved to my own satisfaction (if not to anyone else's) that I was happier in La Ferte Mace, with The Delectable Mountains about me, than the very keenest words can pretend to express. I daresay it all comes down to a definition of happiness. And a definition of happiness I most certainly do not intend to attempt; but I can and will say this: to leave La Misere with the knowledge, and worse than that the feeling, that some of the finest people in the world ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... clouds and showers; I must be making a severe drain on the economy of heaven. From breakfast to dinner I remain on the balcony, and read aloud several chapters of the "Memoires" of Dumas, by way of practice. A dictionary lies by me, and I suffer no word to pass without a perfect definition. Then comes my French grammar, which I study while knitting or sewing, which takes very nearly until dinner-time. After that, I do as I please, either reading or talking, until sunset when we can ride or walk; the walk being always sweetened with sugar-cane. The evening we always spend on ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... of a bifurcation may never constitute type lines. The exception is when the forks run parallel after bifurcating and then diverge. In such a case the two forks become the two innermost ridges required by the definition. In illustration 16, the ridges marked "A—A" are type lines even though they proceed from a bifurcation. In figure 17, however, the ridges A—A are not the type lines because the forks of the bifurcation do not run parallel with each ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... conceited of all animals, says that he alone has the prerogative of thought, and condemns the other animals to the meaner mechanical operation which he calls instinct. But as instincts are unerring and thoughts generally go wrong, man has not much to boast of according to his own definition. When you say you think, and take it for granted, that I am Yorkshire, you err. I am not Yorkshire. Confining yourself to instinct, can you divine when we shall sup? The cows you are about to visit divine to a moment ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... first specialty of the following treatise consists in its giving at the outset, and maintaining as the foundation of all subsequent reasoning, a definition of Intrinsic Value, and Intrinsic Contrary-of-Value; the negative power having been left by former writers entirely out of account, and the positive ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... definition. But that man was so in reality. His speech was not professional. I was not ill. But other people were, and that was the reason of ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... process of sanctification that makes a young man already a deep divine? What is sanctification? Rutherford had a deep hand in drawing up the well-known definition, and, therefore, we may take it as not far from the truth: 'Sanctification is the work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness.' That, or something like that, was the ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... 3. Definition of Criticism. Criticism, as its etymology indicates, is the act of judging. Literary criticism endeavors to form a correct estimate of literary productions. Its endeavor is to see a piece of writing as it is. It brings literary productions into comparison with ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... "is that one of the fine arts which addresses itself to the feelings and the imagination by the instrumentality of musical and moving words"; and that is probably as concise a definition of poetry as can be evolved. For poetry is difficult to define. Verse we can describe, because it is mechanical; but poetry is ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... we must give to the word "God," I am not going to propose to you a metaphysical definition, or any system of my own: I am inquiring what is in fact the idea of God in the bosom of modern society, in the souls which live by this idea, in the hearts of which it constitutes the joy, in the consciences of ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... strategy uses force (or threatens such use) (see page 8) as applied by tactics; tactics employed for a purpose other than that of contributing to the aims of strategy is unsound. Proper tactics, therefore, has a strategic background. Definition of tactics as the art of handling troops or ships in battle, or in the immediate presence of the enemy, is not all-inclusive. Such a view infers that the field of battle is the only province of tactics, or that strategy abdicates when tactics ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... hear the all-pervading tum tum jarring the walls of little parlors in houses with double door-plates on their portals, looking out on streets and courts which to know is to be unknown, and where to exist is not to live, according to any true definition of living. Therefore complain I not of modern degeneracy, when, even from the open window of the small unlovely farmhouse, tenanted by the hard-handed man of bovine flavors and the flat-patterned woman of broken-down countenance, issue the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... devil!" I said to my friend, after satisfactory definition of the Pine Rat; "what fiend may he be, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... conversations of a literary order, making frequent use of such expressions as: "After all, it produces an illusion—does anything else matter?" "Rather a poseur, is he not?" "A question, that, of temperament," or "A matter of the definition of words"; and other charming generalities, which sound well, and seem to go far, and are pleasingly irrefutable. Sometimes the discussion turned on Art—on points of colour or technique; whether realism was quite justified; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... herself with severity not to act like a high-school girl. He was late in returning that noon, and though there seemed a new something in his voice when he asked if he hadn't better sharpen her pencils, he said nothing about her new definition of invitation. It was almost five o'clock when he threw this over ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... ... Kent's ... the preposterous. [Talking on with steady monotony.] But I saw it would not do to interrupt that logical train of thought which reached definition about half past six. I had then been gleaning ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... forehead. When his ordinarily pale face became at all flushed, it arose solely from a more rapid action of the heart. His eyes, of a deep blue, looked with clear, frank, firm gaze. The slightly-contracted eyebrows indicated lofty heroism—"the hero's cool courage," according to the definition of the physiologist. He possessed a fine nose, with large nostrils; and a well-shaped mouth, with the slightly-projecting lips which denote a generous ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... if accepted would have become obsolete in a quarter of a century. The syllable Co stands for all relations between human beings, and these relations are of eight kinds. What would a professor of social science now say to this? What would an ichthyologist say to Wilkins' definition of a salmon? The interest of the book lies in its being the most striking of many proofs of the wide intellectual interests, the alert and insatiable curiosity, and the extraordinary industry of its writer. It has also the pathetic ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... philosophe, il est satirique, humoriste a ses heures; il reunit en sa personne des qualities multiples; il offre dans ses ecrits un specimen de tous les genres. On voit qu'il n'est pas facile de definir l'essayist; mais l'exemple suppleera a la definition. On connaitra exactement le sens du mot quand on aura etudie l'ecrivain qui, d'apres le jugement de ces compatriotes, est l'essayist par excellence, ou, comme on disait dans les anciens cours de ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... photographs of the comet taken every night that the weather made a clear observation possible. The series tallied exactly with what he now saw. The gradual enlargement and brightening; the ever-increasing exactness of definition, and the separation of the nucleus from the two wings. All that he had seen was as pitilessly inexorable as the figures which contained the prophecy of the world's approaching doom. He rose from his seat and said quietly, yet with ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... the centre of the river and the great lakes as far as the head of Lake Superior. The issue of negotiations so stupidly conducted by the British commissioner, was a treaty which gave an extremely vague definition of the boundary in the north-east between Maine and Nova Scotia—which until 1784 included New Brunswick—and displayed at the same time a striking example of geographical ignorance as to the north-west. The treaty specified that the boundary should pass ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... practised in state affairs." Carlyle defines "pragmatic sanction" as "the received title for ordinances of a very irrevocable nature, which a sovereign makes in affairs that belong wholly to himself, or what he reckons his own rights." A dictionary definition calls it "an imperial edict operating as a fundamental law." The term was probably first applied to certain decrees of the Byzantine emperors for regulating their provinces and towns, and later it was given to imperial decrees in the West. In the present case it is ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of slavery, if there be such a form, looking at the chattel principle as the definition of slavery, is comparatively the worst form. For it not only keeps the slave in the most unpleasant apprehension, like a prisoner in chains awaiting his trial; but it actually, in a great majority ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... though they were few, and in sleepless hours, not so few, the incredible loneliness would rush upon him, not lessened by custom; and a more poignant sense of loss. To that vague sense he carefully denied words, lest definition ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... real nature. Caricatures not to be tolerated in the real world are carefully preserved in the poetic world and reproduced according to nature! The poet can certainly imitate a lower nature; and it enters into the very definition of a satirical poet: but then a beauty by its own nature must sustain and raise the object, and the vulgarity of the subject must not lower the imitator too much. If at the moment he paints he is true human nature himself, the object of his paintings is indifferent; but it is only on this ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... In the beginning of your definition I fancied that you were designating your own person, as most people do in describing what is admirable; now I find that you have some ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... to me means all who, consciously or unconsciously, are forwarding God's kingdom on earth. In the broad definition of the Master it means "all those who are not against us." The way in which men associate for worship, or in which they consider it most remunerative to invest their efforts to forward the kingdom, gives them no right to arrogate to themselves the title ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... prescribing penalties for its infringement. It was not the first time that Otasite had heard unfavorably of the influences of "nawohti," which, by the way, with the Cherokees signified physic, as well as spirituous liquor, a synonymous definition which more civilized people have sought to apply. He was content that he and the old chief were once more in affectionate accord, and he did not seek to interpret the flash of ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... superstitious books belonging to All-Souls library, there was returned, in the list of these superstitious works, "eight grailes, seven antiphoners of parchment and bound." Gutch's Collectanea Curiosa, vol. ii., 276. At page 115, ante, the reader will find a definition of the word "Antiphoner." He is here informed that a "gradale" or "grail," is a book which ought to have in it "the office of sprinkling holy water: the beginnings of the masses, or the offices of Kyrie, with the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... caused by his sacred presence; but they did succeed, and so well that Camors was slightly piqued. If not a coxcomb, he was at least young: he was accustomed to please: he knew the Princess de Clam-Goritz had lately applied to him her learned definition of an agreeable man—"He is charming, for one always feels ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... love as a quality belonging to gentle folk, meaning by that phrase the nobility, and nobility had been defined by the Emperor Frederick II, patron of the troubadours, as a combination of ancestral wealth and fine manners. In the Banquet (bk. IV) Dante rejects that definition and transfers nobility from the social to the moral order holding that ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... synonym for "lie" is permanently enshrined in the annals of circumlocution. One of the most offensive words in the language is "idiot"; yet it can be shorn of nearly all its sting when replaced by the definition, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... out the programme indicated by the Chief, and refuses to be diverted from her path by the false suspicions of subordinates.' He employed a sententious phraseology instinctively, as men do when they are nervous, as well as when they justify the cynic's definition of the uses of speech. 'The signorina is, in my opinion, right. If she draws back, she publicly accepts the blot upon her name. I speak against my own feelings and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fact which to his mind was injurious for the past, present or future of his native land he would unhesitatingly sweep that fact into oblivion, and he seemed to be amazed that I should doubt the morality of such a procedure. Bristling with scorn, he refused to give me a definition of the word "patriotism," and I am sure that, if he knows his Thoreau, he does not for a moment believe that he is amongst those who "love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... adulteration of cocoa is now a thing of the past, and most of the cocoa sold conforms with this definition. Statements, however, get copied from book to book, and hence we continue to read that cocoa usually contains arrowroot or other starch. In the old days this was frequently so, but now, owing to many ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... by his instructor to define "space," said: "I have it, sir, in my head, but can not put it into words." The Instructor replied: "I suppose that under those circumstances, Mr. ——, the definition really would not help much." And so it is with contours—the definition does not help much if you know a contour when you meet it on a map. For examples of contours, turn to the map in section 2 and, starting at the United ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... six provinces when the new constitution, then being drafted, became effective in 1997; the new provinces, the names of which had not been recommended by the US Board on Geographic Names for recognition by the US Government, pending acceptable definition of the boundaries, were: Anseba, Debub, Debubawi Keyih Bahri, Gash-Barka, Maakel, and Semanawi Keyih Bahri; more recently, it has been reported that these provinces have been redesignated regions and ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... First, that Exhortation and Dehortation, is directed to the Good of him that giveth the Counsell, not of him that asketh it, which is contrary to the duty of a Counsellour; who (by the definition of Counsell) ought to regard, not his own benefits, but his whom he adviseth. And that he directeth his Counsell to his own benefit, is manifest enough, by the long and vehement urging, or by the artificial giving thereof; which being not required of him, and ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... fifteenth year, [9] in verse as well as prose, marked him as a boy of great talent, but of talent only according to his own definition of it (vide "Friend," vol. iii. edit. 1818). His verse was good, his prose powerful, and language correct, and beyond his years in depth of thought, but as yet he had not manifested, according to the same test, anything of genius. I met among some of his notes, written at ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... knew that things had not been going so favourably for him in the House of late—that the stubborn opposition of the little group of men led by Wilkins was still hindering that concentration of the party and definition of his own foremost place in it which had looked so close and probable a few weeks before. She supposed he had been exhausting himself, too, over that shocking Midland strike. The Clarion had been throwing itself into the battle of the men with a monstrous ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... believing those things which we know to be untrue," while to him on the other hand they were profoundly true, though often enough not in the way that they are generally accepted. Had he possessed any powers of definition at that age, probably he would have described our accepted beliefs as shadows of the Truth, distorted and fantastically shaped, like those thrown by changeful, ragged clouds behind which the eternal sun is shining, shadows that vary in length and character ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... the British commonwealth, the Ambassador was thinking of his old familiar figure, the "Forgotten Man"—the neglected man, woman, and child of the masses. In an address delivered, in June, 1914, before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Page gave what he regarded as the definition of the American ideal. "The fundamental article in the creed of the American democracy—you may call it the fundamental dogma if you like—is the unchanging and unchangeable resolve that every human being shall have his opportunity for his utmost ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... with the peasants and the people whenever I could get the chance. What impressed me was the little part they had in directing their own government, and the little they knew about what it was doing. There was a general disposition to accept, as a definition of duty which must not be questioned, whatever they were told to do by the Vorstand. It is this habit of mind, dating back to the days of Frederick the Great, with only occasional and brief interruptions, which has led many people to think that the German people at large ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... respect for the "Practice and Authority" of the ancient models during the neo-classic era, the general advance of something like reasoning in criticism, finds one of its quainter testimonials in the Eton schoolboy's cleverness. He would show by definition and strict deduction that The Knave of Hearts is a "due and proper Epic Poem," having as "good right to that title, from its adherence to prescribed rules, as any of the celebrated master-pieces ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... nunc," instead of "nec tunc;" he therefore did that which was fatal to the work that he wanted to palm off upon the world as the composition of a Roman, because a Roman would not have done this, because he could not have done it. Definition of time in reference to himself was a necessity of expression; he could not have sacrificed it for alliteration or any other trick of composition, because he would not have dreamt of changing the time in ascribing ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... they would.' Mr Ivery laughed pleasantly. 'England has still a good share of freedom. Any respectable person can get a permit to import the enemy press. I'm not considered quite respectable, for the authorities have a narrow definition of patriotism, but happily I ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... in a people that it calls cats dogs and describes the sun as the moon—and is very particular about the preciseness of these pseudonyms. To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence. The disease called aphasia, in which people begin by saying tea when they mean coffee, commonly ends in their silence. Silence of this stiff sort is the chief mark of the powerful parts of modern society. They all seem straining to keep things in rather than to let things ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... attention to the fact that the code does not define the meaning of the term "variety," and as it does not appear that a clear cut definition has appeared elsewhere in recent literature, in modern application, it may be well to state how it is ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... "Quickness of sensation; quickness of perception; delicacy." Thus is it defined by Dr. Johnson; and the definition gives me no other idea than of the most exquisitely polished instinct. I discern not a trace of the image of God in either sensation or matter. Refined seventy times seven, they are still material; intellect dwells not there; nor will fire ever ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... which it is necessary to introduce into the pulpit, subjects in themselves interesting and important, but which few men can be trusted to treat in unpremeditated language; because they require an exactness of definition, and nice discrimination of phrase, which may be better commanded in the cool leisure of writing, than in the prompt and declamatory style of the speaker. The rule also forbids the attempt to speak when ill health, or lowness of spirits, or ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... "attributes." And for the purposes of a theological handbook doubtless this is the right course to take. But this was not Christ's way. Search the four Gospels through, and probably not one verse can be found which by itself would serve as a suitable definition for any religious catechism or theological textbook. Christ, we must remember, did not, in His teaching, begin de novo. He never forgot that He was speaking to a people whose were the law and the prophets ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... climbs upwards, colour and definition grow out of the haze of smoke and shadows, and the roofs assume their ruddy tones. At midday, when the sunlight pours down upon the medley of houses clustered along the face of the cliff, the scene is brilliantly coloured. The predominant note is the red of the ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home |
