"Nature" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Colin, by his second wife, was born when his father was only 24 years of age - say in 1270 - and the result of the Fitzgerald origin theory would be that Colin must have fought at the battle of Largs 7 years before, according to the laws of nature, he could have been born. In other words, he was not born, if born at all, for seven years after the battle of Largs, four years after the reputed charter of 1266, and 40 years subsequent to 1230, the last year in which either ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... and aspirations of her being. But there remained one knot to be untangled—she could not understand why the plain dress and white cap existed, she could not reconcile the utter simplicity of dress with the lavish beauty of the birds, flowers—all nature. ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... timbered with oak and pine, while in the distance, and separated from us by deep forests of these trees, might be seen a long ridge of snow-capped mountains—the lofty Sierra Nevada. But we were too anxious to reach the gold to care much about the more unprofitable beauties of Nature, and accordingly urged our horses to the quickest speed they could put forth. We were now travelling along the river's banks, and towards evening came in sight of the lower mines, here called the "Mormon" diggings, which occupy a surface of two or three miles along the river. There ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... him, looking more than usually fair and pretty in the mourning she wore for her grandfather. He could not help thinking, as he came in, how rich and handsome everything about her seemed, in contrast to the bare simplicity of his poorer friends—yet certainly nature had intended Lucia for a much more stately and magnificent person ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... offered me the best hut they possessed, and invited me to pass the night there. Being rather fatigued by the toilsome nature of my journey on foot, the heat, and the hunting excursion, I very joyfully accepted their proposition: the day, too, was drawing to a close, and I should not have been able to reach the settlement of the whites before ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... of nature, which impresses the beholder with silent awe. Observe the two heads and one body. See these fair faces, each one lovelier than the other. No one can gaze upon them without a double sensation 'of sorrow ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... receptivity. They must originate, or they are naught. Parents and children—they are all the same. I am convinced that there is no scholarship to be established here. It has been tried and the attempt has failed a hundred times. It's not in the nature of things. Get on the good side of them, that's all. That has failed sometimes, but it is not among the impossible things. Get on ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... disentangle myself from great bewilderment concerning their state in the sight of God: for it was an essential part of my Calvinistic Creed, that (as one of the 39 Articles states it) the very good works of the unregenerate "undoubtedly have the nature of sin," as indeed the very nature with which they were born "deserveth God's wrath and damnation." I began to mourn over the unlovely conduct into which I had been betrayed by this creed, long before I could thoroughly get rid of the creed that justified it: and ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... fear involves the discovery of right relations, mental or concrete, and the placing of self in those right conditions which are determined and provided for by the ground- plan of our nature. ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... When you parted from him after the minuet he stood and watched you, for a moment or two, with a look which gave me to understand that something had happened between you. It was only natural, was it not? that I should make a shrewd guess as to the nature of that 'something.' I thereupon engaged the young man in a long and animated conversation—we discussed Herr Gluck's singular success in London—until a lady claimed his ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... sometimes questioned by his intimate acquaintances as to his English friend, and to them he replied, "Monsieur Wyatt is the son of a colonel in the English army. He has rendered me a very great service, the nature of which I am not at liberty to disclose. Suffice that the obligation is a great one, and that I regard him as one of my dearest friends. Some day, possibly, my lips may be unsealed, but you must at present be content to take ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... of stubble encompassing the field grew wider with each circuit, and the standing corn was reduced to a smaller area as the morning wore on. Rabbits, hares, snakes, rats, mice, retreated inwards as into a fastness, unaware of the ephemeral nature of their refuge, and of the doom that awaited them later in the day when, their covert shrinking to a more and more horrible narrowness, they were huddled together, friends and foes, till the last few yards of upright wheat fell also under the teeth ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... country nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him. He loved to lie in the very center of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation of nature found no place among his many gifts, and his only change was when he turned his mind from the evil-doer of the town to track down ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Highlanders took to it badly for many a day. They were aye, for a time, driving their cattle through the town on the Lord's day or stravaiging about the roads and woods, or drinking and listening to pipers piping in the change-houses at time of sermon, fond, as all our people are by nature, of the hearty open air, and the smell of woods, and lusty sounds like the swing of the seas and pipers playing old tunes. Out would come elders and deacons to scour the streets and change-houses for them, driving them, as if with scourges, into ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... massed guns could not be spared to blaze a path towards Verdun, desperate fighting held up the advance of the Germans. At Herbebois and Ornes and on to Bezonvaux there was hand-to-hand fighting of the most desperate nature, while at Maucourt—an advance position held by the French—terrific execution was done to the masses of troops hurled forward by the Germans. Here masked French quick-firing guns caught German columns of attack, twenty men abreast and hundreds deep, at close range, and blew them into ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... scarcely left Valladolid when the passionate boy's extremely dangerous tastes burst forth with renewed violence. The recluse student of human nature had probably perceived them, for when his tutor, and especially the young evildoer's aunt, Juana, the Emperor Charles's daughter, earnestly entreated him to let the grandson, whose presence would disturb him very little, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... had stepped round the corner; all would be quiet, he would take the opportunity of going off to gather a few sticks for firewood, and then when he returned the others would be sweeping up the blood. This ill-luck had given a gentle melancholy to his countenance, but instead of souring his nature had sweetened it, so that he was quite the humblest of the boys. Poor kind Tootles, there is danger in the air for you to-night. Take care lest an adventure is now offered you, which, if accepted, will plunge you in deepest woe. Tootles, the ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... keep well, and don't worry too much ahead. There, don't cry! I loathe tears! You will yourself, when you have to deal with silly, hysterical girls. Come, I'll promise I won't poison you any more—at least, I'll do my best; but I've a grumbling nature, and you'd better realise it, once for all, and take no notice. We'll get on all right. I like you. I'm glad you came. My good girl, if you don't stop, I'll ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... on cheap labor, which the bulldozing whites will not readily furnish, the wealthy southerners must finally reach the position of regarding themselves and the negroes as having a community of interests which each must promote. "Nature itself in those States," Douglass said, "came to the rescue of the negro. He had labor, the South wanted it, and must have it or perish. Since he was free he could then give it, or withhold it; use it where he was, or take it elsewhere, as he pleased. His labor made ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... of a magician who conjured up a garden in the winter time. The wand of the wizard, however, is not necessary to disclose even in a northern climate in the cold months the beautiful contents of Nature's world. The varieties of evergreen, pine, hemlock, fir, cedar, and larch provide a variety of green foliage through the dreary weather. The rich, clustering berries, besides their ornamental character, furnish food for the snowbirds. ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... and his political knowledge were inherited by his son, Anthony Perenot, who in his early years gave proofs of the great capacity which subsequently opened to him so distinguished a career. Anthony had cultivated at several colleges the talents with which nature had so lavishly endowed him, and in some respects had an advantage over his father. He soon showed that his own abilities were sufficient to maintain the advantageous position which the merits of another had procured him. He was twenty-four years old when the Emperor sent him as ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... morning. Here, papa, look what a beautiful posy of wild flowers I have gathered. See, the dew is still upon them. How lovely they are! To my fancy, now, these uncultivated productions of nature have more charms than the whole garden can equal. Why can we not all be like these flowers, simple and inartificial, with the stamp of nature and truth ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... that papah and thothe envelopes and carry them to yondah dethk." Oh, the poor miserable, contemptible American monkey! He couldn't carry paper and envelopes twenty feet. I suppose he could not get his arms down. I have no pity for such travesties of human nature. If you have no capital, I am glad of it You don't need capital; you need ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... as grass-blades in a meadow, over its whole expanse. It is strange how they came there. Only black-jacks and the lighter decidua which cover such sandy ridges had grown there before, but after these were cleared away by the hand of man and the plow for a few years had tickled the thin soil, when nature again resumed her sway, she sent a countless army of evergreens, of mysterious origin, to take and hold this desecrated portion of her domain. They sprang up between the corn-rows before the stalks had disappeared from sight; they shot through the charred embers of the deserted ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... NATURE. In the literature of the world the two subjects of abiding poetic interest are nature and human nature; but as these subjects appear in Colonial records they are uniformly prosaic, and the reason is very simple. Before nature can be the theme of poets she must assume her ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... agriculture of the neighborhood and the improvement of it. Lecturers from Cornell University are brought throughout the year into the country community to take up in succession the various aspects of farming which may be improved. The market is studied, by chemical analysis the nature of the soil is determined, and the possibilities of the community are raised to their highest value ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... unabated, but he was still shaken by the fact that his mother was seriously ill. With Sally in his arms he whispered or murmured alternately professions of love and anxiety. She was all the time secretly astonished at his devotion to Madam, because it corresponded to nothing in her own nature; but she comforted Gaga because it was her impulse to do so. She did not dislike him in this mood. She felt pity for him. It was only for his tremulous persistency in caress that Sally felt contempt. Gradually she began to be able to divert his mind ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... somewhat more than three times as many in circumference. Its thickness is eight yojanas, it is greatest in the middle, and decreases towards the margin, till it is thinner than the wing of a fly. This place, by nature pure, consisting of white gold, resembles in form an open umbrella, as has been said by the ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler
... to see a specimen of your skill as an archer," replied Gessler. "I am told that you are the best marksman in all Uri; and, therefore, your life being forfeited by your presumptuous act of disobedience, I am inclined, out of the clemency of my nature, to allow you a chance of saving it. This you may do, if you can shoot an arrow so truly aimed as to cleave the apple upon thy boy's head. But if thou either miss the apple, or slay the child, then shall the sentence of ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... undulating central plateau contains water catchment area and nature preserve lowest point: Singapore Strait 0 m highest point: Bukit ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... that your ideas in certain quarters have undergone some little change. You are as different from the Isaacs I knew at first as Philip drunk was different from Philip sober. Such is human nature—scoffing at women the one day, and risking life and soul for ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... left him to face the problems of the day with a new sense of helplessness—the first confused sensation that hers was the stronger nature, the dominant personality—although he did not ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... Jack, showing no sign of changing his mind. "I'll willingly take chances with nature rather than the perfidy and treachery of mankind. Somehow, I can't believe that we're ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... was well alive to the fact that Madame Hsing was, by nature, simple and weak-minded, and that all she knew was to adulate Chia She so as to ensure her own safety. That she was, in the next place, ever ready, so greedy was she, to grasp as much hard cash and as many effects, as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... beg a pair of his socks from Mrs. Grayson, for all of Tiny's that had not been borrowed were away at the laundry. And in that collection of clothes Tiny had to go and sit in the Judges' box at the Stunts, but her good nature was not ruffled one whit on ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... impossible, that the law of cause and effect is merely a phase of the law of chance, that no infallible predictions can ever be made, and that what science used to call natural laws are really only descriptions of the way in which the human mind perceives nature. In other words, the character of the world depends entirely on the mind observing it, or, to return to my earlier statement, the point ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... it was Nature that aroused me, or whether it was Mr. Gow. Anyway I woke up with the distinct impression that somebody was hailing the boat, and thrusting my head up through the hatch I discovered my faithful retainer standing on ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... his dominion there were no horses; nor were the people ever inured to battle or arms, or military service of any kind. Yet the province of Manzi is very strong by nature, and all the cities are encompassed by sheets of water of great depth, and more than an arblast-shot in width; so that the country never would have been lost, had the people but been soldiers. But that is just what they were not; so lost ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... me," Charley Loughran, the xeno-naturalist, said. "I want a chance to study the life-forms in a state of nature." ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... position, heightened by every terror that man and nature can command, and even the intrepid dwarf, who feared neither death nor devil, and over whom religious doubts had no power, began to feel its chilling influence grip his heart. As for Francisco, such mind as he had left to him was taken up with fervent prayer, so it is possible ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... because she is a solitary Titanic spirit, refuse all help and solace. She gets up one morning, insists on dressing herself, and dies; and the youngest sister follows her but more slowly and tranquilly, as beseems her gentler nature. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... institutions that deal so largely in the sensational elements and appeal so strongly to the passions. I am told that the cheap theater is the poor man's club. I very much doubt if that is its chief function or, rather, that its chief result is a wholesome quickening of the better nature of this poor man—that its chief accomplishment is to send him back to his home kinder, truer, and stronger, thru either the relaxation or the instruction, to grapple with the difficulties of life. I greatly fear that, as usually ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... arrow, from one side of the pool to the other, at the same instant discolouring the water with a dark chestnut-brown ink. These animals also escape detection by a very extraordinary, chameleon-like power of changing their colour. They appear to vary their tints according to the nature of the ground over which they pass: when in deep water, their general shade was brownish purple, but when placed on the land, or in shallow water, this dark tint changed into one of a yellowish green. The colour, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Duryodhana, to this history, with all these lords of earth, as to why I will not slay Sikhandin even if I behold him in battle! My father, Santanu, O king, was celebrated over all the world. O bull of the Bharata race, that king of virtuous soul paid his debt to nature in time. Observing my pledge, O chief of the Bharatas, I then installed my brother, Chitrangada, on the throne of the extensive kingdom of the Kurus. After Chitrangada's demise, obedient to the counsels ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Nicholas returned, and sat down to supper. Gradually his good nature returned, and he told them what he had seen in Chichester, and the talk he had heard. How it was reported to his lordship the Bishop that the old religion was still the religion of the people's hearts—how, for example, at Lindfield they had all the images and the altar furniture ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... chairs, with Secretaries and Treasurers by their sides; and to whatever observations were made the most implicit attention was paid. Here, an eloquent Lecturer was declaiming upon the beauty of morality, and the deformity of vice: there, a scientific Professor was unlocking the hidden treasures of nature, and explaining how Providence, in all its measures, was equally wonderful and wise. The experiments which ensued, and which corroborated his ingenious and profound remarks, suspended a well-informed audience in rapturous attention; which was ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... With His justice, because by His Passion Christ made satisfaction for the sin of the human race; and so man was set free by Christ's justice: and with His mercy, for since man of himself could not satisfy for the sin of all human nature, as was said above (Q. 1, A. 2), God gave him His Son to satisfy for him, according to Rom. 3:24, 25: "Being justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature! With respect to crossing, from one sentence in your letter I think you misunderstand me. I am very far from believing in hybrids: only in crossing of the same species or of close varieties. These two or three last days I have ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... yet all was told as having taken place only to-day or yesterday. They therefore had to form for themselves greater illusions than I could have palmed off upon them. If I had not gradually learned, in accordance with the instincts of my nature, to work up these visions and conceits into artistic forms, such vain-glorious beginnings could not have gone on without producing evil consequences for myself in ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... went on. They read aloud with Mrs. Benjamin; they studied and learned, first hand, of Nature's prodigality or niggardliness. Always there was the cultivation of the spirit. Love and fair dealing made the foundation upon which these simple Quaker folk had builded their lives, and no one could live in ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... could easily obtain allies to the hurt of their enemies and the advantage of themselves, the dissatisfied party were only too ready to invoke foreign aid. And revolution brought upon the cities of Hellas many terrible calamities, such as have been and always will be while human nature remains the same, but which are more or less aggravated and differ in character with every new combination of circumstances. In peace and prosperity both states and individuals are actuated by higher motives, because they do not fall under the dominion of imperious necessities; but war ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... know how Flipper is to occupy his time. The usual employments of young lieutenants are of a social nature, such as leading the German at Narraganset Pier and officiating in select private theatricals in the great haunts of Fashion. Flipper is described as a little bow-legged grif of the most darkly coppery hue, and of a general pattern that even the most enthusiastic would find ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... always thought myself that line was not quite fair to the dogs either, but the verses mean that we mustn't blame animals for doing things that it is their nature to do." ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... together into one harmonious whole. Now we know that suffering, misery, and poverty are a violation of God's will. Now we know that the fulness of time has come for us to cast the last relic of our fallen nature from us and to follow the beckoning angel who is waiting to lead us back through the gates of Paradise into an Eden of ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... the treachery of the captain of the Mayflower, who, they assert, was bribed by the Dutch to land them at a distance from the Hudson river. This has been shown, over and over again, to have been a calumny; and, if any farther evidence were requisite, it is now furnished, of a most conclusive nature, by the petition in behalf of the Rev. Mr. Robinson's congregation, of Feb. 1620, and the rejection of its ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... near the coast-line. The highest appreciations of Nature's thunderous forces are conceived, I believe, in the muffled seclusion of the study. I had heard of still-rooms. I did not quite know what they were; but they seemed to me an indispensable part of seaside lodgings, and for the rest of that night I ardently and almost ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... explanation as to how the fatal wound had been inflicted. It appeared at the inquest that the unfortunate man had shot himself in such a peculiar manner as to cause considerable doubt as to whether he had been murdered or had died by his own hand. Evidence, however, of a most convincing nature had ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... savages know the deadly nature of the white man's rifle, although at that time they had not themselves become possessed of it. When their comrades fell, and the two white men were seen to kneel and take deliberate aim at those who followed, the whole party ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... mouldering walls and a tottering house warned him to depart. He was recovering from his dread malady, and beginning to feel the pleasures and inconveniences of authorship and fame. The most amusing proof of his celebrity and his good nature is thus ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... India-rubber pure and simple, he concluded that a compound of some substance with India-rubber could alone render the gum available. He was correct in this conjecture, but it remained to be discovered whether there was such a substance in nature. He tried everything he could think of. For a short time he was elated with the result of his experiments with magnesia, mixing half a pound of magnesia with a pound of gum. This compound had the advantage of being whiter than the pure sap. It was so firm that he used it as leather ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... of military science and precedent, he drew from them principles and suggestions, and so adapted them to novel conditions that his campaigns will continue to be the profitable study of the military profession throughout the world. His genial nature made him comrade to every soldier of the great Union Army. No presence was so welcome and inspiring at the camp fire or commandery as his. His career was complete; his honors were full. He had received from ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... to yawn. He did not really want to go to bed as long as the others were up; but tired nature was getting the best of his good intentions. And besides, he had gone through quite a little stress while trying so furiously to climb that rope, so that his muscles were actually sore, though he refrained from telling his chum so, not wishing to be considered ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... dropsy dilutes it—renders it not only so much less injurious, but tends powerfully to its removal. The thirst of the patient is in perfect harmony with this truth, as all natural symptoms are ever in harmony with nature. If there are convulsive attacks, they are the result of used-up matter returning into the circulation, and reaching even the brain and central parts of the nervous system. The cure is gained when the defective organs are brought to act well. It is shortsighted ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... live and die with the undisputed reputation of being good fellows—your friends and mine—who, if put to the test, would fail miserably. Fortunate is that man to whom it is not given to test all of his friends. This is not cynicism; it is only human nature; and I love human nature, being myself possessed of so much of it. I admire it when it stands firmly upon its legs, and I love it when it wabbles. But when it gains power with increasing odds, grows big with ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... holy Durvasa gave me a boon in the form of an invocation consisting of mantras. Long reflecting with a trembling heart on the strength or weakness of those mantras and the power also of the Brahmana's words, and in consequence also of my disposition as a woman, and my nature as a girl of unripe years, deliberating repeatedly and while guarded by a confidential nurse and surrounded by my waiting-maids, and thinking also of how not to incur any reproach, how to maintain the honour of my father, and how I myself might have an accession of good fortune ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... not forbear to contrast it with the gorgeous parades and reviews held in honor of himself—with the brilliant uniforms, the music, the banners, and the marching. It was an ugly and sickening business: to all that was artistic in his nature, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... in the common consciousness, it changes but little in character. The common consciousness itself changes with exceeding slowness; it retains what it has received with a conservatism like that of children's minds; and, what it adds must, from the nature of the case, be modelled on that which it has received, and be of a piece with it. But, though the common consciousness changes but slowly, it does change: with the change from savagery to civilisation there goes moral development. Some of the myths, which are re-told ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... reflected upon it, had certain elements of terror. Here again, under another disguise, was the force that he had feared in London—the force that had sent Dom Adrian noiselessly out of life, that proposed to deal with refractory instincts in human nature—such as manifested themselves in Socialism—as a householder might deal with a plague of mice, drastically and irresistibly; the force that moved the wheels and drove the soundless engines of that tremendous social-religious machine of which he too ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... — N. affections, affect; character, qualities, disposition, nature, spirit, tone; temper, temperament; diathesis[obs3], idiosyncrasy; cast of mind, cast of soul, habit of mind, habit of soul, frame of mind, frame of soul; predilection, turn, natural turn of mind; bent, bias, predisposition, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... that gigantic tapir, which concealed itself behind rocks, ready to do battle for its prey with the Anoplotherium, a singular animal partaking of the nature of the rhinoceros, the horse, the hippopotamus and ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... them. Sin is not a thing; there is no existing object corresponding to any of the mere counter-words that are properly named abstract nouns. One can no more hate sin or love virtue than one can hate a vacuum (which Nature—itself imaginary—was once by the scientists of the period solemnly held to do) or love one of the three dimensions. We may think that while loving a sinner we hate the sin, but that is not so; if anything is hated it is other ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... sound of voices could be made out. They were human voices, but their intonations, as they came nearer, were sufficient to show that the language was not that of civilized people. They were more in the nature of successive grunts, not much more definable than the noises ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... instinct in her that moved her to foster and champion Hildreth and me ... an instinct that made her gather in every stray cat she found on the road ... she is the only person I have ever known who could break through the reserve of the cat's nature, and make it as fond and sentimental as a ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... the world's interpreter, The man that taught me Nature's unknown tongue, And to the notes of her wild dulcimer First ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... by nature, gifted with a fickle disposition; to-day, he would incline to the east, and to-morrow to the west, so that having recently obtained new friends, he put Hsiang Lin and Yue Ai aside. Chin Jung too was at one ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... leaves, and winning sweet music from the tiny voices, which responded in glee to their salutations. Often they lifted the soft hair from the brows of the children, and frolicked amid their curls, and fanned their sun-burnt cheeks. It was a morning which all nature enjoyed. There could not have been a finer day to start upon a journey. As birds do not need a change of dress, there was no trunk to pack, and no travelling-bag to be laden with comforts. All the preparation necessary ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... anxiety regarding the fate of our messengers. We feared that they had been captured and beheaded. We had retired in despair to our fortress. It was 10 P.M. We were worn out and ready to turn in. Our fire at the bottom of the creek was slowly dying out. Nature around us was as still and silent as death. I suddenly heard sounds of approaching steps. We listened, peeping through the narrow openings in our wall. Were these Tibetans trying to surprise us in our sleep or were they my ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... several memorials, containing accusations of M. de Choiseul, and revealed some curious circumstances relative to the secret functions of the Comte de Broglie. These, however, led rather to conjectures than to certainty, as to the nature of the services he rendered to the King. Lastly, he shewed me several letters in the King's handwriting. "I request," said he, "that the Marquise de Pompadour will procure for me the place of Receiver-General ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... as these permutations are concerned, Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin may be regarded as most nearly resembling the primitive Aryan speech, and with them the Celtic dialects mainly agree. From these, the English varies one degree, the High German two. The following table represents the nature of such changes approximately for these ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... presently left her, however, Miss Rutledge sat pondering over the intricacies of girl nature. Hailing from the far West she was inclined to view the world from a man's standpoint. She was, therefore, wholly in sympathy with a girl who could sturdily fight her own battles without asking help of anyone. She could almost wish that the ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... drifted to the level of the stone fences or curling over their tops in a lip of frosted silver; snow banked high on either side of the road, or lying heavy on the pines and the hemlocks in the woods, where the air seemed, by comparison, as warm as a conservatory. It was beautiful beyond expression, Nature's boldest sketch in black and white, done with a Japanese disregard of perspective, and daringly altered from time to time by the restless pencils ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... to the admission of Wyoming is the suffrage article in the constitution. I am unalterably opposed to female suffrage in any form. It can only result in the end in unsexing and degrading the womanhood of America. It is emphatically a reform against nature.... I have no doubt that in Wyoming to-day women vote in as many [different] precincts as they can reach on horseback or on foot after changing their frocks and bustles.... Tennessee has not yet adopted any of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the soft green of Holliday's Hill, with the purple distance beyond, and the glint of the river, it seemed to him that to be shut up with a Webster's spelling-book and a cross old maid was more than human nature could bear. Among the records preserved from that far-off day there remains a yellow slip, whereon in neat old-fashioned penmanship ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... March night, to feel once more the free streets, which alone carry the atmosphere of unprivileged humanity. The mood of the evening was doubtless foolish, boyish, but it was none the less keen and convincing. He had never before had the inner, unknown elements of his nature so stirred; had never felt this blind, raging protest. It was a muddle of impressions: the picture of the poor soul with his clamor for a job; the satisfied, brutal egotism of Brome Porter, who lived as if ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... or to the distinctive character, of the punishment; but the mere fact is stated in a manner to fill the conscience with awe and to stamp the practical lesson vividly on the memory. But admitting the clauses apparently descriptive of the nature of this retribution to be metaphorical, yet what shall we think of its duration? Is it absolutely unending? There is nothing in the record to enable a candid inquirer to answer that question decisively. So far as the letter of Scripture is concerned, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... to acknowledge the blessed influence which other creatures felt. We sat beneath the shade of a small plantation to enjoy the scene, and then, with spirits unconsciously elevated, and hearts not, I trust, insensible to the glories of nature, and the goodness of nature's God, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... perhaps owes much of its charm to the contrast it makes with the severity of military lines. Even the great west window looks like an afterthought; one's instinct asks for a blank wall. Yet, from the ground up to the cross on the spire, one feels the Norman nature throughout, animating the whole, uniting it all, and crowding into it an intelligent variety of original motives that would build a dozen churches of late Gothic. Nothing about it is stereotyped or conventional,—not even ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... set the table on a roar," as the feasters at a hundred tables, from "Casey's Table d'Hote" to the banquets of the opulent East, now rise to testify. But Shakespeare plainly reveals, concerning Yorick, that mirth was not his sole attribute,—that his motley covered the sweetest nature and the tenderest heart. It could be no otherwise with one who loved and comprehended childhood and whom the children loved. And what does Hamlet say?—"He hath borne me upon his back a thousand times ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... could have found it consistent with my duty to my own reputation to leave such an elaborate impeachment of my moral nature unanswered, my duty to my Brethren in the Catholic Priesthood, would have forbidden such a course. They were involved in the charges which this writer, all along, from the original passage in the ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... were not a people to be trifled with, and in order to properly impress them with their superiority, they told them that John Bull desired a treaty with them. The officers got them to sit in line in front of a cannon, the nature of which instrument was unknown to them, and during the talk the gun was fired, mowing down so many of the red people that the survivors took to flight, leaving the English masters at the north shore, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... don't want to go on no cruise that threatens danger," cried Ben, hoping in this way to elicit something as to the nature of Barr's plans, but he was unsuccessful. The other merely shrugged his ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... had come far beyond the southernmost boundary of their hunting grounds. Philip was sufficiently acquainted with the Eskimos to know that in their veins ran very little of the red-blooded passion of the white man. Matehood was more of a necessity imposed by nature than a joy in their existence, and it was impossible for him to believe that even Celie Armin's beauty had roused the desire ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... dangerous insect which fixes itself in the feet, bores holes in the skin, and lays its eggs there. These, if not extracted, (which extraction by the by is a most painful operation) cause first an intolerable itching, and subsequently sores and ulcers of a sufficiently serious nature to entail the loss of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... amor nature legibus orbem Subdit, et vnanimes concitat esse feras: Huius enim mundi Princeps amor esse videtur, Cuius eget diues, pauper et omnis ope. Sunt in agone pares amor et fortuna, que cecas Plebis ad insidias vertit vterque rotas. Est amor egra salus, vexata quies, pius error, ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... elephants disported their ungainly masses in the sunlight. Circling above us in anxious haste, sea-birds of many varieties gave warning of our near approach to their nests. It was the invasion by man of an exquisite scene of primitive nature. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... curiosities of Washington about this time was the studio of Messrs. Moore & Ward, in one of the committee-rooms at the Capitol, where likenesses were taken—as the advertisement read— "with the Daguerreotype, or Pencil of Nature." The "likenesses, by diffused light, could be taken by them in any kind of weather during the daytime, and sitters were not subjected to the slightest inconvenience or unpleasant sensation." The new discovery gradually ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... sorrows of our fellow-men, a magnanimous acceptance of privation or suffering for ourselves when it is the condition of good to others, in a word, the extension and intensification of our sympathetic nature—we think it of some importance to contend that they have no more direct relation to the belief in a future state than the interchange of gases in the lungs has to the plurality of worlds. Nay, to us it is conceivable that in some ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... years he and she lived together in a union called ideal by ignorant enthusiasts and high-minded cranks. Then she drooped and died—victim of the revolt of outraged Nature. A little before the end they sent for me. I said to the man: 'A child would have saved her!' And he—I can hear him now, answering: 'Ah! but that would have nullified all the use and purpose of our example for humanity.' ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... but because it is of interest and profit to know what the Ancient Intellect thought upon these subjects, and because nothing so conclusively proves the radical difference between our human and the animal nature, as the capacity of the human mind to entertain such speculations in regard to itself and the Deity. But as to these opinions themselves, we may say, in the words of the learned Canonist, Ludovicus Gomez: "Opiniones secundum ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... when the tale opens, but the way in which he takes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the great Limberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs to the charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "The Angel" are full ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... your partner in the dance of life; for, as Mahomet used to say, in his jocular moods, 'those who will dance must pay the fiddler.' To be tied, forever, for better, for worse, to such a —— as Amina Ghoul, is to be transformed in one's whole nature. It is the transmigration of a soul from amiability to peevishness, from activity to discouragement, from love to hate, and from high-souled sentiment to the dog-kennel of humility. Go ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... he did it, however," said Nimmie Amee calmly, "and I married him because he resembled you both. I won't say he is a husband to be proud of, because he has a mixed nature and isn't always an agreeable companion. There are times when I have to chide him gently, both with my tongue and with my broomstick. But he is my husband, and I must ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... administration of tortures. Instruments and tools of all sorts lay about in every direction, bottles were stored on a shelf in one corner, whether containing medical material, or stuff of a more deadly nature, George had no means of discovering. In another corner of the dungeon stood a brick forge, with various irons scattered about on it, which were doubtless used for branding purposes. His attention was drawn to a pile of manacles ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... nature, mature, leisure, valuable, safety, again, virtue, ancient, weather, history, poetry, mother, genuine, earliest, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... preserved with a care very seldom bestowed on childish compositions; and the value set upon his letters by those with whom he corresponded naturally enough increased as years went on. And in the next place he was by nature so incapable of affectation or concealment that he could not write otherwise than as he felt, and, to one person at least, could never refrain from writing all that he felt; so that we may read in his letters, as in a clear mirror, his opinions ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... She had not foreseen this. Nature herself was playing her a horrible, cruel trick. Percy was in danger, and she could not go to him, because the wind happened to blow from the coast ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... People, I must once more return to the Island before I quit it altogether, which, notwithstanding nature hath been so very bountiful to it, yet it does not produce any one thing of intrinsick value or that can be converted into an Article of Trade; so that the value of the discovery consists wholy in the refreshments it will always afford ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... mariners and we are not as rich as we would wish to be. The means we now have for saving life on the coast are considered sufficient, and in regard to adopting your dress on our men-of-war, I fear you do not understand the nature of the Italian sailor. If we placed a number of your dresses on the Duelio, for instance, or on any of our men-of-war, the sailors would reason that the vessels were not seaworthy and we would have much ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... there is a little touch of the Indigo on the short feathers on the head at the base of the upper chap. this bird feeds on flesh when they can procure it, also on bugs flies and buries. I do not know whether they distroy little birds but their tallons indicate their capacity to do so if nature, has directed it. their note is loud and frequently repeated cha' -a cha' -a' &c.- also twat twat ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... can be formed from defiling pitch, and some of the most exquisite perfumes are distilled from the foulest substances. My brother, the same God who brings beauty out of ugliness, and fair purity from corruption, can so change our vile nature, and our vile body, that they may be made like unto Him. The work of the Blessed Trinity, of the Creator, the Saviour, the Sanctifier, is day by day operating on the children of God, and making all things new in them. And remember ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... experience with human nature, and close observations of life, have led me to that conclusion. Our own, and a few happy exceptions beside, are but feeble offsets to the ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... the walls of her habitation. And, although her name appeared jointly with that of her son, Charles the Fifth, in all public acts, she never afterwards could be induced to sign a paper, or take part in any transactions of a public nature. She lingered out a half century of dreary existence, as completely dead to the world, as the remains which slept in the monastery of Santa Clara beside ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... that his master had confessed to him that it was he who had killed Ussher, and that he had said that when he did so his sister was in Ussher's arms. The stick was then brought forward, which was proved to be the one usually carried by Thady; and the blood upon the stick, and the nature of the wound upon the dead man's head, left no doubt that this was the weapon with which he had ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... of conservatism, as a principle, is still more true as to the movement; for it often happens in morals, as well as in physics, that the remedy is worse than the disease. The great evil of Europe, in connection with interests of this nature, arises from facts that have little or no influence here. There, radical changes have been made, the very base of the social edifice having been altered, while much of the ancient architecture remains in the superstructure. Where this is the case, some errors may be pardoned in the artisans who are ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... pleasure in being safe while others were afflicted. And, indeed, our own fallen nature, if we give way to it, will tempt us to the same sin. But how did men begin to look not only on the afflictions, but on the interest, on the feelings, on the consciences of their neighbours, when they began ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... unnatural rage, as it is the custom to describe it. They were but seeking with the strength, the cunning, the deadly swiftness given them to that end, the food convenient for them. On their success in accomplishing that for which nature had so exquisitely designed them depended not only their own, but the lives of their blind and helpless young, now whimpering in the cave on the slope of the moon-lit ravine. They crept through a wet alder thicket, bounded lightly over the ragged brush fence, and paused to reconnoitre ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... in the eye of the rough Thane as he spoke—a mark of feeling which even the death of Athelstane had not extracted; but there was something in the half-instinctive attachment of his clown, that waked his nature more keenly than ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... breeding, there came to the surface a rich vein of independence, obscurely traceable, no doubt, in the characters of certain of his ancestors, appearing at length where nineteenth-century influences had thinned the detritus of convention and class prejudice. His nature abounded in contradictions, and as yet self-study—in itself the note of a mind striving for emancipation—had done little for him beyond making clear the manifold difficulties strewn in his path ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... with a face metamorphosed into a lurid, solid block of horror, overspreading which was a suspicion of something—something too dreadful to name, but which we could have sworn was utterly at variance with his nature. Close at his heels was the blurred outline of something small and unquestionably horrid. I cannot define it. I dare not attempt to diagnose the sensations it produced. Apart from a deadly, nauseating fear, they were ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... possible to say anything true about Kalidasa's achievement which is not already contained in this appreciation. Yet one loves to expand the praise, even though realising that the critic is by his very nature a fool. Here there shall at any rate be none of that cold-blooded criticism which imagines itself set above a world-author to appraise and judge, but a generous ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... quiet certainty that truth needs only a fair field to secure the victory. Here the human mind goes forth unshackled in the pursuit of science, to collect stores of knowledge and acquire an ever-increasing mastery over the forces of nature. Here the national domain is offered and held in millions of separate freeholds, so that our fellow-citizens, beyond the occupants of any other part of the earth, constitute in reality a people. Here exists the democratic form of government; and that form of government, by the confession of European ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... Gardner that night and told Anne what he had done. She was indignant, and expounded his anxiety as one more instance of his failure to understand her nature. But she did not refuse to receive the doctor when he ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... been left to grow over the rocks in undisturbed possession. Here and there, too, were outcrops of the rock, ragged, jutting ledges full of the nooks and crannies which delight the souls of children from one generation to another. The grounds had been, for the most part, left as nature had made them, full of little curves and hillocks and dimples; but the great glory of the place lay in its trees. No conventional elms and maples were they, but the native trees of the forest, huge-bodied chestnuts, tall, straight-limbed oaks, jagged ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... his finger on the real plague-spot of the Restoration. Our Puritan historians write rather loosely about "the floodgates of dissipation," etc., having been flung open by that event as if it had wrought a sudden change in human nature. Mr. Pepys, whose frank Diary begins during the Protectorate, underwent no such change. He was just the same sinner under Cromwell as he was under Charles. Sober, grave divines may be found deploring the growing profligacy of the times long before the 29th of ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... aromas, although somewhat different, may be attributed to the same substances present in different proportions in the two cases. Recovery and identification of the aromatic principles escaping from the roaster would go far toward answering the question regarding the nature of the aroma. Bernheimer[146] reported water, caffein, caffeol, acetic acid, quinol, methylamin, acetone, fatty acids and pyrrol in the distillate coming from roasting coffee. The caffeol obtained by Bernheimer in this work was believed by him to be a methyl derivative ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... nature, living in an atmosphere of constant and increasing artificial excitement, feeling that the money worth little to-day, perhaps, would be worth nothing to-morrow—the men of the South gambled heavily, recklessly and openly. There was no shame—little ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... me from the worst things. But it simply worries and almost exasperates me to hear religious talk from any one. When I hear a sermon I feel an inclination always to say, 'My dear fellow, can't you put your case better?' I want good stuff about Divine and human nature—not this vagueness and platitude. Why don't they tell one something about the optimism of God, even before the spectacle of men's weakness? But, instead, we are told to moan about this vale of tears; we are promised chastisements, disappointments, woes, persecution. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... learning, and had incidentally imbibed from the atmosphere of Antioch all the women's-rights fads and other advanced opinions of the day. These, however, affected mainly the region of her intellect; in her nature she was a simple, affectionate, straightforward American maiden, with the little weaknesses and foibles appertaining to that estate; and it was curious to observe the frequent conflicts between these spontaneous characteristics ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... be obliged to a man who hated me; but it is an illustration of the fact that if Rogers is bitter in his words, which we all know he is, he is always benevolent and generous in his deeds. He makes an epigram on a man, and gives him a thousand pounds; and the deed is the truer expression of his own nature. An uncommon development of character, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... traduced the governor "with many false and scandalous charges." Later, in manifesto after manifesto, Bacon assailed the corruption, the inefficiency, and the injustices of Berkeley's regime. "We appeal to the country itself what and of what nature their oppressions have been, and by what cabals ... carried on." By taking on himself "the sole nominating" of civil and military officers he had made himself master of the colony. He had permitted his favorites "to lay and impose what levies and impositions upon us they should or ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... from Nature.—Christ loved to walk in the fields with his disciples and draw lessons from the plants, the birds, the sowing of the farmer, the gathering of fruit from the vineyard, the ripening harvests, and the whispering breezes. "Consider the ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... We roiled them up considerable. They was mostly friendly when let be. Didn't want to give up their land—but I've noticed something of the same nature in ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... living things. This knowledge is a human acquisition. It has long been recognised that the old attach a higher value to life than do the young. The instinctive love of life and fear of death are of importance in the study of human nature, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... on rich soil. The land is wanted for grazing and cultivation. The settler comes with axe and fire-stick, and in a few hours unsightly ashes and black funereal stumps have replaced the noble woods which Nature took centuries to grow. No attempt is made to use a great part of the timber. The process is inevitable, and in great part needful, frightfully wasteful as it seems. But the forest reserves of the Colony, large as they are, should be made ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... the other companies on other hills see anything of them, though signals were flashed in the direction they had taken. It was not until next morning that they were discovered, quite close to the place they had been ordered to go to. It was characteristic of the nature of the country in which we were operating, and the excellent manner in which they hid themselves, that Captain Nelson should have missed them, for at one time he must have passed quite close to ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring |
