"Diffuse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is the end and terminating of the whole oration. It has three parts,—enumeration, indignation, and complaint. Enumeration is that by which matters which have been related in a scattered and diffuse manner are collected together, and, for the sake of recollecting them, are brought under our view. If this is always treated in the same manner, it will be completely evident to every one that it is being handled according to some artificial system; but if it be done in many various ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... of Mr. Hunt; but he is more unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and absurd than his prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat himself in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats has advanced no dogmas which he was ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... his manners, yet keeping four court jesters about him; given to the composition of wretched verses; sober, simple, frugal, yet a stickler for etiquette; a rough soldier and a crafty politician; skilled in theological disputation and very fond of it; a dull, diffuse, obscure orator, but clever in speaking the language of anybody whom he wished to influence; a hypocrite and a fanatic; a visionary swayed by phantoms of his childhood, believing in astrologers and banishing them; ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... ancients took care to allay it by a kind of rain; conveying the water for that use above the porticoes, which falling again in form of dew through an infinity of small pores concealed in the statues, with which the theatre abounded, did not only diffuse a grateful coolness all around, but the most fragrant exhalations along with it; for this dew was always perfumed. Whenever the representations were interrupted by storms, the spectators retired into the porticoes behind the seats ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... epistolary style exasperatingly vacuous and diffuse, and, like many women of that sort, she used pencil instead of ink, always apologizing for it as due now to her weak eyes, and now to her weak wrist, and again to her not being able to find the ink. Her hand was full of foolish curves ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... him, or whence he came. He mingled not in the mirth, and seemed to recognize no one present, though he regarded all that was passing with a peculiar air of still and earnest attention; and wherever he moved, his calm, penetrating gaze seemed to diffuse a singular uneasiness about him. Now his eye was fixed with a quiet scrutiny on the idolatrous statues, with their votive adornments—now it followed earnestly the young forms that were wreathing in the graceful waves of the dance; and ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... glow and grandeur; its stains are never foul nor dim; its undecomposing surface preserves a soft, fruit-like polish forever, slowly flushed by the maturing suns of centuries. Hence, while in the Northern Gothic the effort of the architect was always so to diffuse his ornament as to prevent the eye from permanently resting on the blank material, the Italian fearlessly left fallow large fields of uncarved surface, and concentrated the labor of the chisel on detached portions, in which the eye, being ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... letters and parcels from the common stock on the hall table, I perceive that most of our fellow lodgers are hyphenated ladies, whose visiting-cards diffuse the intelligence that in their single persons two ancient families and fortunes are united. On the ground floor are the Misses Hepburn-Sciennes (pronounced Hebburn-Sheens); on the floor above us are Miss Colquhoun (Cohoon) and her cousin ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... broadleaf woods are either ring-porous or diffuse-porous, though some of them, like the walnut, are nearly half way ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... however, so diffuse as the present one, necessarily entails a system of duplication of taxes, which in turn leads to an undue enhancement of prices; a decrease both of production and consumption, and consequently of wealth; a restriction of exportations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the editor. "Don't be too diffuse, but see that you miss nothing. What is that paper in front of you?" He took the paper from Desmond O'Connor's hands and held it at arm's length, while a sardonic smile ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... louder, whistling through the open hall where the servants had gathered. Most of the lamps and torches had been blown out, the pitch-pans only sent forth still blacker clouds of smoke, lit by red and yellow flames, and the closed lanterns alone continued to diffuse a flickering light. So the wide space, dim with smoke, was illumined only ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... conquest of Britain by the English our authorities are scant and imperfect. The only extant British account is the "Epistola" of Gildas, a work written probably about A.D. 560. The style of Gildas is diffuse and inflated, but his book is of great value in the light it throws on the state of the island at that time, and above all as the one record of the conquest which we have from the side of the conquered. ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... suffer, sink with pain, With anguish I can ill sustain; Till not a hope has strength to spring, Till scarce a prayer can lift its wing; Yet in my inmost heart there lies A living fount that will arise, And, of itself, diffuse a balm, A healing and refreshing calm, A pure delight, a cooling glow, Which Hate and Meanness ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... foamy ocean star! O be our guide, diffuse thy beams afar; Hail, Mother of God! above all virgins blest, Hail, happy gate of ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 2 (of 4) • Anonymous
... contains two quite noble ones, "Redgauntlet" and "Nigel"; two of very high value, "Durward" and "Woodstock"; the slovenly and diffuse "Peveril," written for the trade;[56] the sickly "Tales of the Crusaders," and the entirely broken and diseased "St. Ronan's Well." This last I throw out of count altogether, and of the rest, accept only the four first named as sound work; so that the list of the novels in which I propose to examine ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Lord Brittleback and Mr. Harold Smith! Renovated in a Medea's cauldron of such potency, all his effete limbs—and it must be acknowledged that some of them had become very effete—would come forth young and round and robust. A new energy would diffuse itself through every department; India would be saved and quieted; the ambition of France would be tamed; even-handed reform would remodel our courts of law and parliamentary elections; and Utopia would be realized. Such, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... fens; the lake is also pure, and on every side ends directly at the shores, and at the sand; it is also of a temperate nature when you draw it up, and of a more gentle nature than river or fountain water, and yet always cooler than one could expect in so diffuse a place as this is. Now when this water is kept in the open air, it is as cold as that snow which the country people are accustomed to make by night in summer. There are several kinds of fish in it, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... odds in the way of organised error and of individual inertness and dulness; nevertheless, it is also true that certain great ideas rapidly clarify themselves in the thought of almost every century. They are opposed and rejected by a multitude, but they are in the air, as we say; they seem to diffuse themselves through all fields of thought, and they are often worked out harmoniously in different departments by men who have no concert of action, but whose minds are open and sensitive to these invisible currents of ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... least. I'm concentrated, that's all. You diffuse yourself, dear; and though all Simla knows your skill in managing ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... compound soft as silk, Quarterns twain of tepid milk, Fit for babies, and such small game, Diffuse through all the strong amalgame. The fiery souls of heroes so do Combine the suaviter in modo, Bold as an eagle, meek ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... the vitiated air into the lower fresh air contained in the remaining 8 feet of the height of the room depends very materially on the difference of temperature between these upper and lower strata and the movements of air in the room. The heavy poisonous vapors and gases fall into and diffuse themselves among the fresh air of the lower strata—very readily if they are nearly the same temperature as the upper, but scarcely at all if the air at the ceiling line is much hotter. Hence it occurs that, in warmed rooms of such size ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... great mission burst thus from the lips of the Gothic king, the spirit of his lofty ambition seemed to diffuse itself over his outward form. His noble stature, his fine proportions, his commanding features, became invested with a simple, primeval grandeur. Contrasted as he now was with the shrunken figure of the spirit-broken ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... we have enjoyed more than fifty-eight of general peace; our Indian border wars have been too limited and local in their character to seriously affect the other parts of the country, or to disturb the general conditions of peace. This fortunate state of things has done much to diffuse knowledge, promote commerce, agriculture, and manufactures; in fine, to increase the greatness of the nation and the happiness of the individual. Under these circumstances our people have grown up with habits and ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... popular and vernacular, from (Professor Antoine) Galland's delightful abbreviation and adaptation (A.D. 1704), in no wise represent the eastern original. The best and latest, the Rev. Mr. Foster's, which is diffuse and verbose, and Mr. G. Moir Bussey's, which is a re- correction, abound in gallicisms of style and idiom; and one and all degrade a chef d'oeuvre of the highest anthropological and ethnographical interest and importance to a mere fairy book, a nice present ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... afterward. I think a man born to wealth ought to doubt his moral title to it, and ought to set to work to prove it—ought to set himself to repair the injustice of fortune by which he profits. Yes, such a man should be a sort of human sunshine, and diffuse blessings all round him. The poor man that encounters him ought to bless the accident. But there, I am not eloquent. You know how much more I ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Milton," she tartly replied. "Look at the Chopin prelude. Will you contradict me if I say that in one prelude this composer crowds the experience of a lifetime? When he expands his idea into the sonata form how diffuse, how ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... discovered at a period when religion no longer serves as a pretext for violence and rapine. Modern navigators have no other object in describing the manners of remote nations than that of completing the history of man; and the knowledge they endeavour to diffuse has for its sole aim to render the people they visit more happy, and to ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... had upon his mind that peaceful influence that Mrs. Bolton had when, occasionally, she sat by his bedside with her work. Some people have this influence, which is like an emanation. They bring peace to a house, they diffuse serene content in a room full of mixed company, though they may say very little, and are apparently, unconscious of their ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... murmurs may become louder from a more forceful, normal action of the heart muscle. The pulse becomes slower, and the blood pressure, from being too low, becomes normal for the age of the individual. The heart will often also actually decrease in size, and the apex beat become localized rather than diffuse, The liver becomes reduced in size; the urine is less concentrated, and if there were traces of albumin after exertion, ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... enumerated some of the diffuse and unnecessary paragraphs which had weakened his cause, as ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... very wide reputation in his own country and wherever Spanish is read. His Episodes Nacionales, some fifty-six in number, attract by their close attention to detail, which gives an air of actuality to the most diffuse of his stories. They are careful and very accurate studies of different episodes of national life, in which the author introduces, among the fictitious characters round whom the story moves, the real actors on the stage of history of the time. Thus Mendizabal, Espartero, Serrano, Narvaez, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... curs'd by heaven's decree, How ill-exchang'd are things like these for thee! How do thy potions, with insidious joy, Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy! 1137 GOLDSMITH: Des. ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... no energy, no condensation, nothing which springs from strong feeling, nothing which tends to excite it. Many fine thoughts and fine expressions reward the toil of reading. Still it is a toil. The Secchia Rapita, in some points the best poem of its kind, is painfully diffuse and languid. The Animali Parlanti of Casti is perfectly intolerable. I admire the dexterity of the plot, and the liberality of the opinions. I admit that it is impossible to turn to a page which does not contain something that deserves to be remembered; but it is at least six times as ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Dutch carried to their Eastern settlements two of their home propensities, which distinguish and embellish the towns of the Low Countries; they indulged in the excavation of canals, and they planted long lines of trees to diffuse shade over the sultry passages in their Indian fortresses. For the latter purpose they employed the Suriya (Hibiscus populneus), whose broad umbrageous leaves and delicate yellow flowers impart a delicious coolness, and give to the streets ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... spectacles. His early tendency to obesity having increased, Lord Byron is now enormously fat,—so fat as to give the impression of a person quite overladen with his own flesh, and without sufficient vigor to diffuse his personal life through the great mass of corporeal substance which weighs upon him so cruelly. You gaze at the mortal heap; and, while it fills your eye with what purports to be Byron, you murmur within yourself, "For Heaven's sake, where is he?" Were I disposed to be caustic, I might ...
— P.'s Correspondence (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Meehan finds, with the rarest exceptions, that the leaves fall earlier in the season, and assume before falling a brighter tint; that they are less deeply toothed or serrated; that the buds are smaller; that the trees are more diffuse in growth and have fewer branchlets; and, lastly, that the seeds are smaller—all in comparison with the corresponding European species. Now, considering that these trees belong to distinct orders, it is out of the question ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... he may expand in his little scrap of reserved open country. Such is already the poor Londoner's miserable fate.... Our Utopia will have, of course, faultless roads and beautifully arranged inter-urban communications, swift trains or motor services or what not, to diffuse its population, and without some anticipatory provisions, the prospect of the residential areas becoming a vast area of defensively walled villa Edens ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... of benevolent action, when much is being done to drive away the darkness and delusions of many generations, and to diffuse light and truth through the earth; it excites the liveliest joy in every philanthropic bosom to witness the triumphant results already achieved. Recent efforts to banish the use of intoxicating drinks, have ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... portion of Paris where Dr. Jenkins' patients lived, on those broad tree-lined boulevards, those deserted quays, the mist soared immaculate, in innumerable waves, as light and fleecy as down. It was compact, discreet, almost luxurious, because the sun, slothful in his rising, was beginning to diffuse soft, purplish tints, which gave to the mist that enveloped everything, even the roofs of the rows of mansions, the aspect of a sheet of white muslin spread over scarlet cloth. One would have said that it was a great curtain sheltering the long, untroubled sleep of wealth, a thick curtain ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... evening was charming, and he promised himself the satisfaction of walking home beneath the Arch of Constantine and past the vaguely lighted monuments of the Forum. There was a waning moon in the sky, and her radiance was not brilliant, but she was veiled in a thin cloud curtain which seemed to diffuse and equalize it. When, on his return from the villa (it was eleven o'clock), Winterbourne approached the dusky circle of the Colosseum, it recurred to him, as a lover of the picturesque, that the interior, in the pale moonshine, would be well worth a glance. He turned aside and walked to one of the ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... grimly. "Half a pound of it gives off the radiation of an eighth of a ton of pure radium. One can guess that he had been instructed to get up as high as he could in the Shed and dump the powder into the air. It would diffuse—scatter as it sifted down. It would have contaminated the whole Shed past all use for years—let alone ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... great master by treating its converse as its synonyme. Descartes having demonstrated that all thought is existence, Bishop Berkeley and Professor Huxley infer that all existence is thought. So says the Professor in so many words, and to precisely the same effect is the more diffuse language of the Bishop, where, speaking of 'all the choir of heaven and furniture of earth, of all the bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world,' he declares that their esse is percipi, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... by such means that the young general, as profound a politician as he was a great captain, contrived to ingratiate himself with the people. While he flattered their prejudices for the moment, he laboured to diffuse among them the light of science by the creation of the celebrated Institute of Egypt. He collected the men of science and the artists whom he had brought with him, and, associating with them some of the best educated of his officers, established ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... novels, Of wonderful marvels Very high and diffuse unto the hearing! As Scripture tells, These strange novels To you ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... the results of recent researches in Babylonia. Professor M. Muller, though expressing himself with more caution, inclines to the same conclusion. Popular works, in the shape of Cyclopaedias and short general histories, diffuse the impression. Hence a difficulty is felt with regard to the Scriptural statement concerning the first kingdom in these parts, which is expressly said to have been Cushite or Ethiopian. "And Cush begat Nimrod: (he began to be a mighty ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... generation or two to find out what are the passages in a great writer which are to become commonplaces in literature and conversation. It is to be remembered that Emerson is one of those authors whose popularity must diffuse itself from above downwards. And after all, few will dare assert that "The Vanity of Human Wishes" is greater as a poem than Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," or Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale," because no line in either of these poems is half ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... not see?" said brother Michael. "The virtues of both lovers diffuse themselves through the lake. The infusion of masculine valour makes the fish active and sanguineous: the infusion of maiden modesty makes him coy and hard to win: and you shall find through life, the fish which is most easily hooked is ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... altered. Legislation could not go deep enough. It could not change human nature. That could only be effected by the diffusion of a spirit of justice and consideration throughout the community. The effort to diffuse such a spirit is the proper work of the Church; and as this truth became clearly seen, the Church felt less and less inclined to throw herself on the side of ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... colonies in the West Indies." Thomas Southey, in his "Chronological History of the West Indies" (Lond. 1827), devotes considerable space to their achievements, but depends entirely upon the traditional sources. In 1803 J.W. von Archenholz published "Die Geschichte der Flibustier," a superficial, diffuse and even puerile narrative, giving no references whatever to authorities. (It was translated into French (Paris, 1804), and into English by Geo. Mason (London, 1807).) In 1816 a "History of the Buccaneers in America" was published by James Burney as the fourth volume of "A chronological ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... always inharmonical with the divine, and the beautiful harmonious. Beauty, then, is the destiny or goddess of parturition who presides a birth, and therefore, when approaching beauty the conceiving power is propitious, and diffuse, and benign, and begets and bears fruit; on the appearance of foulness she frowns and contracts in pain, and is averted and morose, and shrinks up, and not without a pang refrains from conception. And this is the reason why, when the hour of conception arrives, and the teeming nature is ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... their spontaneous longing for immortality. The unrivalled revelation of the disinterested love of God made by Christianity, and its effect in refining and increasing the love of men, have contributed in a most important degree to sanction and diffuse the faith in a blessed life reserved for men hereafter. One remarkable specification may be noticed. The only pagan description of children in the future life is that given by some of the classic poets, who picture the infant ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... success can give to human exertion. And in what cause can the energies of Christian benevolence be more appropriately exercised? To prevent war is to avoid the effusion of human blood, and the commission of innumerable crimes and atrocities;—it is to diffuse peace, and comfort, and happiness, through the great family of man,—it is to foster the arts and sciences which minister to the wants of society,—it is to check the progress of vice,—to speed the advance of the gospel,—to ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... a Mimosa, lime trees, Carissa, Mimusops, Stemodia ruderalis now appear. The most interesting is a small diffuse Caryoplylleous-looking plant, with white Campanulate flowers; it is probably a Frankeniacea. On the pagodas an Aristella grows. Certain features prevail in the vegetation similar to those of the Coromandel coast. Fig trees often surrounded at base ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... contempt of our brethren and contention. We ought to be satisfied in our places, doing 'nothing through strife or vain glory, or with murmurings and disputings'; but endeavour, in the meekness of wisdom, to diffuse a heavenly fragrance around us, and to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of real practical value, in affording a good and cheap supply of the best culinary and other vegetables that the climate can produce, but as showing to what departments efforts are best directed. Such gardens diffuse a taste for the most healthy employments, and offer an elegant resource for the many unoccupied hours which the Englishman in India finds upon his hands. They are also schools of gardening; and a simple inspection of what has been done at Bhagulpore is a valuable lesson to any person about ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... perception of form, sense of color, and knowledge of the principles of sculpture, painting, music, and architecture are notably deficient. It is a law of life and nature, that truth and beauty, adequately represented, create and diffuse a limitless element of wisdom and pleasure. Such memorials are talismanic, and their influence is felt in all the higher and more permanent spheres of thought and emotion; they are the gracious landmarks that guide humanity above the commonplace ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... desire to assist, or to show gratitude. It is not charity when gifts are given from other considerations, as when animals are fed that they may be used, or presents given by lovers to bind affection, or to slaves to stimulate labour. It is found where man, seeking to diffuse happiness among all men—those he loves, and those he loves not—digs canals and pools, makes roads, bridges, and seats, and plants trees for shade. It is found where, from compassion for the miserable and the poor, who have ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... coming to that," she said. She paused again, with her eyes on Lily, and then continued, in a tone of diffuse narrative: "When we was at the Benedick I had charge of some of the gentlemen's rooms; leastways, I swep' 'em out on Saturdays. Some of the gentlemen got the greatest sight of letters: I never saw the like of it. Their waste-paper baskets 'd be fairly brimming, and papers ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... years later in "Les Caracteres" of La Bruyere, who dropped personalities and gave them the form of permanent types. It is a literature peculiarly adapted to the flexibility and fine perception of the French mind, and one in which it has been preeminent, from the analytic but diffuse Mlle. de Scudery, and the clear, terse, spirited Cardinal de Retz, to the fine, penetrating, and exquisitely finished Sainte-Beuve, the prince of modern critics and literary artists. It was this skill in vivid delineation that gave such point and piquancy ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... letter. She desires me to say that she and Bro are going to dine with Mrs. Robert Martin to-morrow. I must tell you that Georgie and I went to hear Dr. Chalmers preach, three Sundays ago. His sermon was on a text whose extreme beauty would diffuse itself into any sermon preached upon it—God is love. His eloquence was very great, and his views noble and grasping. I expected much from his imagination, but not so much from his knowledge. It was truer to Scripture than I was prepared ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... ferns are the most predominant, cover the walls, and are moistened by small springs of limpid water. In winter, when the volcano is buried under ice and snow, this district enjoys perpetual spring. In summer, as the day declines, the breezes from the sea diffuse a delicious freshness. The population of this coast is very considerable; and it appears to be still greater than it is, because the houses and gardens are distant from each other, which adds to the picturesque beauty of the scene. Unhappily the real welfare of the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... then with a Fork and a Spoon kept continually stirr'd, 'till all the Furniture be equally moisten'd: Some, who are husbands of their Oyl, pour at first the Oyl alone, as more apt to communicate and diffuse its Slipperiness, than when it is mingled and beaten with the Acids; which they pour on last of all; and 'tis incredible how small a quantity of Oyl (in this quality, like the gilding of Wyer) is sufficient, to imbue a very ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... genuinely regarded me as a magician, would the mere fact of Pudentilla's writing to that effect be a reason for actually regarding me as a magician? You, with all your arguments and your witnesses and your diffuse eloquence, have failed to prove me a magician. Could she prove it with one word? A formal indictment, written and signed before a judge, is a far more weighty document than what is written in a private letter! Why do not you prove me a magician by my own deeds instead ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... from her play. She is an emotional actress of considerable force, as she showed us in her production of "The Lady of the Camelias." She has the power of repression. She is artistic, sincere and graceful. Her work in this diffuse play proved that beyond the peradventure of a doubt, so that her engagement at the Hudson Theater need not be unduly deplored. The Gloucester of John Blair was extremely amusing. Such a Richard, the most imaginative imaginer could never ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... there are differences, Payne's translation is invariably the clearer, finer and more stately of the two. Payne is concise, Burton diffuse. [466] ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... day, that of slavery was freely discussed in all its bearings. It is difficult, in a single extract, to convey an adequate idea of the character of the editorial columns of a paper, where terse and concentrated irony and sarcasm alternate with eloquent appeal and diffuse commentary and labored argument. We can only offer at random the following passages from a long review of a speech of John C. Calhoun, in which that extraordinary man, whose giant intellect has been shut out of its appropriate field of exercise by the very ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... can judge, had no knowledge of Kant. He is, nevertheless, dealing with Kant's own problem, of the theory of knowledge, in his rather diffuse 'Dissertation on Language,' which is prefixed to the volume which bears the title God in Christ, 1849. He was following his living principle, the reference of doctrine to conscience. God must be a 'right God.' Dogma must make no assertion ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... to have. Your trouble is that you're too diffuse; you spread yourself out too much. You want to fix your mind on one thing; and that will have to be business as soon as ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... marvellous exactness (ακριβεια {akribeia}). The language of the Greek geometers is also wonderfully concise, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary. One of the complaints often made against Euclid is that he is 'diffuse'. Yet (apart from abbreviations in writing) it will be found that the exposition of corresponding matters in modern elementary textbooks generally takes up, not less, but more space. And, to say nothing of the perfect finish of Archimedes's treatises, we shall find in ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... admirable faculty of sarcasm, wherever sarcasm is required, the same depth of feeling, wherever feeling is called for, the same refusal to make a parade of feeling even where it is shown. Never trivial, never vulgar, never feeble, never stilted, never diffuse, Lockhart is one of the very best recent specimens of that class of writers of all work, which since Dryden's time has continually increased, is increasing, and does not seem likely to diminish. The growth may or may not be matter ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... detraction, until they lose even the very power of perceiving that which is true. They become, too, incapable of all generous self-denial and self-sacrifice; feelings of bitterness towards every successful rival (and there are few who may not be our rivals on some one point or other) gradually diffuse themselves throughout the heart, and leave no place for that love of our neighbour which the Scriptures have stated to be the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... to answer all the purposes of its establishment, and not only furnishes well-educated officers to the Army, but serves to diffuse throughout the mass of our citizens individuals possessed of military knowledge and the scientific attainments of civil and military engineering. At present the cadet is bound, with consent of his parents or guardians, to remain in service five years from the period ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... this deed to the board of trustees was accompanied with a long letter, setting forth the wishes, hopes, and plans of the grantor, in the formal and diffuse rhetoric peculiar to his generation, and, perhaps, too much contemned by ours. To say the least, we are no more warranted in despising the utterances of noble, self-sacrificing philanthropists, because they are clothed in phrases now deemed verbose and stilted, than ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... diffuse; I must return to facts. Honora Dudleigh, who saw my devotion, encouraged it. I wondered at it sometimes, for she knew the smallness of my fortune, and must have known the nature of the woman I expected to share it. But as time passed I wondered less, for her ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... leaving out all humanitarian views—as a mere matter of political economy it is better to have the colored race a living force animated and strengthened by self-reliance and self-respect, than a stagnant mass, degraded and self-condemned. Instead of the North relaxing its efforts to diffuse education in the South, it behooves us for our national life, to throw into the South all the healthful reconstructing influences we can command. Our work in this country is grandly constructive. Some races have come into this world and overthrown ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the silky tufts, making of each a flake of fire, all raining at the same slight slope from hair-fine stems. Against the turf they looked for all the world like Chinese lanterns swung for some miniature revel of the fairies—they seemed literally to diffuse light upon the air. Ishmael stood staring, stung to excitement by that suddenly-glimpsed beauty; but Phoebe darted forward, and the next moment had withdrawn a foot whose stout country shoe and white stocking were ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... exertion, and he resolves that, when he can no longer call it his own, it shall preserve the relics of past literature for ages yet to come, and form a centre whence scholarship and intellectual refinement shall diffuse themselves around. We can see this influence in its most specific and material shape, perhaps, by looking round the reading-room of the British Museum—that great manufactory of intellectual produce, where so many heads ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... persisted in by all critics for a generation, would act as so wholesome and tonic a course of Eugenic instruction, would so strongly insist upon quality, and so widely diffuse an unconscious fastidiousness of selection, that the locust cloud of phantoms which now darken the zenith might be dissipated, and again we should behold the sky which is the home of stars. For we may safely suppose that excellence will never be ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... to a portrait by Ingres from a decoration by Rubens. At first, 'comme on a l'oeil rempli de l'eclatante verite pittoresque du grand maitre flamand, on ne voit dans l'artiste francais qu'un ton assez uniforme, une teinte diffuse de pale et douce lumiere. Mais qu'on approche de plus pres et qu'on observe avec soin: mille nuances fines vont eclore sous le regard; mille intentions savantes vont sortir de ce tissu profond et serre; on ne peut plus en detacher ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... to offer to the notice of Lord Melbourne his Bachelor's Dispatch, or portable kitchen. It will roast, bake, boil, stew, steam, melt butter, toast bread, and diffuse a genial warmth at one and the same time, for the outlay of one halfpenny. It is peculiarly suited for lamb, in any form, which requires delicate dressing, and is admirably adapted for concocting mint-sauce, which delightful adjunct Lord ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... ready to march to their death in order to proclaim the God of life to nations plunged in darkness. The advances of industry, the developments of commerce, the calculations of ambition, all conspire to diffuse spiritual light over the globe. These are noble spectacles, revealing clearly the traces of a superior design, which the mighty of this world are accomplishing, even by the craft and violence of their policy: they are the manifest ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... True, the theme is somewhat extended; Jefferson's life was a protracted and busy one; he took a leading part in complicated transactions, and promulgated doctrines which cannot be summarily discussed. But the author's prolixity has not grown out of the extent of his theme alone. He is both diffuse and digressive. He introduces much irrelevant matter, and tells everything in a round-about-way. By a judicious exercise of the arts of elimination and compression, we think that all which illustrates the subject might have been comprised in one volume ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... added offence, and his opulence was less than nothing. In settling among them he ran the risk of being ignored. But when it came to ignoring, Jimmy considered that success lay with the party who got in first. So before he settled he took care to diffuse a sort of impression that the Tasker Jevonses were never at home to anybody, that it was not to be expected that a great novelist and playwright would have time for calling and being called on, even if he had the absurd inclination. He had one solitary introduction in the neighbourhood, and he ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... poet but not a great literary {255} artist. He wrote negligently and with the ease of assured strength, his mind gathering heat as it moved, and pouring itself forth in reckless profusion. His work is diffuse and imperfect; much of it is melodrama or speech-making rather than true poetry. But on the other hand, much, very much of it, is unexcelled as the direct, strong, sincere utterance of personal feeling. Such is the quality of his best lyrics, like When We Two Parted, the Elegy ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... was born were we not in direst danger? Such danger that all his royal father could do in honor of the glad event was to break a musk-bag before his faithful followers as sign that the birth of an heir to empire would diffuse itself like perfume through the whole world? Even so now, and if I cannot devise some ceremony, then am I ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... Gustave Le Bon, it is the "condensed" soul of our ancestors, which is true, beyond a doubt, but only a part of the truth, for we find in it also the soul of the future and probably of many other forces which are not necessarily human. William James saw in it a diffuse cosmic consciousness and the chance intrusion into our scientifically organized world of remnants and bestiges of the primordial chaos. Here are a number of images striving to give us an idea of a reality so vast ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... to have written a book too shallow for the learned, too deep for the frivolous, too technical for the general public, and too diffuse for the specialist ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... keratitis, the relationship of which to inherited syphilis was first established by Hutchinson. It occurs between the ages of six and sixteen years, and usually affects one eye before the other. It commences as a diffuse haziness or steaminess near the centre of the cornea, and as it spreads the entire cornea assumes the appearance of ground glass. The chief complaint is of dimness of sight, which may almost amount to blindness, but there is little pain or photophobia; ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... freshens and fertilises; the light, conspicuous; the salt, working concealed; and the dew, visible like the former, but yet unobtrusive and operating silently like the latter. Some of us had rather be light than salt; prefer to be conspicuous rather than to diffuse a wholesome silent influence around us. But these three types must all be blended, both in regard to the manner of working, and in regard to the effects produced. We shall refresh and beautify the world only in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... privately, these born eminences must often have been inconvenient and even noisome. But of the future husband personally Mr. Gascoigne was disposed to think the best. Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker. But if Grandcourt had really made any deeper or more unfortunate experiments in folly than were common in young men of high prospects, he was of an age to have ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... twitch downwards (fig. 108, b, c). This rebound carries it back, not only to the zero position, but sometimes beyond that position. We have here a parallel to the following observation of Dewar and McKendrick: 'When diffuse light is allowed to impinge on the eye of the frog, after it has arrived at a tolerably stable condition, the natural E.M.F. is in the first place increased, then diminished; during the continuance of ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... charm of the sensuous world dwells in us, is an emanation from ourselves; it is we who diffuse it, each person for himself according to his power, and we have it back again in the measure of our out-giving. But I did not comprehend early enough the deep meaning of this well-known truth. . . . During my childhood and youth the charm seemed to reside in the thing itself, ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... substance and the less modified living "protoplasm" of plants, a considerable proportion of the substance of seeds, bulbs, and so on, are albuminous bodies, or proteids. These also are insoluble bodies, or when soluble, will not diffuse easily through animal membranes. ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... toes at least half webbed; terminal discs large; first toe shorter than second and not opposable to others; skin smooth, lacking osteoderms; parotoid glands, if present, poorly developed and diffuse; palpebral membrane reticulate (except in A. calcarifer); iris red or yellow; skull shallow, depth less than 40 per cent of length; nasals large; frontoparietal fontanelle large; quadratojugals ...
— The Genera of Phyllomedusine Frogs (Anura Hylidae) • William E. Duellman
... I wanted any further evidence of the moral atmosphere which words diffuse, I would ask you to observe how the first thing men do, when engaged in controversy with others, is ever to assume some honourable name to themselves, such as, if possible, shall beg the whole subject in dispute, and at the same time to affix on their adversaries a name which shall place ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... poisonous, bristling stings. The atmosphere of the city is changed; in lieu of the friendly perfume of honey, the acrid odour of poison prevails; thousands of tiny drops glisten at the end of the stings, and diffuse rancour and hatred. Before the bewildered parasites are able to realise that the happy laws of the city have crumbled, dragging down in most inconceivable fashion their own plentiful destiny, each one is assailed by three or four envoys of justice; and these vigorously proceed ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... recovered his recollection, "forgive the wild transports of a fond lover, who hath so unexpectedly retrieved the jewel of his soul! Yet, far from wishing to hoard up his treasure, he means to communicate and diffuse his happiness to all his friends. O my Monimia! how will the pleasure of this hour be propagated! As yet thou knowest not all the bliss that is reserved for thy enjoyment!—Meanwhile, I long to learn by what contrivance this happy interview hath been ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... had gained a new degree of resolution; but appearances deceived me; for her tranquility was the langour of over-wrought resentment. A supply of provisions, charitably sent us by my kind parishioners, seemed to diffuse new cheerfulness amongst the rest of the family, nor was I displeased at seeing them once more sprightly and at ease. It would have been unjust to damp their satisfactions, merely to condole with resolute melancholy, or to burthen them with a sadness they did not feel. Thus, once ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... sends only to make him afraid! Let him understand that each time we despise those terrors, their force is lessened, and the soul gains power over them. There is always some great good obtained; but I will not speak of it, that I may not be too diffuse. I will speak, however, of what happened to me once on the night of All Souls. I was in an oratory, and, having said one Nocturn, was saying some very devotional prayers at the end of our Breviary, when Satan put himself on the book before me, to prevent my finishing my prayer. I ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... and arguments of the speaker, but his forms of thought and all that is characteristic of his genius. Such an operation, rightly performed, may, like a diminishing mirror, concentrate the brilliancy of diffuse orations, and assist their efficacy on minds which would faint under the effort of grasping ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... consequence of this lesson. "Pauline" and "Paracelsus" had been deeply musical, and the music came back to their author's verse with the dramas, lyrics, and romances by which "Sordello" was followed. But the dread of being diffuse had doubly rooted itself in his mind, and was to bear fruit again as soon as the more historical or argumentative mood ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... America, and the maritime route to India, it seems to have been conceived that exclusive chartered companies were best fitted for its effectual prosecution. "The spirit of enterprise in distant trade, which had for a century brought large resources to Spain and Portugal, began to diffuse itself as a new principle, in the rising commerce of England, during the long and able administration of Queen Elizabeth. Hence associations were beginning to be formed, the joint credit of which was to support experiments for extending the trade of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... education; there is no national system. In 1867 Congress established a National Bureau of Education, the function of which is "to collect statistics and facts showing the condition and progress of education in the several states and territories, and diffuse such information respecting the organization and management of schools and school systems and methods of teaching as shall aid the people of the United States in the establishment and maintenance of efficient school systems, ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... ornament has been adjusted, it may be used as a mathematical base for all the rest of the table appointments. Candlesticks, either of silver or bronze, are artistic when placed at equal distance around the flowers. They diffuse a soft light upon the table, and by being an incentive to the recalling of old memories, they invoke conversation when there is danger of its lagging. It is one of the charms of candlelight—thus power to bring up pleasant reminiscences. Between these stately guardians of the floral ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... knowledge. Some of his guesses (though partly right) hit upon traits of character I should conceive quite out of all possibility of solution from mere handwriting. I can understand that a man should guess at one's temperament, whether lively or slow; at one's habit of thought, whether diffuse or logical; at one's Will, whether strong and direct or feeble and timid. But whether one distrusts men, and yet trusts friends? Half of this is true, at all events. Then I cannot conceive how a man should see in handwriting such an accident as whether one knew much of Books or men; and in ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... remain,—haunt their homes upon the hills, diffuse a soft religious awe through the twilight of their groves, perhaps because they are without form and substance. Their shrines seldom pass utterly into oblivion, like the dwellings of men. But every Shinto ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... and which his writings between 1860 and 1870 do not touch. Though the Oxford lectures are only a fragment of what he ought to have done, they should be sufficient to a careful reader; though their expression is sometimes obscured by diffuse treatment, they contain the root of the matter, thought out for fifteen years since the close of the more brilliant, but less ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... the beginning to the end, in the most diligent manner, and to compose it in alternately rhyming verse, as was then the fashion. It was a foreign subject of which I availed myself; but if verses are music, I at least endeavored to adapt my music to the text, and to let the poetry of another diffuse itself through my spiritual blood; so that people should not be heard to say, as they had done before, regarding the romance of Walter Scott, that the composition was cut down and ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... blows the breeze, but with a warmer force. The melting ground, the brimming watercourse, The wak'ning air, the birds' returning flight, The longer sunshine, and the shorter night, Arcturus' beams, and Corvus' glitt'ring rays, Diffuse a promise of the genial days. Yon muddy remnant of the winter snow Shrinks humbly in the equinoctial glow, Whilst in the fields precocious grass-blades peep Above the earth so lately wrapt in sleep. What sweet, elusive odor fills the soil, To rouse ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... had cured two thousand people, "having been made proper recipients to receive Divine manuductions; which heavenly and Divine influx, coming from the radix God, his Divine Majesty had most graciously bestowed upon them to diffuse healing to all, be they deaf, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... his light and power from that good Spirit, and anxiously directing to that great Agent all the hopes and the praises of the flock whom he led, and of the readers whom he taught, his writings remain to diffuse and perpetuate the lesson of his life. Into whatever tribe of the ancient East or of the remote West his Pilgrim has been introduced, the name and story of the writer bear, as their great lesson, the testimony that God's Scriptures are the richest of pastures to the human soul; and that God ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... establishment of any manufactures, or the outlay of any money amongst them. Who will carry his machinery to a country where—though he may be a good master and a kind friend, though he may give occupation to hundreds and diffuse wealth among thousands—his spindles may be stopped at the beck of a priest, and his machinery left to rust at the dictate of Mr O'Connell. Independent men do not wish to lose all self-control—to sacrifice all right of private judgment; and he who dares to assert ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... great moral question of the time; the least informed with true knowledge—the least efficient in virtuous action—the least conscious of that Christian and republican freedom which, as the native atmosphere of piety and holiness, it is their prime duty to cherish and diffuse,"—Miss Martineau. I quote this paragraph to contradict it. The American clergy are, in the mass, equal, if not superior, to any in the world: they have to struggle with difficulties almost insurmountable, (as I shall substantiate) and worthily ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... distressing hallucinations, in the poems of ALFRED B. STREET. He is a descriptive poet, and at the head of his class. His pictures of American scenery are full of gusto and freshness; sometimes too wild and diffuse, but always true and beautiful.' So some are praised and some are blamed—'thus runs the world away!' . . . WE are made aware, and we would not have our correspondents ignorant of the fact, that there is a critical eye monthly upon our pages, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... "I labour to diffuse the important good Till this great truth by all be understood, That all the pious duty which we owe Our parents, friends, our country, and our God, The seeds of every virtue here below, From discipline and ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... me to be more diffuse than I should have been without it; but it gives you a bit of ancient geography which will do you no harm. There are two great rivers which extend through this territory, the Euphrates and the Tigris, though both of them unite and flow ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... just sufficient drag to keep the boats stem- on to the sea without appreciably retarding their drift to leeward; but it was none the worse for this, since, with their drift scarcely retarded, they rode all the more easily; and presently, when the oil began to exude from the can and diffuse itself over the surface of the water, there was a narrow space just ahead of us where the seas ceased to break, with the result that in the course of ten minutes we were riding quite dry and comfortable, except for the scud-water that came driving along. This, however, ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... publishing an account of a recent debate, and only obtained his release by expressions of humble submission and the payment of heavy fees. The awe, however, which his humiliation and peril had been intended to diffuse gradually wore off; the keen interest which was awakened by the ministerial changes at the beginning of the reign of George III., which have been already mentioned, naturally prompted a variety of efforts to gratify it by a revelation of the language concerning them ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... bounds its northern confines. Europe would therefore become colder* if Africa were to be overflowed by the ocean; of if the mythical Atlantis were to arise and connect Europe with North America; or if the Gulf Stream were no longer to diffuse the warming influence of its waters into the North Sea; or if, finally, another mass of solid land should be upheaved by volcanic action, and interposed between the Scandinavian peninsula ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... civilization that we regard it, we may be sure that it is not as a political agent, or an annuller of the inequalities of life, that we are to expect aid from it. Its office, or rather one of its chief offices on earth, is to diffuse through the world, regardless of condition or possessions or talent or opportunity, sympathy and a recognition of the value of manhood underlying every lot and every diversity—a value not measured by earthly accidents, but by heavenly standards. This we understand to be "Christian equality." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... about her domestic duties, that Godwin seldom heard anything except the voice of the cuckoo-clock, a pleasant sound to him. Her son, employed at a nurseryman's, was a great sinewy fellow with a face of such ruddiness that it seemed to diffuse warmth; on Sunday afternoon, whatever the state of the sky, he sat behind the house in his shirt-sleeves, and smoked a pipe as he contemplated the hart's-tongue which grew ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... now "found himself" as a poet. It is true that his style remained diffuse and his ear faulty, but his countrymen, then as now uncritical of artistic form, overlooked the blemishes of his verse, and thought only of his vibrant emotion, his scorn of cowardice and evil, his prophetic exaltation. In 1847 came the first general collection ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... life, I remember to have been playing with my younger sister, not then three years old. It was one of those bright mornings in spring, that bring joy and life to the heart, and diffuse gladness and animation through all the tribes of living creatures. Our feelings were in perfect harmony with the universal gladness of nature. Even now I seem to hear the merry laugh of my little sister, as she followed me through the winding alleys of the garden, her cheek suffused ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... rooted, natural, feminine hatred for politics I have no inclination to become diffuse on them, as I have on the errors of other people's cooking or ideas on decoration. I know I am held to be too partial to France in West Africa; too fond of pointing out her brilliant achievements there, too fond of saying the native is as happy, and possibly happier, under her rule than under ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... shop and ceases to diffuse liquid poison, he does not invite the world to put up the shutters; neither will I. Actors overrate themselves ridiculously," added she; "I am not of that importance to the world, nor the world to me. I fling away a dirty old glove instead of soiling my fingers filling it with more ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... saying of a beloved friend, long since translated from this scene of mutation to a state of eternal beatitude: 'I wear my sackcloth on my loins; I don't wish to afflict others by carrying a sorrowful countenance.' A wise conclusion. I love to diffuse happiness over all with whom I come in contact. But all this is a kind of accident. I took up my pen to tell thee about our garden. I never saw it half so handsome as it is now. Morning Glories ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... certain account of what the mind at home, in the spacious circuits of her musing, hath liberty to propose to herself, though of highest hope and hardest attempting; whether that epic form whereof the two poems of Homer, and those other two of Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse, and the book of Job a ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... obscure Entry. A Glare of Light suddenly breaks upon you, beyond what the Avenue at first promis'd: and a thousand Beauties of Genius and Character, like so many gaudy Apartments pouring at once upon the Eye, diffuse and throw themselves out to the Mind. The Prospect is too wide to come within the Compass of a single View: 'tis a gay Confusion of pleasing Objects, too various to be enjoyed but in a general Admiration; and they ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... brand our future with sordidness, oppression, and shame? Why can not we rise to noble conceptions of our destiny? Why do we not feel that our work as a nation is to carry freedom, religion, science, and a nobler form of human nature over this continent? And why do we not remember that to diffuse these blessings we must first cherish them in our own borders, and that whatever deeply and permanently corrupts us will make our spreading influence a curse, not a blessing, to this New World? It is a common idea in Europe that we are destined to spread an inferior civilization over North America; ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... writer Marvell has many merits and one great fault. He has fire and fancy and was the owner and master of a precise vocabulary well fitted to clothe and set forth a well-reasoned and lofty argument. He knew how to be both terse and diffuse, and can compress himself into a line or expand over a paragraph. He has touches of a grave irony as well as of a boisterous humour. He can tell an anecdote and elaborate a parable. Swift, we know, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell |
