"Modify" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which we can ethically deduce explanations of conditions which were, in the past, not amenable to any classification. These relate to individual and racial characteristics. We are beginning to learn that we can modify these characteristics by proper selection, by environment, and by education. This process will, to an eminent degree, redound to the permanent advantage of mankind. We may reasonably aspire to a system of race-culture which will eliminate ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... a foreboding waiting to command her. She became more aware of Skrebensky. She knew he was waking up. She must modify her soul, depart from her ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... further preparation,—that caused him in the maturity of his renown, before Copenhagen, to write, "every hour's delay makes the enemy stronger; we shall never be so good a match for them as at this moment,"—that induced him at Trafalgar to modify his deliberately prepared plan in favor of one vastly more hazardous, but which seized and held the otherwise fleeting chance,—led him here also at San Juan, unknown, and scarcely more than a boy, to press ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... hypotheses are not likely to be sustained, and that the newly-ascertained facts do not call for any very radical interference with the traditional lines upon which the life of Columbus has heretofore been written.[407] At any rate there seems to be no likelihood of such interference as to modify our views of the causal sequence of events that led to the westward search for the Indies; and it is this relation of cause and effect that chiefly concerns us in a history of ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... interest me in him. I must see and know him. It might be of service to him and to all, Probus, methinks, if he could be brought to associate with those whose juster notions might influence his, and modify them to the ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... own point of view have a right to use, all the arts of obstruction and of Parliamentary intrigue. The battle of the Constitution must be fought out in Parliament, and if it is to be won, Englishmen may be compelled to forego for a time much useful legislation, to modify the rules of party government, and, it is possible, even the forms ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... him, after receiving his letters; and it may be supposed that the bombastic style of that epistle would not efface the unfavorable impression produced by Balthazar's exterior. The representations of Haultepenne and others induced him so far to modify his views as to send his confidential councillor, d'Assonleville, to the stranger, in order to learn the details of the scheme. Assonleville had accordingly an interview with Gerard, in which he requested the young man to draw up a statement ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Savonarola's contempt by sending rich gifts to the convent and by sending five of the chief citizens to him in order to induce him to modify the strain of his preaching. The gifts were immediately distributed among the poor, and Savonarola in a pulpit allusion observed that a faithful dog does not cease barking in his master's defence because a bone is flung him. To the five ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... discerned the true secret of his friend's comparative obscurity. Even while preparing for the bar, when they had agreed to go on alternate mornings to each other's lodgings to read together, Scott found it necessary to modify the arrangement by always visiting his friend, whom he usually found in bed. It was William Clerk who sat for the picture of Darsie Latimer, the hero of Redgauntlet,—whence we should suppose him to have been a lively, generous, susceptible, contentious, and rather helter-skelter ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... really arisen by the operation of natural conditions, we ought to be able to find those conditions now at work; we ought to be able to discover in nature some power adequate to modify any given kind of animal or plant in such a manner as to give rise to another kind, which would be admitted by naturalists as a distinct species. Lamarck imagined that he had discovered this 'vera ...
— The Darwinian Hypothesis • Thomas H. Huxley
... modify his enthusiasm by acknowledgment of inadequacies and devotes about a page of his long review to the correction of seven incorrect renderings. Teut. Merkur, ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... to a heat totally distinct from that which they possess as cooling bodies? And has it not also been proved by recent researches that the quality of the atmosphere may immensely affect its permeability to heat; and, consequently, profoundly modify the rate of cooling the globe as ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... announcing a "signal victory," by the blessing of God, "over the combined forces of the enemy." That is glory enough for a week. When Lee says "signal victory," we know exactly what it means, and we breathe freely. Our generals never modify their reports of victories. They see and know the extent of what has been done before they speak of it, and they never mislead ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... mouth be kept wide open and no other organ be allowed to modify or interrupt the sound a vowel is produced. In speech every part of the head that can be used is brought into action to modify these uninterrupted vibrations of vocal cords and air. The lips, the cheeks, the teeth, the tongue, the hard palate, the soft palate, the nasal cavity, all cooeperate ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... touching of pitch will defile still prevailed with him. He was a gentleman;—and would have felt himself disgraced to enter the house of such a one as Augustus Melmotte. Not all the duchesses in the peerage, or all the money in the city, could alter his notions or induce him to modify his conduct. But he knew that it would be useless for him to explain this to Lady Carbury. He trusted, however, that one of the family might be taught to appreciate the difference between honour and dishonour. Henrietta Carbury ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... study we observed that nerve pathways are affected not only by what enters over the sensory pathways, but also by what flows out over the motor pathways. As the nerve currents travel out from the motor centres in the brain to the muscles, they leave traces which modify future thoughts and actions. This being so, it is easy to see that what we give out is fully as important as what we take in; in other words, our expressions are just as important as our impressions. By expressions we ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... questions of policy which are doubtful enough to need argument is there any single consideration on which the whole case will turn. Human affairs are much complicated by cross interests, and many influences modify even ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... expression too. It is not true, however, that expression and impression are parallel and mutually corresponding beyond the elements. Suppose a concourse of columns covered by a roof,—the Parthenon. Those psychophysical changes induced by the sight now mutually check and modify each other. Can we say that there is a "meaning," like the energy of the column, corresponding to that complex? It is at least not energy itself. Ask the same as regards the lines and masses of a picture ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... the belief that the king can do no evil. The doctrine of decrees, as taught by the Calvinist, was the spiritual side of the assertion of the divine right of kings. On the other hand, when the people claim the right to rule, they modify their theology into Arminianism. From an age of the absolute rule of the king comes the doctrine of human depravity; and with the establishment of democracy appears the doctrine of man's ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... further provided by the act of Congress, approved June 4, 1897, entitled, "An act making appropriations for sundry civil expenses of the Government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1898, and for other purposes," that "The President is hereby authorized at any time to modify any Executive order that has been or may hereafter be made establishing any forest reserve, and by such modification may reduce the area or change the boundary lines of such reserve, or may vacate altogether any order ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... 7th, 1901) to a thing like this, and to begin discussions anew thereon on something that is very vague, will certainly land us in difficulties. I believe that we are entitled to hold you to the Middelburg proposals, which we can modify as ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... certain point. Up to that time it remained in the form of steam. But as soon as the first fluid water could be condensed from the envelope of steam, it began its geological action, and has continued down to the present day to modify the solid crust of the earth. The final outcome of this incessant action of the water—wearing down and dissolving the rocks in the form of rain, hail, snow, and ice, as running stream or boiling surge—is the formation of mud. As Huxley says in his admirable Lectures on ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... of Almeida, the grand Marshal Coutinho declared that, having come to India with the intention of destroying Calicut, he intended to turn to account the absence of the Zamorin from his capital. In vain the new viceroy endeavoured to modify his zeal and induce him to take the wise measures recommended by experience. Coutinho would listen to nothing, and Albuquerque was obliged to follow him. Calicut, taken by surprise, was easily set on fire; but the Portuguese, having lingered to pillage the Zamorin's palace, were fiercely attacked ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... imperfectly influence, and a large proportion of the external circumstances of his life lie wholly or mainly beyond his control. At the same time, every one recognises the power of skill, industry and perseverance to modify surrounding circumstances; the power of temperance and prudence to strengthen a naturally weak constitution, prolong life, and diminish the chances of disease; the power of education and private study to develop, sharpen and employ to the best advantage our intellectual ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.... It was, possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate, its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... forms a whole, all whose parts have an influence on one another, like the different organs of a single body. It is interesting to understand the affinities and antipathies implanted in everything by Nature, and then to put them into play. In this way one might be able to modify laws that ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... willing to endure a twenty-four-hours' martyrdom for the sake of half a million francs. But, as I have just had the honour to tell you, something which I will not attempt to explain prompted me at the last moment to modify my plan in one little respect. I thought it too soon to go back to the Rue Daunou within twenty-four hours of our well-contrived coup, and I did not altogether care for the idea of going myself to the ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... much is claimed. These foods are really substitutes for the inefficiency of the average mother. There is no real justification for their use. If all mothers were clean, faithful, and efficient, there is no reason why each one could not be taught to modify cow's milk to suit her child, just as satisfactorily, or more so, than a manufacturer who never saw her child. The manufacturers, however, do the work, and the naturally ignorant or lazy and inefficient mother, is willing to pay ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... its object the acknowledgment of past services, and the relief of the poor, no future occurrences can at all modify it. For the very reason that I know I could one day legally cancel the present free and deliberate act, I declare, that if ever I were to attempt such a thing, under any possible circumstances, I should deserve the contempt and horror of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... formation of these habitual modes of reaction being largely conditioned by outside influences, it is possible to control the process of their formation. For this reason, the educator is able to modify the child's natural reactions, and develop in their stead more valuable habits. No small part of the work of formal education, therefore, must consist in adding to the social efficiency of the child by endowing him with habits making for neatness, regularity, accuracy, obedience, ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... then, modify the first conclusion, that the blame of the war rests with the military class, by adding a second factor, namely, the rise and influence of the commercial class. These two classes, acting and reacting on ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... how reluctantly our Missionaries may have been, or may still be, to disturb, or alter, or modify the relations of the Churches at Amoy. But they conceive it to be their duty to say that feeling should never be allowed to take the place of conscience, nor to discharge its functions; and so long as our Missionaries claim to be subordinate to the authority ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage
... did not bring to light many results of lasting importance beyond making it evident that they were a refutation of the errors of his contemporaries, they contain various explanations of facts which modern science need not modify in any essential point, and discoveries which history has hitherto assigned to a ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... whatever reason, we make friends less easily. The main reason probably is that we acquire a point of view, and it is easier to keep to that, and fit people in who accommodate themselves to it, than to modify the point of view with reference to the new personalities. People who deal with life generously and large-heartedly go on multiplying relationships to ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... if heated in the flame in the platinum forceps, impart a rich green color to the outer flame. In fact, if any substance containing copper be submitted to the blowpipe flame, it will tinge it green, provided there be no other substance present to impart its own color to the flame, and thus modify or mar that of ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... STORY. Madam Filippa, being found by her husband with a lover of hers and brought to justice, delivereth herself with a prompt and pleasant answer and causeth modify the statute 306 ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... been able to dwell on the broad features of the country which it takes many ages to change or modify. From the earliest times we can record the settlers on this chosen spot must have looked out on the same hills and the same broad valley with its overarching sky. But then, instead of the "crown of gold" ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... A new treaty was concluded with China. Without abrogating the Burlingame treaty, it was agreed to modify it so far that the Government of the United States might regulate, limit, or suspend the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States or their residence therein, but that it should not absolutely ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... allowance for the existing life of the nation; that is our business, the business of the people who are" (he all but said "statesmen") "in the public service; but if need arises, don't be uneasy. Those institutions will modify that ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... to an end. Soon she would go back to those rock-bound shores of New England where in earlier days her ancestors had edified themselves with burning witches. She would pass out of his life but never out of his memory. His heart would go with her, but though it killed him he would never modify the rigors of his self-appointed exile from her presence until ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... man, and Una quite a woman, while Rosebud will be opening day by day in knowledge and deep interest. I hear that your pen is busy, and that from your tower you are looking upon old England and estimating her influences and the character of her people. Recent experiences must modify your judgment in many ways. A romance laid in England, painted as you only can paint, must be a great success. I struggle on, and only wish I were worthy the respect my ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the incorrect term 'centrifugal force,' proposes to 'modify, if not banish,' the old-fashioned astronomy. What is called centrifugal force is in truth only inertia. In the familiar instance of a body whirled round by a string, the breaking of the string no more implies ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... the very centre of this world. Touch it, and there is a responsive movement through the whole system of the world. Undoubtedly external circumstances rule in their turn over this same central pulsation: alter, arrange, and modify, these external circumstances as best you can, but he who, by the word he speaks or writes, can reach this central pulse immediately—is he idle, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... attitude might lead one to expect. Was he not among his own Northern Democrats at Freeport? And yet it seemed to give him a keen pleasure to call his hearers "Black Republicans." "Not black," came from the crowd again and again, and once a man: shouted, "Couldn't you modify it and call it brown?" "Not a whit!" cried the Judge, and dubbed them "Yankees," although himself a Vermonter by birth. He implied that most of these ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... I must modify the massacre of Manuel; he has been a good deal stabbed, but will, they say, recover.(849) Perhaps it is better that some of those assassins should live to acknowledge, that "Do not to others what you would not have done to you" is not so ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... venesection and cool douches. Cold water and acid drinks should be administered freely, so that sweat and other excretions may carry off poisonous materials. Care must be taken to watch the pulse, the breathing, the appearance of the feet, the evacuations from the bowels, and to modify therapy in accordance with these indications. The eruption is to be encouraged by external warmth and special care must be taken with regard to complications in the eyes, the ears, the nose, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... suppose that any considerable movement of opinion in Europe can be limited to the frontiers of one nation. Even at a time when it took half a generation for a thought to travel from one capital to another, a student or thinker in some obscure Italian, Swiss or German village was able to modify policy, to change the face of Europe and of mankind. Coming nearer to our time, it was the work of the encyclopaedists and earlier political questioners which made the French Revolution; and the effect of that Revolution ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... law, that use and disuse are powerful to modify organs, Lamarck is upon more solid ground, and can point to many instances of the visible effect of these factors of change. It is of course rather closely bound up with his second law and may even be regarded as an extension ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... professors of the geomantic art, who thrive on the ignorance of superstitious clients. They are called in to select propitious sites for houses and graves; and it often happens that if the fortunes of a family are failing, a geomancer will be invited to modify in some way the arrangement of the ancestral graveyard. Houses in a Chinese street are never built up so as to form a line of uniform height; every now and again one house must be a little higher or a little lower than its neighbour, or calamity will certainly ensue. It is impossible to walk ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... wound is not healed with the same plaister: if the accessions of the disease be vehement, modify them with soft remedies: be in all things wise as a serpent, but harmless ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... with building the body can, in turn, considerably modify its form, copying specially striking features found in the mother's thought; certain characteristic family traits, the Bourbon nose, for instance; those belonging to strangers in continual relationship with the mother, ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... was not the real, but the usual. Now the usual, of the sort thus despised, happens to represent the necessities of our organisms and of that wider organism which we call circumstances. We may modify it, always in the direction in which it tends spontaneously to evolve; but we cannot subvert it. You might as well try to subvert gravitation: "Je m'en suis apercu etant par terre," is the only result, as ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... heart warm and loving. Notwithstanding the stern realities that marked her path, there was a vein of romance in her nature which, unfortunately, attained more than healthful development, and while it often bore her into the Utopian realms of fancy, it was still impotent to modify, in any degree, the social difficulties with which she was forced to contend. Ah, there is a touching beauty in the radiant up-look of a girl just crossing the limits of youth, and commencing her journey through the checkered sphere ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... consumption. That Renoir, Raffaelli, and Toulouse-Lautrec owe much to Degas is the secret of Polichinello. This patient student of the Tuscan Primitives, of Holbein, Chardin, Delacroix, Ingres, and Manet—the precepts of Manet taught him to sweeten the wiriness of his modelling and modify his tendency to a certain hardness—was willing to trust to time for the verdict of his rare art. He associated daily with Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Whistler, Duranty, Fantin-Latour, and the crowd that first went to the Cafe Guerbois in ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... before the directors, meanwhile keeping his announcement of the three performances before the people. But the sale of tickets amounted to next to nothing, and Mr. Conried yielded with as much grace as possible, when on January 30th the directors refused to modify their action, though they expressed a willingness to recoup Mr. Conried for some of his expenses in mounting the opera. The directors who took this action were J. P. Morgan, William K. Vanderbilt, G. G. Haven, Charles Lanier, George ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... I found my predecessor (General Hovey) had issued an order permitting the departure south of all persons subject to the conscript law of the Southern Confederacy. Many applications have been made to me to modify this order, but I regarded it as a condition precedent by which I was bound in honor, and therefore I have made no changes or modifications; nor shall I determine what action I shall adopt in relation to persons unfriendly to our cause who remain after the time limited by General Hovey's ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... mammals is due to the chance opening of the soil in an obscure African region. It suggests to us that as geological exploration is extended, many similar discoveries may be made. The slenderness of the geological record is a defect that the future may considerably modify. ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... rate of revolution in all the plants observed by me, being nearly the same during the night and the day, I infer that the action of the light is confined to retarding one semicircle and accelerating the other, so as not to modify greatly the rate of the whole revolution. This action of the light is remarkable, when we reflect how little the leaves are developed on the young and thin revolving internodes. It is all the more remarkable, as botanists believe (Mohl, p. 119) that twining plants ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... was almost overwhelming—till thoughts of such an encounter came to modify her joy. She was only an unprotected girl—yet—she had no appearance of a woman! This must be her safeguard, should this man now approaching prove some rough, lawless being of ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... that though, when you are master of your art, you may modify your outline by making it dark in some parts, light in others, and even sometimes thick and sometimes slender, a scientifically accurate outline is perfectly equal throughout; and in your first practice ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... of the theories of Darwin were seen by him as by his critics, and he was ever willing to admit the doubt. None of his disciples was as ready to modify his opinions as he. "We must beware of making science dogmatic," ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... idiotic proportions, and her nose is placed entirely "out of drawing" and is obtrusively conspicuous when seen in profile. This type of woman is generally classified among the inquisitive, bright, and energetic. She should aim to modify the unhappy angularity of her profile as well as to repress her gossipy tendencies. The graduated coil of hair and waved coiffure, shown by No. 17, are most felicitous in their effect on this ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... of a nation of potters with a nation of carvers in wood would tend very decidedly to modify the utensils of the former. One example may be given which will illustrate the possibilities of such exotic influences upon form. In Fig. 473, a, we have an Alaskan vessel carved in wood. It represents ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... of personality in which not only individual but perhaps racial experience is bedded, we have the key to a vast range of obscure phenomena. Sidis believes that "strong permanent impressions or suggestions made on the reflex organic consciousness of the inferior centers may modify their functional disposition, induce trophic changes, and even change organic structure" and this in a sentence is probably what lies behind all faith and mental healing.—"The Psychology of Suggestion," ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... to think that nothing of this kind was necessary between Richard and her. Now she, too, began to lay little schemes by which, without his being aware of it, she might influence his judgment, divert or modify ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... called Lucretius on Life and Death. All these works indicate, if taken together, the nature of the fallacies—intellectual, religious, and social—which have in succession provoked them, which have not yet exhausted themselves, and which it has been the ambition of the writer to discredit or modify. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... from friendship we go forward to that which in all languages is emphatically called love, we shall still find ourselves dogged and attended by inequality. Nothing can be more certain, however we may seek to modify and abate it, than the inequality of the sexes. Let us attend to it as it ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... mode of the hour, even though it makes them look hideous. My aim would be to suggest the style rather unobtrusively, and clothe myself becomingly. I'm too egotistical to be ultra-fashionable. Since I, who am in love chiefly with myself, can so modify style, much more should you, who are devoted to nature, make fashion in ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... in the expressions of two faces,—one predominant in the lower and the other in the upper portion of the face. That there was any scientific basis for this was entirely unknown before my discoveries of the organs behind the face, which modify its development and expression. My lectures upon this subject in 1842 were attended by the physiognomical writer, Redfield, who derived ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... king received one of these protests two alternatives were open to him. He might recall the distasteful decree altogether or modify it so as to suit the court; or he could summon the parlement before him and in a solemn session (called a lit de justice) command it with his own mouth to register the law in its books. The parlement ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... and the States are prohibited from exercising this authority. But this power also is in fact controlled by the banks, and the revenue from imports increased or diminished, according to their action. Indeed, they can modify or repeal tariffs at their pleasure, for, they have only to inflate the circulation, and prices rise here to the extent of the duties, and the tariff becomes inoperative. Of all the branches of our industry, the manufacturing is injured most by a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... however (those obtained by Mrs. Dupont Lee), further evidence has caused me to modify my belief in their supernormal value, and I should now attach no "evidential value" to them at all, strictly speaking. In an excellent criticism of the Lee photographs, published in the Proceedings, Amer. S.P.R., vol. xiii. pp. 529-87, Dr. Walter F. ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... crackers, too, showed signs of running out. As an experiment I ordered eggs for breakfast once—but only once. The cook had evidently tried to serve them in disguise, believing that a large amount of cold grease would in some way modify their taste. He did not seem to have the least respect for old age. It was the time of cholera; the boat might have become a pesthouse any moment. But the steward assured us that the drinking water had been ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... the recollection of our most innocent enjoyment." Edward, as the mother's favorite, escaped her severity; but it fell upon Mary with double force, and was with her carried out with a thoroughness that laid its shortcomings bare, and consequently forced Mrs. Wollstonecraft to modify her treatment of her younger children. This concession on her part shows that she must have had their well-being at heart, even when her policy in their regard was most misguided, and that her unkindness was not, like her husband's cruelty, born ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... earth. The many legislators of this whole region are ever busily engaged in determining upon their policy and methods of operation, and in endeavoring to influence the law-making body of each government to create and modify laws in harmony with the underground ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... Much more conclusive as to the effect of his Latin training than the literary allusions are the numerous words of Latin origin either coined by Shakespeare, or used in such a way as to imply a knowledge of their derivation. The discovery of a lost translation may modify our views as to whether a particular author was used by him in the original, but the evidence from his use of Romance words gives clear proof that his schooling was no unimportant element in his mastery ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... well on his way the outraged husband had time to reflect, and the past few months rose vividly before him. He saw his own folly and did not spare himself in his condemnation; but this folly did not for an instant modify the guilt of the two fugitives. Every moment his injuries seemed more colossal, more unpardonable, more unendurable. He had been wounded in his affections and also in his vanity, which was far more dreadful, and an agonizing thirst for ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... until they have been heated in their passage over America, Asia, and Europe, and they contribute to raise the temperature of the atmosphere. The nearest land, ending in the points of the Cape of Good Hope, Patagonia, and Tasmania, does not modify the atmospheric currents." ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... read them in sequence, point out some of the characteristics of each of his four periods. Why is Shakespeare often called a great dramatic artist? How did his audience and manner of presentation of his plays modify his treatment ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... inspection of certain officers appointed by the university, and if an error was discovered, the copies were ordered to be burnt or a fine levied on them, proportionate to their inaccuracy. Harsh and stringent as this may appear at first sight, we shall modify our opinion, on recollecting that the student was in a great degree dependent upon the care of the transcribers for the fidelity of his copies, which rendered a rule of this nature almost indispensable; nor should we forget the great ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... cannot conscientiously take part in war; all I can do is to endeavour to modify its evil, and try to turn ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... can modify itself to arctic cold and Indian heat, to incessant labor or the long enervation of luxury, learns to endure. Unwilling dressing, lonely breakfast, the Subway, dull work, lunch, sleepiness after lunch, the hopelessness ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... another important question. Malthus now introduced a modification upon which his supporters laid great stress. In the new version the 'checks' which proportion population to means of subsistence are not simply 'vice and misery,' but 'moral restraint, vice, and misery.'[228] How, precisely, does this modify the theory? How are the different 'checks' related? What especially is meant by 'moral' in this connection? Malthus takes his ethical philosophy pretty much for granted, but is clearly a Utilitarian according to the version of Paley.[229] ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... before a tribunal that would execute its inexorable decree with a power from which there is no appeal. Mercy is not an attribute of war, either in its methods or decisions. The latter must stand in the end as against the conquered. From war there is no appeal but to war. Time and enlightenment may modify or alter the mandates of war, but in this age of civilization and knowledge, neither nations nor peoples move backward. Ground gained for freedom or humanity, in politics, science, literature, or religion, is held, and from this fresh advances may be made. Needless cruelty may be averted in ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... War Eagle told a queer yarn. I shall modify it somewhat, but in our own sacred history there is a similar tale, well known ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... to them. But I wouldn't have you obtrude them too ostentatiously—for your own sake, Le Breton, for your own sake, I assure you. Remember, you're a very young man yet: you have plenty of time before you to modify your opinions in: as you go on, you'll modify them—moderate them—bring them into harmony with the average opinions of ordinary parents. Don't commit yourself at present—that's all I would say to you—don't commit yourself at present. When ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... woodland outlines of the banks of Dartmouth Cove. In certain fits of prosaic humorism, he would, as we have seen, condemn himself to delineation of the parades of a watering-place; but the moment he permitted himself to be enthusiastic, vaster imaginations crowded in upon him: to modify his old conception in the least, was to exaggerate it; the mount of Pendennis is lifted into rivalship with Ehrenbreitstein, and hardworked Falmouth glitters along the distant bay, like the gay magnificence of ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... he exclaimed shrilly, "we are going too far. That the Blue Disease may modify the course of illness is conceivable, and seems to be supported by evidence. But to assume that it ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... them to wait upon her when she could just as well help herself. In this she proved firm. The consequence was, an entire change in Hannah's deportment towards her, and a cheerful performance by her of every thing she asked her to do. This could not but be observed by her mother, and it induced her to modify, to some extent, her way of treating her servants. The result was salutary, and now she has far less trouble with them than she ever had in her life. All, she finds, are not so worthless as she ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... potatoes to store cattle, since writing the above, I wish to modify the opinion I have expressed to a certain extent. I had a conversation with Mr Hope on the subject, and he states that his belief is, that potatoes are not prejudicial to the growth of store cattle ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... writing of stage matters, these words are often misused. To adapt a play is to modify its construction with the view of improving its form for representation. Plays translated from one language into another are usually more or less adapted; i. e., altered to suit the taste of the public before which the translation is to be represented. To dramatize is to ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... to explain it away, to modify its miseries, to extract its sting—whether they have come from the party of unbelief, or the party of education, or the party of amusement, have failed—and failed utterly. No matter what men say or do to get rid of it, there it is—staring them in the face! Whether they look ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... The Northern nations, like others, had to come to an understanding with themselves about their inherited myths, their traditional literary forms. One age after another helped in different ways to modify their beliefs, to change their literary taste. Practically, they had to find out what they were to think of the gods; poetically, what they were to put into their songs and stories. With problems of ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... servants in England, and the same class of men in the States; nor between the excellent stations in this country, and the wretched counterpart thereof in the Republic. Increased intercourse with Europe will, it is to be hoped, gradually modify these defects; but as long as they continue the absurd system of running only one class of carriage, the incongruous hustling together of humanities must totally prevent the travelling in America being as comfortable as that in ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... door. Then, his jaw dropped, his eyes widened. Next moment, he sprang to his feet, his face radiant with welcome. His phrases, in the excitement of this meeting, were the mountaineer's idioms, which new associations were beginning to modify in ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... that, if rumour carried to Mataafa the language I have heard used in my own house and before my own native servants, he would be highly justified in keeping clear of Apia and the whites. One gentleman whose opinion I respect, and am so bold as to hope I may in some points modify, will understand the allusion and appreciate my reserve. About the same time there occurred an incident, upon which I must be more particular. A was a gentleman who had long been an intimate of Mataafa's, and had recently (upon account, indeed, of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the whole guard with you; one naked wretch can't do much against eight armed men. And, listen; take the young gentleman also, and let him see what goes on; the experience may modify his views, but don't touch him without telling me. I have reports to write, and shall ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... which our shipping is subjected by the operation of these discriminating duties requires that they be met by suitable countervailing duties during your present session, power being at the same time vested in the President to modify or discontinue them as the discriminating duties on American vessels or their cargoes may be modified or discontinued at those islands. Intimations have been given to the Spanish Government that the United States may be obliged ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... generally states the time required for cooking its ingredients, but an approximate table is occasionally of use as giving a general idea of the time required for certain things. In any case, it is approximate only, for things should be cooked until done, and various conditions modify the time stated. The atmosphere, altitude, kind of oven or mode of heating employed, and the age of certain things, such as vegetables, all have to be considered, so that hard and fast ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... that is a most suggestive and significant fact. It will be the business of future critics to show in how far such falling back would of necessity modify what Mr Baildon has set down as his corner-stone of morality, and how far it was bound to modify the atmosphere—the purely egotistic, hedonistic, and artistic atmosphere, in which, in his earlier life as a novelist, at all events, he had been, on the whole, for long ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... "Since which time I have not been advertised by any man of anything which they would require to be altered" probably expresses the fate of most of the many requests for criticism that accompany translations, but does not essentially modify the impression he conveys of unusually favorable conditions for such work. One remembers that Tyndale originally anticipated with some confidence a residence in the Bishop of London's house while he translated the Bible. Thomas Wilson, again, says of his translation of some of the orations ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... modify his diet as follows, and then, I anticipate, he will cease to be troubled with his acid dyspepsia and flatulence. He should take his fruit alone, and take any of the crisp unsweetened Wallace "P.R." Biscuits in preference ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... transportation and the colonies in production of raw materials, the students see reason, though not necessarily justice, in the acts prohibiting Americans from various forms of manufacture and transportational activities. These new facts modify in the minds of students the point of view so often given in elementary courses, that the War for Independence was caused by sheer British meanness and injustice, by ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the government, they necessarily played a subordinate part in the senate, and were moreover kept in pecuniary dependence on the corporation through the economically important privilege of using the public pasture. The gradually recognized right of the patrician consuls to revise and modify the senatorial list at least every fourth year, ineffective as presumably it was over against the nobility, might very well be employed in their interest, and an obnoxious plebeian might by means of it be kept out of the senate or even ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... was moved by this affection for her, which she knew to be genuine; but what a fool her mother had been, what a weak reed, indeed, she was to lean upon! Cowperwood, when he conferred with Mrs. Carter, insisted that Berenice was quixotic, nervously awry, to wish to modify her state, to eschew society and invalidate her wondrous charm by any sort of professional life. By prearrangement with Mrs. Carter he hurried to Pocono at a time when he knew that Berenice was there alone. Ever since the Beales Chadsey incident ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... blue, or have dread or sorrow, or that undescribable something that makes you feel badly; when you have worry or trouble, then's the time to get hold of your thinking machinery, and modify the ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... Physicians modify their rules according to the violent longings that happen to sick persons, ordinarily with good success; this great desire cannot be imagined so strange and vicious, but that nature must have a hand in it. And then how easy a thing is it to satisfy ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... that the carriage is too heavy. I can only renew the representations contained in my letter of January 1, 1898, to the Adjutant General, accompanying drawing, etc., of my proposed carriage for machine guns. I would now, based on experience, modify my theory of organization as then proposed, and would make several changes in the model of carriage then proposed without departing ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... informed by others that about two years before there had been considerable fatality among children, as the consequence of a sort of epidemic at one of the northern camps. Admitting the correctness of these reports, I have no reason to modify my general statement that the health of the Seminole is good and that they are certainly increasing their number. Their appearance indicates excellent health and their environment is ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... historical results from central and peripheral location, continental and insular. It determines the amount of heat received from the sun, though air and ocean currents may redistribute that heat within certain limits, and humidity or aridity modify its effects. Still zonal distinctions remain. The great climatic regions of the earth, like the hot, wet equatorial belt or the warm, dry trade-wind belts or the cool, well-watered temperate zones, constitute, through the medium of their economic products and their climatically imposed methods ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... invisible. But, whatever were their advantages or disadvantages, at any rate it is good for us to call up in review things, which are now passed away, but which once occupied so large a share of the thoughts and attention of mankind, and in a great degree tended to modify their characters and ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... interesting in this connexion to study also first contact in its lists of articles, and the effects produced upon aboriginal minds and methods. For example, a tribe that would jump at iron arrow-heads stoutly declined to modify the shafts. Present material is such as the Indian tribes of the two Americas are making to-day. Spurious material includes all that mass of objects made by whites and sold as of Indian manufacture; some of it follows native models and methods; the rest is fraudulent and pernicious. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... that goes to the roots of the economic structure and modifies it (the food and shelter question in life) will inevitably modify every other branch and department of human life, political, ethical, religious and moral. This makes the social question primarily an economic one and all our thought and effort should be concentrated ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... of the animal will, of course, modify the digestibility of feeds, as will also the manner and time of harvesting, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... present state of mind this information was upsetting. It not only compelled him to modify his opinion of Rickman after having formed it, but it threw him back on the agony and responsibility of decision. On the last morning of the term allowed him for reflection he received that hurried note from Rickman, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... the Prophet Daniel. God chose to employ this mode to acquaint the holy Patriarch with the various revolutions which would take place in his Order, and he signified them to him by the statue itself, by the different metals of which it was composed, either thus to modify by these humiliating foreshowings the honor which he derived from being the Founder of so wonderful a work as that of the establishment of his Order; or to inspire him with the intention of sending up fervent prayers to heaven, which should draw down graces on his flock at all times, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... in the treatment of facts need hardly be stated, but they are few in number, not serious in import, and outbalanced by numerous cases in which it has been necessary to modify the description of incidents either too painful or horrible to be fully depicted. As a compensation for its occasional storical inaccuracy, His Natural Life is notably free of the melodramatic excesses that most young writers would have been ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... aliens from holding land in the state. As the act would apply almost solely to the Japanese, the federal government was placed in an embarrassing position. Under existing treaties the Japanese were granted equal rights with other aliens, but the states were able to modify the practical operation of treaty provisions, as California planned to do, by declaring certain aliens ineligible to citizenship and then placing particular restrictions upon them. The Secretary ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... great eagerness of expression and gesture, was urged by the Queen, much to the discomfiture of the envoys. In vain they attempted to modify and to explain. Their faltering excuses were swept rapidly away upon the current of royal wrath; until at last Elizabeth stormed herself into exhaustion and comparative tranquillity. She then dismissed them ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... driven three of my children half-mad—one sat up to twelve o'clock over it. My second son, the mathematician, thinks that you have omitted one almost inevitable deduction which apparently would modify the result. He has written out what he thinks, but I have not tried fully to understand him. I suppose that you do not care enough about the subject to like to see what ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... place of Mr. Podmore's first proposal it was eventually decided to modify the resolution of 7th November, 1883, by inserting the words 'to help on' between the words 'shall be' ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... conditions of employment in large establishments under the control of the government. In debates in Parliament, in testimony before government commissions of investigation, in petitions, pamphlets, and newspapers, the conditions of factory labor were described and discussed. Successive laws to modify these conditions were introduced into Parliament, debated at great length, amended, postponed, reintroduced, and in some ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... 1812, Hampton, Craney Island, White House, and various places on and near the Potomac, since identified with fierce encounters and forays in the war of the rebellion, witnessed gallant deeds in behalf of the Republic. In 1829 a convention assembled in Virginia to modify the Constitution. Long having the most extensive territory and largest slaveholders, the aristocratic element disturbed and overmastered democratic principles. During Cromwell's rule, when virtually independent, Virginia proffered a fleet to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... is only an individual's expression, in his own way, of opinions entertained by hundreds of the Medical Profession in every civilized country, and has nothing in it which on revision the writer sees cause to retract or modify. The superstitions it attacks lie at the very foundation of Homoeopathy, and of almost every form of medical charlatanism. Still the mere routinists and unthinking artisans in most callings dislike whatever shakes the dust out of their traditions, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... company, which has had a system of commutation fares in force for more than four years, shall abolish, alter, or modify the same, except for the regulation of the price charged for such commutation; and such price shall, in no case, be raised to an extent that shall alter the ratio between such commutation and the rates then charged for way fare, on the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... miseries comes dashed with a double portion of contempt. My griefs have nothing in them that is felt as sacred by the bystanders. Yet is my affliction, in truth, of the deepest grain—the heaviest task that was ever given to mortal patience to sustain. Time, that wears out all other sorrows, can never modify or soften mine. Here they must continue to gnaw as ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... a possible truth hidden somewhere within somewhat clumsy approximations, it must modify some of our generally accepted ideas. The life-process will appear, not a slow, interrupted, but substantially forward development from lower and simpler organisms to higher and more complex, with the end (if there be an end), beyond the very limits of eternity, but rather a swift ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... duration, disappearing spontaneously or as the result of treatment, in several hours or days; it may recur upon exposure to the exciting cause. The prognosis of chronic urticaria is to be guarded, and will depend upon the ability to discover and remove or modify ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... experience left its mark on her. She was never again quite the merry, thoughtless, utterly fearless child she had been. I tried, however, to take the good with the ill, remembering that thorough-going childhood cannot last for ever, that the shock possibly helped to soften and modify a nature that might have been too daring for perfect womanliness—still more, wanting perhaps in tenderness and sympathy for the weaknesses and tremors of ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... at Newcastle in 1746. (The Dublin edition of 1753 I have not seen.) Though d'Argens's purpose in Letter 35 may have been to advertise his own novel, what he had to say is interesting. Like many others, he could scoff at the heroic romances and yet borrow and quietly modify the doctrines of Ibrahim and Clelie. He proposed a still more "advanced" vraisemblance and decorum—psychological analysis tinged with cynicism rather than idealism; gallantry but against the background ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... pedal that the slightest urging of the key either upward or downward by the finger will shift the swell pedal and cause it to close or open as may be desired and to the desired extent. When an organ possesses four or five swell boxes, and when these swell boxes (as in the case of Hope-Jones' organs) modify the tone by many hundred per cent., it becomes highly important that the organist shall at all times have complete and instant control of the swell shutters and shall be conscious of their position ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... nothing for a long time. It was as if he were waiting for a question, a single prod from Paresi. But Paresi wouldn't give it. Paresi waited, just waited, with his dark face turned away, not helping, not pushing, not doing a single thing to modify the pressure that churned ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... progress of decorative elaboration is interfered with by forces from without the art. This occurs when ideas, symbolic or otherwise, come to be associated with the purely geometric figures, tending to arrest or modify their development, or, again, it occurs when the artist seeks to substitute mythologic subjects for the geometric units. This period cannot be always well defined, as the first steps in this direction are so thoroughly subordinated to the textile forces. Between ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... in reference to Calhoun's nullification doctrines. He would, if he could, have taken his State out of the Union, because he and the South did not like the tariff. He had the right, as a Senator in Congress, to bring all the influence he could command to compel Congress to modify the tariff, or abolish it altogether. And with this he ought to have been contented. With a solid South and a divided North, he could have compelled a favorable compromise, or prevented any legislation at all. It is legitimate legislation for members ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... how bacteria may behave when they have gained entrance to the body, what effects may be produced, and what circumstances may modify the disease in any particular case. The extreme instance of bacterial invasion is found in some of the septicaemias in the lower animals, e.g. anthrax septicaemia in guinea-pigs, pneumococcus septicaemia in rabbits. In such diseases ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... several ways of making single-eye cuttings. The most common form of the cutting is the single bud with an inch of wood above and below, the ends being cut with a slant. Some modify this form by cutting away the wood on the side opposite the bud, exposing the pith the whole length of the cutting. In another form, a square cut is made directly under the bud, leaving an inch and a half of wood above. Or this last form is modified by making a long sloping cut from ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... come when the United States should modify its present policy of excluding Chinese immigration. Thomas, p. ...
— Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Debate Index - Second Edition • Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh |
