"Diffusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fulfilled this condition may be doubted. But it was certainly sweet and potent, and for the children at any rate a couple of glasses of it induced a haze upon the feast—a sort of golden fog through which Mr. Mortimer loomed in a halo of diffusive hospitality. He used his handkerchief for a table-napkin, and made great play with it as they do in banquets on ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... closely together are all things interwoven in his discourse, and attended with a certain self-command; so great is his accuracy, he never adopting any idle expression; and so just his precision that nothing lacking, nothing redundant, can be found in him. AEschines is more full, more diffusive, and appears the more grand, as he has more breadth. He has more flesh, but not so ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... it is, not to the artist only, but to all of us. The laws under which matter is collected and constructed are the same throughout the universe: the substance so collected, whether for the making of the eagle, or the worm, may be analyzed into gaseous identity; a diffusive vital force, apparently so closely related to mechanically measurable heat as to admit the conception of its being itself mechanically measurable, and unchanging in total quantity, ebbs and flows alike through the limbs of men and the fibers of insects. ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... marks of judging what encouragement a play meets with; but the generosity of all the persons of a refined taste about town was remarkable on this occasion; and it must not be forgotten how zealously Mr. Addison espoused his interest, with all the elegant judgment and diffusive good-nature for which that accomplished gentleman and author is so justly valued by mankind. But as to Phaedra, she has certainly made a finer figure under Mr. Smith's conduct, upon the English stage, than either in Rome or Athens; and if she excels the Greek and Latin ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... electricity does not enter as a base into the specific fluid whence our Ideas and Volitions proceed? Whether the hair, which loses its color, turns white, falls out, or disappears, in proportion to the decay or crystallization of our thoughts, may not be in fact a capillary system, either absorbent or diffusive, and wholly electrical? Whether the fluid phenomena of the Will, a matter generated within us, and spontaneously reacting under the impress of conditions as yet unobserved, were at all more extraordinary than those of the invisible and intangible fluid produced ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... things, nay, as the only evil truly to be dreaded. The writings of this father discover a deep penetration and clear conception, with an admirable perspicuity in the diction; but seeming apprehensive of not having sufficiently inculcated his matter, he is diffusive, end runs into repetitions. His reasoning is just and close, corroborated by Scripture and tradition. The accurate F. Sirmond published part of his writings, but the most complete edition of them was given at Paris, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... of Missions he says, at a later period, 8th November: "The spirit of missions is the spirit of our Master; the very genius of his religion. A diffusive philanthropy is Christianity itself. It requires perpetual ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... whose sounds came from a hopeless distance. Yet there was something in the expression of the mouth, that suggested a consistent standing aloof from herself and her desires. The lines of the face could never have been drawn by mere diffusive, emotional habits. Thought had left as many traces as feeling in the firm drawing. The quality of the face was of that indefinable kind that gives to all characteristic things their peculiar power over the imagination. The more powerful the quality, the less can it be rendered into terms. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Can a nation, whose diffusive philanthropy extends to the civilization of a quarter of the globe, and to the evangelization of the whole world, be regardless of any of the children of her own bosom, or suffer the pious, truly patriotic solicitude of her King, for the instruction of the meanest of his subjects ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... indeed. It seems funny enough to think of such a thing. The fact is, it is much easier to me to speak than to write. I think I could learn with a good deal of leisure and trouble to write intelligibly, but not without it. I am so diffusive and wanting in close condensed habits of thought. How often I go off in a multitude of words, and really say nothing worthy ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... prosperity at so many different points of the empire, showed the distracted condition of the state, and its internal weakness. That again proclaimed its external peril. No other cause had called forth this diffusive spirit of insurrection than the general consciousness, so fatally warranted, of the debility which had emasculated the government, and its incompetency to deal vigorously with the public enemies. [Footnote: And this incompetency was permanently increased by rebellions that were ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... dividing his thoughts with the one supreme agony that bowed him down, they were rather welcomed than discarded. His mind was as a wheel, embracing grief within grief, multiplied to infinitude; and the wider and more diffusive the circle, the less powerful was the concentration of sickening heart and brain on that which was the more immediate ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... may paint, in the strong colours of ridicule, "the perpetual virtual adjournment, and the unbroken sitting vacation of the Board of Trade." [Note: I can never forget the delight with which that diffusive and ingenious orator, Mr. Burke, was heard by all sides of the house, and even by those whose existence he proscribed. (Speech on the Bill of Reform, p. 72-80.) The Lords of Trade blushed at their insignificancy, and Mr. Eden's appeal to the 2,500 volumes ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... deglutition, dehiscence, delectable, delete, deleterious, delineate, deliquescent, demarcation, demimonde, demoniac, denizen, denouement, deprecate, depreciate, derelict, derogatory, despicable, desuetude, desultory, deteriorate, diacritical, diagnosis, diaphanous, diatribe, didactic, diffusive, dilatory, dilettante, dipsomania, dirigible, discommode, discretionary, discursive, disintegrate, disparity, dispensable, disseminate, dissimulation, dissonant, distain, divagation, divination, divulge, dolor, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Eternal Light of the Universe! what Adorations can express the grateful Acknowledgments of thy diffusive Bounty! Who can contemplate the beauty of thy Works, the Product of thy single Fiat, and not acknowledge thy Omnipotence, Omniscience, and extensive Goodness! What Tongue can refrain from singing thy Praise! What Heart ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... me, every way, an honest man. My wife and my children are the objects that have wholly taken up my heart; and as I am not invited or encouraged in anything which regards the public, I am easy under that neglect or envy of my past actions, and cheerfully contract that diffusive spirit within the interests of my own family. You are the head of us; and I stoop to a female reign as being naturally made the slave of beauty. But to prepare for our manner of living when we are again together, give me leave to say, while I am here at ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... of triumphal arches and memorial obelisks; but the sleep, the health, the innocence, the grateful vicissitudes of seasons, reproduce themselves in fruits and products enduring for generations, and overlooked by the slanderer only because they are too diffusive to be noticed as extraordinary, and benefiting by no light of contrast, simply because our own beneficence has swept away the ancient wretchedness that could have furnished that contrast. Ceylon, of itself, can reply victoriously to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... effect of exemplary behaviour in persons of exalted rank; their course as it is nobly distinguished, so it will be happily influential; others will catch the diffusive rays, and be ambitious to resemble a pattern so commanding. Their amiable qualities will not terminate in themselves, but we shall see them reflected ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... thoroughly. And he did possess decided talent, if not genius. But his artistic gift accorded with his character, and was controlled by judgement, correct taste, and intellectuality rather than by strong and erratic impulses. His aims were definite and decided rather than vague and diffusive; but his standards were so high that, thus far, he had scarcely attempted more than studies that were like the musician's scales by which he seeks to acquire a skill in touch that shall enable him to render justly the works of ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... of physical union, which has for its object the continuation of the species—it belongs to the mind as well as to the body. It warms, invigorates, and elevates every sentiment, every feeling; and in its highest, purest, most diffusive form unites us to God and all ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... energy of desire rushing in from the cold poles to be warmed and expanded at the tropics, where the all-moving sun pours his directest rays; that above charged with rich gifts from the Lord of light, glowing with heat drawn from Him, and made diffusive by His touch, spreading itself out beneficent and life-bringing into all colder lands, swathing the world in soft, warm folds, and turning the polar ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren |
