"Past times" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... much more limited patrimony and alliances of this new quasi-dynasty rendered its personal power very inferior to that of the northern branch, and consequently lessened the influence possessed by the ruling family in past times. In Ireland the connections, more or less numerous, by blood relationship with the great families, always exercised a powerful influence over the body of the nation in rendering it docile and amenable to ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... voyages and travels. The wide domain of knowledge and the world of books are so related, that all roads cross and converge, like the paths that carry us over the surface of the globe on which we live. Many a reader has learned more of past times from good biographies, than from any formal history; and it is a fact that many owe to the plays of Shakespeare and the novels of Walter Scott nearly all the knowledge which they possess of the ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... wiser than his ancestors. But though they willingly let go all the good things that were among those of former ages, yet, if better things are proposed, they cover themselves obstinately with this excuse of reverence to past times. I have met with these proud, morose, and absurd judgments of things in many places, particularly once in England." "Were you ever there?" said I. "Yes, I was," answered he, "and stayed some months there, not long after the rebellion in the ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... swift Deer sped away, To his cave, where in past times he lay Well concealed; unaware Of a Lion couched there, For a spring that soon made ...
— The Baby's Own Aesop • Aesop and Walter Crane
... Prometheus chain'd? The vulture—the inexhaustible repast Drawn from his vitals? Say what meant the woes By Tantalus entail'd upon his race, And the dark sorrows of the line of Thebes? Fictions in form, but in their substance truths— Tremendous truths!—familiar to the men Of long past times; nor ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... the old man to plead for the "country"; to Jimmie the "country" had let itself be lost, suppressed, taken over by the capitalists, the "plutes". Jimmie's sense of loyalty was not to his country, but to his class, which had been exploited, hounded, driven from pillar to post. In past times the government had allowed itself to be used by corporations; so now it was in vain that the President made appeals for justice and democracy, using the beautiful language of idealism. Jimmie did not believe that he meant it; or anyhow, Wall Street would see that ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... construct a coherent narrative of past times from the fragmentary information furnished by survivors, are aware of the difficulty of ascertaining the true sequence of events indiscriminately recalled. For this purpose the newspapers of the date were indispensable. Of other documents consulted I may mention, for the satisfaction ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... into the philosophy of the Upani@sads it may be worth while to say a few words as to the reason why diverse and even contradictory explanations as to the real import of the Upani@sads had been offered by the great Indian scholars of past times. The Upani@sads, as we have seen, formed the concluding portion of the revealed Vedic literature, and were thus called the Vedanta. It was almost universally believed by the Hindus that the highest truths could only be found in the revelation of the Vedas. Reason was regarded generally as ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... there are such serpents and such lizards in existence, ay, and much larger ones. They may be found not only in the tropical isles of the Orient, but in the Western world, in the lagoons and forests of Equatorial America. Many of the "sailors' yarns" of past times, which we have been accustomed so flippantly to discredit, on account of their appearing rather tough, have under the light of recent ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... instead of a king, they have a president, as we have. And in past times they had brave men who fought to make their country free. One of their great men was William Tell. The Swiss love his name as strongly as we love the ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... brought clean across i' this direction, an' it'll be a stiffish job. Th' cattle market's goin' to be shifted out o' yon hollow, an' in another year or two th' whole scene about here will be changed." Jackson and I both remembered something of the troubles of the cotton manufacture in past times. We had seen something of the "shuttle gatherings," the "plug-drawings," the wild starvation riots, and strikes of days gone by; and he agreed with me that one reason for the difference of their demeanour during the present trying circumstances lies in their increasing intelligence. The great growth ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... one of the surest foundations of her future greatness. We know nothing, and have never known anything, of those class distinctions and class enmities which in Western Europe have often rudely shaken society in past times, and imperil its existence ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... was, nor seemed built for war, But rather like the work of other days, When men, in better peace than now they are, Had leisure on the world around to gaze, And noted well the past times' changing ways; And fair with sculptured stories it was wrought, By lapse of time ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... as a child, of the great man, with whom we were daily and intimately associated, and now transfer those impressions from that great work, "Parton's Life of Jackson," to the pages of this unpretentious record of past times. ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... speedy decay of the belief in a God,[198] he may well be equally revolted by the obstinate infatuation of the men who expected to preserve the belief in a God by the spies of the department of police. Much had no doubt been done for the church in past times by cruelty and oppression, but the folly of the French bishops, after the reign of Voltaire and the apostolate of the Encyclopaedia, lay exactly in their blindness to the fact that the old methods were henceforth ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... confessedly transcends human experience, and when we consider the question upon broad grounds of moral probability, I have no doubt that men will continue in the future, as in the past, to cherish the faith in a life beyond the grave. In past times the disbelief in the soul's immortality has always accompanied that kind of philosophy which, under whatever name, has regarded Humanity as merely a local incident in an endless and aimless series of ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... sooner turn for consolation in my most vapourish moments. The truth is, I have 'no lack of argument' to ponder upon of the most gloomy description, but this arises from other causes. Some day or other, when we are veterans, I may tell you a tale of present and past times; and it is not from want of confidence that I do not now,—but—but—always a but to the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... easily conceive how certain minds must be swayed and bent by some of these long, involved, but firm and vehement passages. I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting one or two pages. The writer is referring to the great literary relics of past times:— ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... know scarce anything, save that they thought such and such forms beautiful. So strong is the bond between history and decoration, that in the practice of the latter we cannot, if we would, wholly shake off the influence of past times over what we do at present. I do not think it is too much to say that no man, however original he may be, can sit down to-day and draw the ornament of a cloth, or the form of an ordinary vessel or piece of furniture, ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... questions, in order to check the disposition to accept the great critic's ironical remark in sober earnest. Much of what is currently accredited as authentic history is in fact a mixture of flattery and calumny, myth and fable. Yet in this set of fables, whatever may have been the case in past times, people will no longer agree to believe. During the present century the criticism of recorded events has gone far toward assuming the developed and systematized aspect of a science, and canons of belief have been established, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... alone of an evening, sat in his bedroom, the world shut out, his thoughts in long past times, rebuilding the ruins ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... seen Ann less often than in past times. In the coppersmith's great household she commonly had her hands full, and I felt indeed that her face was changed towards me. A kind of fear, which I had not marked in her of old, had come over her of late; meseemed she lived ever in dread of some ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Dr. Robertson very truly says, "It is a cruel mortification, in searching for what is instructive in the history of past times, to find that the exploits of conquerors who have desolated the earth, and the freaks of tyrants who have rendered nations unhappy, are recorded with minute, and often disgusting accuracy, while the discovery ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... found among the Florentine peasants a young girl, radiantly beautiful, who possessed an extraordinary susceptibility to spiritual influences. Through her means he conversed with the renowned dead men of the past times. But one day Regina (such was the girl's name), much to the old man's surprise, gave birth to a child. She herself died, in Kirkup's house, soon after, and on her death-bed she swore a solemn oath on the crucifix that the baby's father was none other ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... doing has this been? Why is it that I may not think of past times? Why is it that all thought, all memories are denied to me? Who was it that broke the ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... always happy! I don't think its quite right, Jos bach, do you? You are a deacon at Penmorien and you ought to know. If it was a hymn now! but you hear it's all nonsense about the swallows. Ach y fi! she is learning them from Sara ''spridion';[1] some song of the 'old fathers' in past times!" ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... under which men are "free to live by no man's leave, underneath the Law." No human being can be safely trusted with unlimited power, and no man, no matter what his nationality, could have withstood the temptations offered by the chaotic conditions in the Philippines in past times any better than did the Spaniards. There is nothing written in this book that should convey the opinion that in similar circumstances men of any nationality would not have acted as the Spaniards did. The easiest recognized characteristic of absolutism, and all the abuses and ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... men praise past times, so prophets prefer to represent themselves as the last. The early Christians caused much scandal amongst the orderly law-loving Romans by their wild and mistaken predictions of the end of the world being at hand. The catastrophe ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... as to be made the absolute measure of Revelation, as if no part of theological teaching were true which cannot bring its express text, as it is called, from Scripture, and authorities from the Fathers or profane writers,—whereas there are numberless facts in past times which we cannot deny, for they are indisputable, though history is silent about them. I suppose, on this score, we ought to deny that the round towers of this country had any origin, because history does not disclose it; or that any individual came from Adam ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... among the peculiar attributes of memory that a slight state of intoxication often so greatly enhances the recollection of past times and scenes, that all the circumstances connected with them come back much more clearly than would be possible in a state of sobriety; but that, on the other hand, the recollection of what one said or did while the intoxication lasted, is more than usually imperfect; nay, that ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... until this time lived always in the firm hope that when he died he would be admitted into the shining hall of Valhalla, where he might expect to meet all the great heroes of past times. He believed that Odin would receive him there, and reward him well for all the glorious deeds that he had done. So he was not at all willing to abandon this Norseman's faith in a future life which, as men promised, ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... repeated failures which have followed the numerous attempts of past times, the idea has not been abandoned of one day conquering the supreme principle which must command the ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... this peculiarity attached to it, that a slight state of intoxication very often enhances the remembrance of past times and scenes, whereby all the circumstances connected with them are recalled more distinctly than they could be in a state of sobriety; on the other hand, the recollection of what one said or did while in a state of intoxication is less clear than usual, nay, one does not recollect at all if ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... brought home to them as to no other people the tremendous influence of sea-power. Their historians have recalled to them the successive attempts which have been made in past times by German States to create a navy and to obtain colonies, attempts which to our own people are quite unknown, because they never, except in the case of the Hanseatic League, attained to such importance as ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... the Fisher, sinking on his seat, "what madness this is! I was a thought warm with the liquor, and the recollections of past times were rising on my memory. Think nothing of it. I heard those words once before," and he ground his teeth in rage—"Yes, once—but in a shriller voice than your's! Sometimes, too, the bastard rises to my view; and then I smite him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... contrary, and if you look into history we've all got some discreditable forefathers. So I mean no offence when I say I don't think any great things of the part the Jewish people have played in the world. What then? I think they were iniquitously dealt by in past times. And I suppose we don't want any men to be maltreated, white, black, brown, or yellow—I know I've just given my half-crown to the contrary. And that reminds me, I've a curious old German book—I can't read it myself, but a friend of mine was reading out of it to me the other day—about the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Hilloa, citizen! look out! (looking at him) But I say, what's the matter with you? You are queerly rigged. Why, I haven't seen a man in such a condition for many a long day. You're like an ancient ruin, a dream of past times. No, really I don't mean to hurt your feelings. Can I ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... of a Kingdom depends not only upon the King and the laws and ordinances of the Kingdom, but also upon the loyal obedience of the subjects. And the subjects of "The Kingdom of Heaven" have, in past times, so far forgotten this duty, that it has come to pass that for centuries the great branches of the Church of Christ have had little, if any, outward communion or fellowship with one another. And in our own country the professed members of Christ are divided into ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... inform you how the King's passion for this Duchess began, and of several particulars of the Court of the late King, which have a great relation to things that are acted at present." "Far from blaming you," replied the Princess of Cleves, "for repeating the histories of past times, I lament, Madam, that you have not instructed me in those of the present, nor informed me as to the different interests and parties of the Court. I am so entirely ignorant of them, that I thought a ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... moved a great deal by that sentence in the speech of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in which he said that the one bright spot in the situation was the changed feeling in Ireland. In past times, when this empire has been engaged in these terrible enterprises it is true—it would be the utmost affectation and folly on my part to deny it—the sympathy of the Nationalists of Ireland, for reasons to be found deep down in centuries of history, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... considered, will justify the publick. Those who have no power to judge of past times, but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions. The call for books was not in Milton's age what it is in the present. To read was not then a general amusement; neither traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance. The women had not then aspired to literature, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... to live! Even in one thought The wisdom of past times to fit together, And from the luminous minds of many men Catch a reflected truth; as, in one eye, Light, from unnumbered worlds and farthest planets Of the star-crowded universe, is gathered Into ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... the Mosaic period of the creation of man. The Bible tells us that MAN was created about six thousand years ago. Now, the material fact is, that amid all the fossil remains of the geologist, and all the records of past times, there is no proof that man has lived longer than that period; but there is abundant proof to the contrary. Amid all on which the geologist relies to demonstrate the existence of animals prior ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... defeat for those engaged was none the less vivid because victory meant the gain of so little ground and defeat the loss of so little; perhaps the more vivid in want of the movement of pursuing or of being pursued in the shock of arms as in past times, when an army front hardly covered that of one brigade in the trenches. For winners and losers, returning to their billets in French villages as other battalions took their places, had time to think ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... never a prophet in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." (39) Such testimony cannot have been given of Moses by, himself, nor by any who immediately succeeded him, but it must come from someone who lived centuries afterwards, especially, as the historian speaks of past times. (40) "There was never a prophet," &c. (41) And of the place of burial, "No one knows ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... with the age-old sexual evils? So reasoning, we have naturally turned to education as one, but not the only, method of attack on the sexual problems which have degraded and devitalized human life of all past times, but which somehow have kept out of the limelight of publicity until our ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... application of my professional studies, and have considered them especially in their connection with geological phenomena, with a view of obtaining, by means of a thorough acquaintance with glaciers as they exist now, some insight into the glacial phenomena of past times, the distribution of drift, the transportation of boulders, etc. It was, however, impossible to treat one series of facts without some reference to the other; but such explanations as I have given of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... be said, moreover, that whatever may have been the case in past times, the training of the regular soldier to-day neither aims at producing mere machines nor has it that effect. As much attention is given to the development of self-reliance in the rank and file as to making them subordinate. It has long been ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... guide held a lighted taper on one side of the column, that we might observe its glowing transparency. I could well enter into the feeling of noble triumph which must have animated those great and powerful Doges of past times, in thus being able to beautify their own Christian temple in Venice at the expense of the unbelieving, barbarous Turk, whose usurpation of these sacred relics and of the Holy Land was righteously considered a scandal and a shame to ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... that, being hospitably entertained, and happening to pass the night in a stranger's house, you are so unfortunate as to detect unquestionable proofs of some dreadful crime, say murder, perpetrated in past times by one of the family. The principle at issue is the same in both cases: viz., the command resting upon the conscience to forget private consideration and personal feelings in the presence of any solemn duty; yet merely the difference of degree, and not ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... in past times were not the rich and the powerful," Jesus was saying. "Very often our nation has listened to God's voice only after defeat in war. When men know they are weak, ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... areas of his soul, out of past times of his now weary life, a sound stirred up. It was a word, a syllable, which he, without thinking, with a slurred voice, spoke to himself, the old word which is the beginning and the end of all prayers of the Brahmans, the holy "Om", which roughly means "that what is perfect" ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... end, and I shall if she is to be got; for the men of my blood soon make up their minds when they want a thing, and they do not rest much until it's theirs. This peculiarity has often landed them in trouble in past times, and may land me in trouble now; but I'm ready for the ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... no less than of other citizens. And even if our negotiation with France should terminate favorably and the war in Europe cease, yet the state of society which unhappily prevails in so great a portion of the world and the experience of past times under better circumstances unite in warning us that a commerce so extensive and which holds out so many temptations to lawless plunderers can never be safe without protection; and we hold ourselves obliged by every tie of duty which binds us to our constituents to promote ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson
... both are incomparably finer than anything else in the tragedies and are much more dramatic than the dialogue. It is in the emotion of a spectator belonging to our own time rather than in that of an actor of those past times that the poet shows his dramatic strength; and whenever he speaks abstractly for country and humanity he moves us in a way that permits no doubt of ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... from the fiery tribes of Barbary, and strengthened by numerous Christian slaves or Mamlukes, trained to serve their captors in arms against their own countrymen. With forces thus constituted, did Al-mansur, in whom once more shone forth the spirit of the Arab conquerors of past times, invade the Christian territories in each spring and autumn for twenty-six successive years, carrying the Moslem arms in triumph even to the shores of the "Green Sea," (Atlantic Ocean,) and into regions which Tarik and Musa had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... each belief, institution, custom, and arrangement was modified; and how the consensus of preceding structures and functions was developed into the consensus of succeeding ones. Such alone is the kind of information respecting past times which can be of service to the citizen for the regulation of his conduct. The only history that is of practical value is what may be called Descriptive Sociology. And the highest office which the ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... ever. A slight quiver came upon him as he beheld the blaze of the Northern railway station and all the feverish traffic around it. Wild fancies surged through his brain. He thought of Beauchene. Why should he not do likewise? He recalled past times, and, yielding to sudden madness, turned his back upon the station and retraced his steps towards the Boulevards. Seraphine, he said to himself, was doubtless waiting for him; she had told him that he would ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... for the Court of Assistants is on the right of the northernmost corridor. The great banqueting-hall, 80 by 40 feet, and 35 feet high, has a range of Corinthian columns on either side. The five lofty, arched windows are filled with the armorial bearings of eminent goldsmiths of past times; and at the north end is a spacious alcove for the display of plate, which is lighted from above. On the side of the room is a large mirror, with busts of George III. and his worthy son, George IV. Between the columns are portraits of Queen Adelaide, by Sir Martin Archer Shee, and William IV. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... dash off a profoundly coloured and shaded narrative like this of Thierry's will find himself bitterly wrong. Even a great philosophical view may much more easily be extemporised than this lasting and finished image of past times. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... not at the time seen, but took an early opportunity of visiting. Scrope, too, was naturally much more speculative in his modes of thought than Lyell, and argued for the probably greater intensity in past times of the agencies causing geological change, and for the legitimacy of discussing the mode of origin of the earth. Lyell, like Hutton, argued that he saw 'no signs of a beginning,' but his characteristic candour is shown ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... revenues had now run out, and that it would be necessary for the House of Commons to make a new provision for the support of him and of his family. "I am persuaded," said the King, "that the experience of past times and a due regard to the honor and dignity of the Crown will prevail upon you to give me this first proof of your zeal and affection in a manner answerable to the necessities of my Government." Then the King withdrew, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... upon two things, first, upon the original preferences of our soul; but, second, upon the mass of testimony to the nature of God, man, and the universe which reaches us, in divers manners, from without. For the most part these divers manners are reducible to one, all that we learn of past times and much that we learn of our own reaching us through the medium of books or papers, and even he who cannot read learning from the same source at second-hand and by the report of him who can. Thus the sum of the contemporary knowledge ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to visit, sweltering in flames. Were a Protestant vintner to sell his ale beneath a picture of Catholics burning in hell, I fear we should never hear the last of it. But I must say, that these pictures seemed the production of past times. They were one and all sorely faded, as if their owners were beginning to be somewhat ashamed of them, or lacked zeal to repair them. The conducteur of the stage had an Italian translation of Mr Gladstone's well-known pamphlet on Naples in his hand, which then covered ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... picturesque system, and John Randolph, poet and tory, revelled in the recollection of it. "Our Egyptian taskmasters," he would say, meaning the manufacturers of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and New England, "only wish to leave us the recollection of past times, and insist upon our purchasing their vile domestic stuffs; but it won't do: no ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... who was nursing her, she sent for two men who in past times had been favoured lovers. They came to her at once, whilst her husband was gone away to fetch a doctor and an apothecary, as she had ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... Arawack is the sign of past time and is used as a prefix to nouns, as well as a suffix to verbs. Kubakanan ancestors, those passed away, those who lived in past times. ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... resignation. It is almost superfluous to call to mind the example of modern nations, with whom refinement has increased in direct proportion to the decline of their liberties. Wherever we direct our eyes in past times, we see taste and freedom mutually avoiding each other. Everywhere we see that the beautiful only founds its sway on ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Thorpe Ambrose, not even the visit from Mr. Bashwood, which was to come with the evening, being referred to by either of them. All through the dinner they drifted further and further back into the old endless talk of past times about ships and sailing. When the butler withdrew from his attendance at table, he came downstairs with a nautical problem on his mind, and asked his fellow-servants if they any of them knew the relative merits "on ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... subsequently, the females from the danger incurred during incubation, and the young from being inexperienced, had been rendered dull as a protection. But this view is not supported by any evidence, and is not probable; for we thus in imagination expose during past times the females and the young to danger, from which it has subsequently been necessary to shield their modified descendants. We have, also, to reduce, through a gradual process of selection, the females and the young to almost exactly the same tints and markings, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... several occasions, and probably made a deeper impression on the mind of our Moslem friend, from the popular belief current in India that the Feringhis are men of no caste, without religious faith or ceremonies—a belief which the conduct and demeanour of the Anglo-Indians in past times tended, in too many instances, to confirm. Off the southern extremity of Ceylon, the ship was again becalmed for several days; but the tedium of this interval was relieved, not only by the ordinary sea incidents ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... however, though showing that present times are not good, do not prove that they are worse than past times. It may be that there was poverty in the valley before the enclosure of the common quite as severe as there is now; and, so far as concerns mere economics, that event did but change the mode of the struggle ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... background of memory—compared with these queens, she looked like an old woman. He saw women whose names will appear in the history of the nineteenth century, women no less famous than the queens of past times for their wit, their beauty, or their lovers; one who passed was the heroine Mlle. des Touches, so well known as Camille Maupin, the great woman of letters, great by her intellect, great no less by her beauty. He overheard ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... are queer craft! I swear, I thought you'd lay to when I h'isted signals; I ha'n't forgot past times and the meetin'-house steps, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... rich development of intellectual action as the Old World has not seen. Without this unity, literature may be cultivated by cliques of men of talent, who are chiefly stimulated to express themselves by observing the thought and beauty which foreign intellects and past times produced; but their productions will not spring from the country's manifold life, nor express its mighty individuality. The sections of the country which are nearest to the intelligence of the Old World will furnish the readiest writers and the most polished thinkers, until the New World dwarfs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... in the City. Many of the electrical amusements provided appear grander from the contrast with the darkness they are made to displace—a contrast scarcely greater than that depicted by our "Nature Delineators" when, in allegory, they paint the present contrasted with past times; the later years of my reign contrasted ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... are we to impute these disorders, and to what cause assign the decay of a State so powerful and flourishing in past times? The reason is plain. The servant is now become the master. The magistrate was then subservient to the people: all honors, dignities, and preferments, were disposed by the voice and favor of the people; but the magistrate, now, has ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... attention. One would have thought it a ruin buried under a coating of white shells, much resembling a covering of snow. Upon examining the mass attentively, I could recognise the ever-thickening form of a vessel bare of its masts, which must have sunk. It certainly belonged to past times. This wreck, to be thus encrusted with the lime of the water, must already be able to count many years passed at the bottom of ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... at by this series of handbooks is the recall of the designer and craftsman to a saner view of what constitutes originality by setting before them something of the experience of past times, when craft tradition was still living and the designer had a closer contact with the material in which his design was carried out than is usual at present. Since both design and craftsmanship as known until the end of the 18th century were the ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... violent and bigoted Conservative—or, in other words, the man who still inherits the Orange sentiments of past times—a lesson that he ought not to forget. It will also test the whole spirit of modern Conservatism, and its liberality. If there be at the press, or anywhere else, a malignant bigot, with great rancor and little honesty, it is very likely ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... not dispute the beneficent influence of other factors combined with these, but, taken alone, they would be powerless, and if science were eclipsed they would be transformed into fresh causes of servitude and ignorance, as it has often appeared in past times when the laws of science and of freedom have been set at nought. I therefore declare science and freedom to be the portion of all, and they should be as widely diffused as possible, since the way to knowledge and a worthy life is open to all men. ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... decay! In the courtyard of the castle an old horse and three cows were grazing, and beneath the cornices on the walls two goats, half black half white, were browsing. I believe that old castles interest one by calling up ideas of past times, which are in such strong contrast with the present. In the courtyard of this castle were brewing vessels in vaults which had formerly perhaps been dungeons, and pitched sails stretched upon the walls to dry: the spirit of old romance and modern manufactures ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... copies of Raphael Madonnas he was wont to dine alone. It was the only disconsolate hour of his day, this summer weather. He had never been a large eater, like that great chap Swithin, or Sylvanus Heythorp, or Anthony Thornworthy, those cronies of past times; and to dine alone, overlooked by the Madonnas, was to him but a sorrowful occupation, which he got through quickly, that he might come to the more spiritual enjoyment of his coffee and cigar. But this evening was a different matter! His eyes twinkled at her across the little table ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the "Introduction" referred to in the above letter Lord Russell gives a modest estimate of his own career: "My capacity I always felt was very inferior to that of the men who have attained in past times the foremost place in our Parliament, and in the Councils of our Sovereign. I have committed many errors, some of them very gross blunders. But the generous people of England are always forbearing and forgiving to those statesmen who have the good ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... book, but who has done his best to remedy it, anyhow! And all the English shopful is either brand new fiction or illustrated travel (of 'Buns with the Grand Lama' type), or gilded versions of the classics of past times done up to give away. While the French bookshop reeks ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... modern Europe, but represents a stage which most other civilizations have passed through, and which is therefore not distinctively Chinese; the three characteristics which I have enumerated, on the other hand, distinguish China from all other countries of past times. Something must be said at this stage about each ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... the latter, are only educated to please, to manage their persons, and regulate their exterior behaviour; and their minds are corrupted at a very early age, by the worldly and pious cautions they receive, to guard them against immodesty. I speak of past times. The very confessions which mere children are obliged to make, and the questions asked by the holy men I assert these facts on good authority, were sufficient to impress a sexual character; and the education of society was a school ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... of a few short hours, has an extraordinary charm for every age, sex, and rank, and has ever been the favourite amusement of every cultivated people. Here, princes, statesmen, and generals, behold the great events of past times, similar to those in which they themselves are called upon to act, laid open in their inmost springs and motives; here, too, the philosopher finds subject for profoundest reflection on the nature and constitution of man; with curious eye the artist follows the groups which pass rapidly ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... blacksmith or by the cultivators themselves. Where the Barhai is a village menial he is practically on an equality with the Lohar or blacksmith; but the better-class carpenters, who generally live in towns, rank higher. The Sansia or stone-mason of the Uriya country works, as a rule, only in stone, and in past times therefore his principal employment must have been to build temples. He could not thus be a village menial, and his status would be somewhat improved by the sanctity of his calling. The Halwai and Bharbhunja or confectioner and grain-parcher are castes of comparatively low origin, especially ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... fact that, down to middle Tertiary times at all events, an equable temperate climate, with a luxuriant vegetation, extended to far within the arctic circle, over what are now barren wastes, covered for ten months of the year with snow and ice. The arctic zone has, therefore, been in past times capable of supporting almost all the forms of life of our temperate regions; and we must take account of this condition of things whenever we have to speculate on the possible migrations of organisms between the old ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... or ignorant ravage it is vain to speak; my words will not reach those who commit them, and yet, be it heard or not, I must not leave the truth unstated, that it is again no question of expediency or feeling whether we shall preserve the buildings of past times or not. We have no right whatever to touch them. They are not ours. They belong partly to those who built them, and partly to all the generations of mankind who are to follow us. The dead have still their right in them: ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... testimony respecting the canon is given by Josephus towards the end of the first century A.D. "For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, ... but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine. And of them five belong to Moses.... But as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, the prophets who were after Moses wrote down what was ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... Friar, who habitually preached before the Queen, fell so deeply in love with Mademoiselle de Bourdeille that he completely lost his wits, and sometimes in his sermons, whilst speaking of the beauty of the holy virgins of past times, he would so forget himself as to say some words respecting the beauty of my said aunt, not to mention the soft glances which he cast at her. And sometimes, whilst in the Queen's room, he would take great ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... selection we can clearly understand the full meaning of that old canon in natural history, 'Natura non facit saltum.' This canon, if we look only to the present inhabitants of the world is not strictly correct, but if we include all those of past times, it must BY MY THEORY be strictly true" ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... can supply all your wants as He can supply all the wants of every soul of man. And after generations have drawn from Him, the water will not have sunk one hairsbreadth in the great fountain, but there will be enough for all coming eternities as there has been enough for all past times. He is like His own miracle—the thousands are gathered on the grass, they do 'all eat and are filled.' As their necessities required the bread was multiplied, and at the last there was more left than there had seemed to be at the beginning. So 'of His fulness have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... its ten horns. To wit, we have the chain, with which the Dragon, the seducing and destroying Serpent, will be bound and cast into the abyss, REVEL. xx: 2, That is the magnetic chain of events of past times in connexion with events of this time. In this chain the genuine condition of the existing political and ecclesiastical governments appears in its true light, so that, when this chain will be duly spread and made ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... past times a large number of our native, plants acquired a well-deserved, but purely empirical celebrity, for curing scrofula and scurvy. But later discovery has shown that each of these several herbs contains lime, and earthy salts, in a subtle form of high natural sub-division: whilst, at the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... in with many, many questions about past times; and for her satisfaction I had to recur to gone-by troubles, to explain causes of seeming estrangement, to touch on single-handed conflict with Life, with Death, with Grief, with Fate. Dr. John listened, saying little. He and she then told me of changes they had known: ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... of past times, of the happy days when the Empress Anna yet reigned, and when all breathed of pleasure and enjoyment at that happy court; and perhaps it was these recollections that rendered Biron sad and thoughtful. He was absent and low-spirited, and his large, flashing eyes ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... He started up with a stifled shout, and then, looking kindly at me, said, "Ay, you have done quite right—that you have, cousin, to wake me. I have had a very ugly dream, and it's all solely owing to this room and that hall, for they made me think of past times and many wonderful things that have happened here. But now let us turn to and have a good sound sleep." Therewith the old gentleman rolled himself in the bed-covering and appeared to fall asleep at once. But when I had extinguished the candles ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... conception and more brilliant in the execution. Some states have fallen after a nobler struggle; others have risen with more exalted strides. Nor are we here to look for eminent heroes, colossal talents, or those marvellous exploits which the history of past times presents in such rich abundance. Those times are gone; such men are no more. In the soft lap of refinement we have suffered the energetic powers to become enervate which those ages called into action and rendered indispensable. With admiring awe we wonder at these gigantic images of the past as ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... be asked, "Why should we for ever be looking back at past times? were men perfect then? is it not possible to improve on the knowledge then possessed?" Let us examine ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... after the stived-up atmosphere of the gaol, with its maddening Sunday chapel and its hideous possibilities of public torture for any revolt against the unendurable routine. We, nowadays, read with a shudder of the enormities that were common in the prisons of past times—we, who only know of their modern substitutes. For the last traces of torture, such as was common long after the moyen age, as generally understood, have vanished from the administration of our gaols before a vivified spirit of ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... had never suspected that their home had been tenanted in past times by a set of beings totally different from those that inhabit it now; still farther was it from their thought to imagine that creation after creation had followed each other in successive ages, every one stamped with a character peculiarly its own. It was Cuvier who, aroused to new labors ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... I feel out of spirits now if I think of papa; I am not easy in my mind about him. When he is very much interested, there is a quivering in his face which I don't remember in past times. He seems to have got older and thinner, all on a sudden. He shouts (which he never used to do) when he threatens sinners at sermon-time. Being in dreadful earnest about our souls, he is of course obliged to speak of the devil; but he never ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... or aggression. Our naval armaments and such military power as we possess are notoriously created and maintained for defensive purposes only. Brigandage and pillage we have most certainly been guilty of in past times, but such a policy could not now survive the day it was mooted. We are in the last trenches, preparatory to finally abandoning ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... real knight and chevalier of those past times, would not let her mount the downs to have her farewell view of the big ships unaccompanied by him; and partly and largely in pure chivalry, no doubt; but her young idea of England's grandeur, as shown in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the islands of Langka-wi and Lingga and the towns of Indragiri and Indrapura, &c. Sumeru (in Java), Madura, Ayuthia (in Siam), and many other names, show how great Indian influences have been in past times in the far East. May it not be, therefore, that Malaya or Malayu[46] was the name by which the earliest Sanskrit-speaking adventurers from India denominated the rude tribes of Sumatra and the peninsula with whom they came in contact, just as Jawi is the name given ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... of Government has been, in past times, and will be hereafter, a fertile source of ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... years ago we purchased and removed into a most substantial and well-built stone house, the chimneys of which were constructed with open fireplaces, and the flues carried up separately to the top, where they all met upon the same level surface, as chimneys in past times usually were built, thus. Every fireplace in the house (and some of them had stoves in,) smoked intolerably; so much so, that when the wind was in some quarters the fires had to be put out in every ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... proportion of the whole population, the actual number of the genuine disciples of Christ within its pale were in small compass. The revival in some measure, of the spirit of its reformers, even in opposition to the letter of many of its formularies, has, no doubt, in past times, done much to increase its living influence and usefulness, but recent events have shown how large a portion of its clergy instead of going forward in the work of the Reformation, are rather desirous of retrograde ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... in the Islands much of that peculiar and discriminative form of life, of which the idea had delighted our imagination, we were willing to listen to such accounts of past times as would be given us. But we soon found what memorials were to be expected from an illiterate people, whose whole time is a series of distress; where every morning is labouring with expedients for the evening; and where all mental pains or pleasure arose from the dread of winter, the expectation ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... wore on. Sometimes she stole to the window, and looked out on the sleeping city, on the peaceful Arno which was bathed in silvery moonlight, and on the old, irregular houses, thinking what struggles and agonies this place had witnessed in past times, and realizing what an infinitesimal bit of the world's sufferings she was called to bear. Sometimes she lighted a candle and read, sometimes prayed, but for the most part just lay still, silently enduring, learning, though she did not think ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... papers, and pondered over this one and the other, in that bitterest of all helpless woe, with which miserable men think of happy past times—George's father took the whole of the documents out of the drawer in which he had kept them so long, and locked them into a writing-box, which he tied, and sealed with his seal. Then he opened the book-case, and took down the great ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... connected with the following anecdote of past times; for I am obliged to relate a story. In our times, and in our country, which I hope you love as much as I do, for as far as I am concerned, I am ready to shed the ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... looks at this reply sent a pang through Stephen as great as any he had felt at the sight of Elfride. The words about shortness of time were literally true, but their tone was far from being so. He would have been gratified to talk with Knight as in past times, and saw as a dead loss to himself that, to save the woman who cared nothing for him, he was deliberately throwing away ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... than many men who have got both the one and the other. So, at least, I try to think now, though I started in my youth with as high an ambition as the best of them. Thank God, it is not my business here to speak of past times and their disappointments. A twinge of the old hopeless heartache comes over me sometimes still, when I think ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... not help thinking dear Harold might have remembered Killy Marey's needs when he gave me that half of his means. And as to going back to Mount Eaton, ghosts of past times would meet me there, whose pain was then too recent to have turned into the treasure these ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... peril attach to individuals and families alone. It stands, a fearful beacon, in the experience of Cities, Republics, and Empires. The lessons of past times, on this subject, are emphatic and solemn. The history of wealth has always been a history of corruption and downfall. The people never existed that could stand the trial. Boundless profusion is too little likely to spread for any people the theatre of manly energy, rigid self-denial, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... port dues; some of them were higher than before, and to counterbalance the increase he proposed to give several new advantages to colonial trade. Payment was no longer to be evaded so easily as in past times, and smuggling would be attended with greater risk. The money was to be paid into the English treasury and was to be used only for colonial defence. More would be wanted for that purpose, and he proposed to raise ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... peace in the Church, there is little of that moral earnestness in the life of the nation which in past times laid the foundations both of English character and of English greatness. We are becoming swiftly, I think, a light and flippant people, the only seriousness in our midst the economic seriousness of our depressed classes. It is not to ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... be placed upon my prose, but not upon my poetry. To say the truth, this information mortified me much. I said to myself, 'Cervantes, you are certainly either changed, or the world, contrary to its custom, has grown wiser, for in past times you used to meet with praise.' I read my comedies anew, together with some interludes which I had placed with them. I found that they were not so bad but that they might pass, from what this author called darkness into what others might perhaps term noon-day. I was angry, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... the desert ever manifested for the faith of the Prophet of Allah. They call themselves by the same name as the Christians of the North, yet there is as much difference between their Christianity and that of Wesley or of Channing, as between creeds that in past times have vowed mutual extermination. Still we must not call them barbarians because they cherish an institution hostile to civilization. Their highest culture stands out all the more brilliantly from the dark background of ignorance against which it is seen; but it would be injustice to deny that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... shallow courtiers, known only for polished manners, habits of dissipation, and an excessive regard to their own interest, to men who knew the strength and disposition of the enemy, who, by deep researches into past times, could judge of the present, and were too noble-minded to build plans of self-aggrandizement on the future. Misled by smooth flatterers, the Queen manifested a fatal dislike to all those whose minds were ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... bronze statues of divinities or priests, fixed into the ground or into some part of the masonry as magical nails destined to preserve the bricks from destruction, and consequently to keep the memory of the dedicator continually before posterity. Stelaa engraved on both sides recalled the wars of past times, the battle-field, the scenes of horror which took place there, and the return of the victor and his triumph. Sitting or standing figures of diorite, silicious sandstone or hard limestone, bearing inscriptions ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... by the Pacific has been deepened thousands of feet, since the present inhabitants of that sea came into existence. Thus there is not a shadow of a reason for believing that the physical changes of the globe, in past times, have been effected by other than natural causes. Is there any more reason for believing that the concomitant modifications in the forms of the living inhabitants of the globe have been brought about ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... of the Penal system in England in past times, and in our own ... It exhibits in detail the career of one of our latest prison reformers; alleged, we believe with truth, to have been one of the most successful, and certainly in his judgments and opinions one of the ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... confronted him with his deceit and wrong: somehow he could not bring himself to call it by its true name, crime, and fasten it on the man there and then. There was a high-bred delicacy about David Lawrence, a little of the old knightly chivalry that in past times held a man back from striking a fallen foe. And then he was not quite sure. The dishonorable work lay between the two men, and he forbore to ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... to recall names as it does other things? The answer is, that names (proper names) have very few associations, very few strings, or clues, leading to them. It is easy to see this; for suppose you moved away from the neighborhood of that sleigh-ride many years before, and in thinking over past times find yourself unable to recall the name of the Corners where the store stood. The place can be remembered perfectly, and a thousand circumstances connected with it, but they furnish no clue to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... Buckle pressed his conclusions, we objected the difficulty of finding what the truth about past times really was, he would admit it candidly as far as concerned individuals; but there was not the same difficulty, he said, with masses of men. We might disagree about the characters of Julius or Tiberius Caesar, but we could know well enough the Romans of the Empire. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Gilbert Blane, and others of the English navy and army, it is evident that the scorbutic condition of the system, especially in crowded ships and camps, is most favorable to the origin and spread of foul ulcers and hospital gangrene. As in the present case of Andersonville, so also in past times when medical hygiene was almost entirely neglected, those two diseases were almost universally associated in crowded ships. In many cases it was very difficult to decide at first whether the ulcer was ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... power, and among all these races, there existed, and in some part of them there yet exists, that excellence which alone is to be desired and justly to be praised. Wherefore, if any man being born in one of these countries should exalt past times over present, he might be mistaken; but any who, living at the present day in Italy or Greece, has not in Italy become an ultramontane or in Greece a Turk, has reason to complain of his own times, and to commend ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... unhappy; for they have not enough to keep their lives in motion;" as if all those peculiar habits and associations which made Fleet Street and Charing Cross the finest views in the world to himself had been essential parts of human nature. Of remote countries and past times he talked with wild and ignorant presumption. "The Athenians of the age of Demosthenes," he said to Mrs. Thrale, "were a people of brutes, a barbarous people." In conversation with Sir Adam Ferguson he used similar language. "The boasted Athenians," he said, "were barbarians. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... some difficulty from lack of facts. That every existing organism has been developed out of the simple into the complex, is indeed the first established truth of all; and that every organism which existed in past times was similarly developed, is an inference no physiologist will hesitate to draw. But when we pass from individual forms of life to Life in general, and inquire whether the same law is seen in the ensemble of its manifestations,—whether modern ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... to sing of the things of yesterday, let us begin with what God did for us in past times. My beloved brethren, you will find it a sweet subject for song at times, to begin to sing of electing love and covenanted mercies. When thou thyself art low, it is well to sing of the fountain-head of mercy; of that blest decree wherein thou wast ordained to eternal life, and of that ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... appropriated. Sequestered, surrounded by pleasing objects, and dignified by the not uncertain evidences of history, it offers to the thinking mind all those interesting sensations which a review of past times, important events, and manners now no more, ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... having in past times possessed a wider range than at present seems to have been overlooked. But as a matter of fact the probability that the manatee ever ranged, in comparatively modern times at least, as far north as Ohio without leaving other ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... evil—which is apparent—I maintain that there is a great deal of good in it; that it is inextricably associated with much real refinement and progress. Men are accustomed to speak of the simplicity and purity of past times, and to compare, with a sigh, the good old era of the stage-coach and the spinning-wheel with these days of whizzing machinery, Aladdin palaces, and California gold. But the core of logic that lies within this rind of sentiment ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... my garter and shuffles the smock over my head, or the lord that steadieth my chair's back while I eat, or the other that looketh to my buck-hounds lest they be mangy, be holden by me in higher esteem and estate than he who hath placed me among the bravest of past times, and will as safely and surely set me down among the ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... chiefly from that source. Whether the high temperature which prevailed on the earth during the deposition of the coal measures was derived from internal heat it is impossible to say; it is evident that the temperature of the earth's surface has been in past times, and perhaps is now, modified by causes which no scientific research has been enabled to detect [Footnote: Since the sun's secular motion has been known, astronomers have suggested that the solar system has been carried through portions of space having variable temperatures. Geologists, however, ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... hitherto depressed their energies, and left them the sport and passive creatures of circumstance. If they have sunk into a state of listlessness, in the first place, from the oppression which their ancestors endured in past times—and if they have continued in that state, from a variety of causes, some of which are faintly shadowed forth in the preceding pages, I yet hope, and most devoutly hope, that the hour and the day are ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... meet him again in Ireland: he was the queen's cousin, and man of the very highest character and ability. The grand jury of Kent were nominated by Sir Thomas Wyatt, who was sheriff for that year. This is not unimportant, for Wyatt in past times had been Anne's intimate friend, if not ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude |
