"Obverse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will hear of his failure. Or he may have done well for years, and still do well, but the critics may have tired of praising him, or there may have sprung up some new idol of the instant, some "dust a little gilt," to whom they now prefer to offer sacrifice. Here is the obverse and the reverse of that empty and ugly thing called popularity. Will any man suppose it worth ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... signed by the engineer of the works; and on the obverse was written, "The bearer, Ruby Brand, is serving as a blacksmith in the erection of the ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Nonjuring schism was political rather than religious; and its roots go out to vital events of the past. At the bottom it is the obverse side of the Divine Right of kings that they represent. That theory, which was the main weapon of the early secular state against the pretensions of Rome, must naturally have commanded the allegiance of members of a church which James I, ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... reference to the observations of your correspondents A. S. and H., I would beg to observe that, some time ago, I gave to the Museum at Winchester a medal struck on the occasion of the marriage of Prince James F. E. Stuart and M. Clementina Sobieski: on the obverse is a very striking head and bust ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... a state, man's capacities would be liberated; while in existing political organizations his powers were hampered and distorted to meet the requirements and selfish interests of the rulers of the state. The doctrine of extreme individualism was but the counterpart, the obverse, of ideals of the indefinite perfectibility of man and of a social organization having a scope as wide as humanity. The emancipated individual was to become the organ and agent of a comprehensive ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... indentation of the same nature with the quadratum incusum of the Greeks. This rude form is replaced in later times by a second design, which is sometimes a horseman, sometimes the forepart of a ship, sometimes the king drawing an an arrow from his quiver. Another type exhibits on the obverse the monarch in combat with a lion while the reverse shows a galley, or a towered and battlemented city with two lions standing below it, back to back. The third common type has on the obverse the king in his chariot, with his charioteer in front of him, and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... of promoting my knowledge of Roman history. I read up in order to find out the acts and deeds of the old rulers of the civilised world. Besides collecting the coins, I used to make careful drawings of the obverse and reverse faces of each in an illustrated catalogue which I kept in my little ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... in addition to the Medal already noticed in our pages, a Medallion of the lamented Poet and Novelist, from Chantrey's bust. It is, we think, the obverse of the Medal, with bronzed circular frame work bearing the motto suggested by Sir Walter. Though handsome, it is an economical memorial of one whose amiable talents must endear him to every ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... by the engineer of the works; and on the obverse was written, "The bearer, Ruby Brand, is serving as a blacksmith in the erection of the Bell ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... him to be his successor. For although my acquaintance with the Baal Shem did not tend to increase my admiration for his chief disciple, I never expressed my full mind on the subject to the Master, for he had early enjoined on me that the obverse side of the virtue of Humility is to think highly of one's fellow-man. "He who loves the Father, God, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... A medal was struck to celebrate this last attempt to keep the one remaining seaway open between Old France and New. Its legend ran thus: Ludovicoburgum Fundatum et Munitum, M.DCC.XX ('Louisbourg Founded and Fortified, 1720'). Its obverse bore the profile of the young Louis XV, whose statesmen hoped they had now established a French Gibraltar in America, where French fleets and forts would command the straits leading into the St Lawrence and threaten ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... privilege of details serves me here. This Lion is distinctly a beautiful coin, admirably made, with its value in fine, clear letters circling the obverse side, and a head thereon—of Newton, as I live! One detects American influence here. Each year, as we shall find, each denomination of coins celebrates a centenary. The reverse shows the universal ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... has its obverse, says the Italian proverb; and the comparatively low rank which his country occupies in this new field of view, is a melancholy contemplation for an Englishman. He finds that, in general, things are judged of only by the measure of their practical utility, and that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... a silver 10s. piece might be introduced during the war instead of (or in addition to) the paper notes now current. Although these might be objected to on the ground of size and weight, they would be interesting as a memento of the great war, especially if the obverse side bore, say, a representation of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... ourselves the lurid splendours; and surely no more awful picture of the Judgment was ever painted than we have here in the "Dies Irae," "Tuba minim," "Rex tremendae," and the "Confutatis." The method of showing the obverse of the medal first, and then astonishing us with the sudden magnificence of the other side, is an old one, and was an old one even in Mozart's time, but he uses it with supreme mastery, and results that have never been equalled. ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... US: chief of mission: Ambassador John M. O'KEEFE embassy: 171 Prospect Mira, use embassy street address telephone: Flag description: red field with a yellow sun in the center having 40 rays representing the 40 Kyrgyz tribes; on the obverse side the rays run counterclockwise, on the reverse, clockwise; in the center of the sun is a red ring crossed by two sets of three lines, a stylized representation of the roof of the ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... was taken aback by this obverse view of the situation; but, recovering herself, she shook her head. "I wouldn't cry for no brother that lef me to starve when he was rollin' in two and a 'arf million dollars," she said sceptically. "And I'm sure my Rosie ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... traced in more delicate lines elsewhere. There can be no doubt that self-reliance, which was both the cause and the effect of local self-government long practiced, has been a powerful factor in American life; that an indifference to the past has often been only the obverse of an elastic hope, a consciousness of destiny; that a fearlessness and a spirit of adventure have been invited by the large promises held out by nature; that an expansiveness of mind, and an alertness and facility in ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... scriptural warranty. The Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse assert the existence of the devil, of his demons and of Hell, as plainly as they do that of God and his angels and Heaven. It is plain that the Messianic and the Satanic conceptions of the writers of these books are the obverse and the reverse of the same intellectual coinage. If we turn from Scripture to the traditions of the Fathers and the confessions of the Churches, it will appear that, in this one particular, at any rate, time has brought about no important deviation from primitive belief. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... an irony perhaps not wholly accidental—beneath the Asokan inscription on the Allahabad pillar. Of his zeal for Hinduism we have a convincing proof in gold coins of his reign that preserve on the obverse in the figure of the sacrificial horse a record of the Asvamedha, which he again revived. Strange to say, however, his fame has never been so popular as that of his son, Chandragupta II., Vikramadytia, the Sun of Power, who reigned in turn for nearly forty years, and ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... question-beggars,—"bad taste" is responsible for half the reticence that marks current writing, for the failure to prick the bladders of every species that bloat themselves all around us. "Good taste" is the staunchest ally of hypocrisy, and corruption is the obverse side of civilisation. I do not believe in these general truths that rule the market. What is "true for all" is false for each. It is the business of every man to speak out, to be himself, to contribute his own thought to the world's thinking—to be egoistic. To be egoistic ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... showing obverse as well as reverse of the world's problem of employment and discipline, "we can see at once if a woman is not ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... each sheet descriptive titles were written: "Portrait of an Angel, 15th March '20;" "Astral Beings at Play, 3rd December '19;" "A Party of Souls on their Way to a Higher Sphere, 21st May '21." Before examining the drawing on the obverse of each sheet, she turned it over to read the title. Try as she could—and she tried hard—Priscilla had never seen a vision or succeeded in establishing any communication with the Spirit World. She had to be content with the ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... Europe there were now bodies of exasperated, uncompromising men, who devoted their lives to plotting against governments, and who formed, in their community of interest and purpose, a sort of obverse of the Holy Alliance, a federation of kings' enemies, a league of principle and creed, in which liberty and human right stood towards established rule as light to darkness. As the grasp of authority closed everywhere more tightly upon its baffled foes, more and more of these men passed into exile. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... then, may have been, and very probably was, produced by evolution from the atoms or vortex rings of ether, according to the theory advanced by the authors of the work called the "Unseen Universe," which I have referred to. The world of ether is to be regarded in some sort the obverse complement of the world of sensible matter, so that whatever energy is dissipated in the one is by the same act accumulated in the other; or, as Fiske describes it, "it is like the negative plate in photography, ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... medal bears the name and rank of the recipient stamped upon the edge. A clasp bearing the words "Fenian Raid, 1866" (crossing a scarlet and white ribbon) surmounts the medallion bearing the vignette of Queen Victoria on one side, and on the obverse a design emblematic of the Dominion of Canada. For those who served in 1870 the same medal was granted, with lettering to correspond, while to the volunteers who were on duty on both occasions, an extra clasp was issued, ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... torture was mingled not only the ecstasy of loving, but the fear of her daughter. This is a world that allows nothing without its obverse and reverse. Strange differences are often seen between the two sides; and one of the strangest and most inharmonious in this world of human relations is that coinage which a mother sometimes finds herself offering to a daughter, and which reads on one side, Bridegroom, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... the ground upon which my wooden house had stood we found, at a depth of from nine to nineteen inches, eighteen copper and two silver medals; one of the latter is of Marcus Aurelius. The other is a tetra-drachm of the island of Tenedos; on the obverse, to the right, is the head of Jupiter, to the left that of Juno, both having one neck in common, like the heads of Janus. The head of Jupiter is crowned with laurels, that of Juno has a wreath or crown. Upon the reverse of the coin there is a laurel wreath round the edge, and in ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... lotus flowers of thin copper; nineteen small pierced pearls; one bluish crystal bead; and twenty-four small coins in a light coloured metal, possibly brass, smooth on one side and with lotus flowers, trisulas, feet, &c., on the obverse. These had been arranged on the bottom and attached in ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... perhaps medallic, productions of her artists, in the XVIth century, might, many of them, vie with the choicest efforts of Greece. I purchased two silver medals, of the period just mentioned, which are absolutely perfect of their kind: one has, on the obverse, the profile of an old man with a flowing beard and short bonnet, with the circumscription of AEtatis Suae LXVI.; and, on the reverse, the words De Coelo Victoria. Anno M.D. XLVI. surrounding the arms of Bavaria. I ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... picture of the fort on its obverse side, surrounded by the words, "Defender of Fort Ridgely, August 18-27, 1862." Just over the flag staff, in a scroll, is the legend, in Sioux, "Ti-yo-pa-na-ta-ka-pi," which means, "It shut the door against us," referring to ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau |
