"Positive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exigencies of the day. The aim is to direct special attention to the failure to recognize the Negro as a human asset with untold economic possibilities. He believes that the matter of race values and interdependency of all races must find "a definite and assuredly positive place in the various policies of any nation which is made up of several race groups." In one sense the author believes that "racial conflict, strife and differences inspiring as they do, struggle, jealousy, and ambition, are ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... remarkable when such a poet is young. The faults are the opposites of the classic poet's excellences: want of measure, want of proportion, want of clearness and simplicity, want of temperance, want of that selective power which knows what to leave out or when to stop. And these frequently become positive and end in actual disorder of composition, huddling of the matters treated of into ill-digested masses, violence in effects and phrase, bewildering obscurity, sought-out even desperate strangeness of subject and expression, uncompromising individuality, crude ornament, and fierce colour. Many ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... "I am positive that Hopewell would never have sold it for a hundred dollars if he hadn't felt he must," broke in the storekeeper's wife, and Janice did not complete ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... an exit for him to slip out of, unnoticed. He's always kept us guessing—my sister and I. He never knew his father. From a silent, observing child he ran into a stormy, vivid youth that often threatened disaster if not positive annihilation—but he's of the breed that dashes to the edge, grinds his teeth, plants his feet, and looks over!—then, breathing hard, draws back. After a while I got to banking on that balking trick of his. Once I ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... evening. He applied leeches and mustard poultices. Those ministrations failing to alleviate the sufferings ofthe invalid, Dr Bordot brought a colleague into consultation, but neither the new-comer, Dr Partra, nor himself could be positive in diagnosis. Something gastric, it was evident. They did what they could, though working, as it ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... which Augustine learned in his wonderful experiences,—who started the Reformation in the right direction; who became the greatest benefactor of these modern times, because he based his work on everlasting and positive ideas, which had life in them, and hope, and the sanction of divine authority; thus virtually invoking the aid of God Almighty to bring about and restore the true glory of his Church on earth,—a glory forever to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... rate go out before we are married." Mary Lowther felt this to be a decision in her favour,—to be a decision which for the time made her happy and light-hearted. She had so dreaded a positive and permanent separation, that the delay seemed to her to ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... few photographs we had, the majority of which everyone has seen, since they have been widely published in magazines and newspapers. Our collection of photographs was always a disappointment as far as positive proof was concerned because, in a sense, if you've seen one you've seen them all. We had no clear pictures of a saucer, just an assortment of blurs, blotches, and ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... (population): The annual percent change in the population, resulting from a surplus (or deficit) of births over deaths and the balance of migrants entering and leaving a country. The rate may be positive or negative. ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... for a given time, in order to protect others from infection. But the cause must be explicitly declared. By declaring it, you educate the country to look beyond the temporary measure,—to look forward to a return to a normal state of things, and to study the positive organic principle destined to govern that normal state. By keeping silence, you accustom the mass to disjoin the moral from the political, theory from practice, the ideal from the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... separates them from that class; and, second, because they contribute in large measure to provoke and to constitute among the workers of all trades, of all localities, and of all countries the consciousness and the fact itself of solidarity: a double action, the one negative and the other positive, which tends to constitute directly the new world of the proletariat by opposing it, almost ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... dualist Austria-Hungary became the oppressor of non-German and non-Magyar nationalities. It is the obstacle to peace in Europe and it has degenerated into a mere tool for Germany's expansion to the East, without a positive mission of its own, unable to create a state organisation of equal nations, free and progressive in civilisation. The dynasty, living in its absolutist traditions, maintains itself a phantom of its former world empire, ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... fact that this great people was ruined by the Transalpine wars of Caesar, was not the most important result of that grand enterprise; far more momentous than the negative was the positive result. It hardly admits of a doubt that, if the rule of the senate had prolonged its semblance of life for some generations longer, the migration of peoples, as it is called, would have occurred four hundred years sooner than it did, and would have occurred at a time when the Italian ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the boy!" By the time the messenger had returned she had readdressed the envelope, unopened, to Mr. Goward. Billy took it back down-stairs again; and every one trooped off to bed, Alice and mother with positive snorts and flounces ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... Dewsdale lasted little more than twenty years. Matthew Haygarth was married in Dewsdale church, his son John was christened in Dewsdale church, and he himself is buried in the churchyard. That is about as much positive information as I can give you; and you will perhaps remark that the parish register would afford you as much. After questioning the good-natured old rector rather closely, and obtaining little more than the above information, I asked ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the one exception of Wuthering Heights, that conveys so poignant an impression of surroundings, of things seen and heard, of the earth and sky; of weather; of the aspects of houses and of rooms. It suggests a positive exaltation of the senses of sound and light, an ecstasy, an enchantment before the visible, tangible world. It is not a matter of mere faithful observation (though few painters have possessed so incorruptibly the innocence of the eye). It is an almost supernatural intentness; sensation raised ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... such as a spare sail, a coil or two of line, a few nails, a hammer, a saw, a trifle of crockery, some cooking utensils, and, above all, our fowling-pieces and some ammunition. Miss Merrivale, however, was positive that they would not; and as the time dragged slowly by without any sign of the reappearance of the boat, I began at last to fear that she ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... which is very beautiful, with shrubberies, shady walks, and bowers; but the building itself is in ruins, having been destroyed during the late fire. Being quite isolated from any other dwelling, and surrounded by a large garden enclosed with lofty walls, it was positive negligence that caused its destruction. The ambassador, Sir Robert Gordon, was up the Bosphorus, and his principal servant obstinately refused to allow any one to enter the room where the fire had originated, until it was too late. The damages are estimated ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... continues 'if somebody sees in his dream a black man with black teeth and that man kills him,' intimating thereby that by the unreal dream-phantom a real fact, viz. death, is notified.—It is, moreover, known from the experience of persons who carefully observe positive and negative instances that such and such dreams are auspicious omens, others the reverse. And (to quote another example that something true can result from or be known through something untrue) we see that the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... has been placed on "the starvation-theory," and it is probable that there is much suffering in the Confederacy; but this does not proceed so much from the positive absence of food as from other causes. The first of these causes is undoubtedly the loss of all faith in the Southern currency. That currency has not yet fallen so low as the Continental currency fell, when it required a bushel of it to pay for a peck of potatoes, but it is at a terrible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... so positive, and so eager to get her father started after the motor boat he had lost, that Wyn could not understand why the Jarleys were not already ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... "Nonsense!" said the positive Miss Brown; "such men don't sweep stores. He may have passed current in some country village, but that ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... luggage, while during the year that followed this upheaval Limbert, strolling with me on the goose-green, to which I often ran down, played extravagantly over the theme that with what he was now going in for it was a positive comfort not to have the social kaleidoscope. With a cold-blooded trick in view what had life or manners or the best society or flys from the inn to say to the question? It was as good a place as ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... whom they would not be paid without his understanding much and conceiving more as to their cause and nature. How much he really did understand she was never quite aware;—but she did know that he detected her in a positive falsehood. She might certainly have managed the matter better than she did; and had she admitted everything there might probably have been but few words about it. She did not, however, understand ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... obscure corner under the piano, where she proceeded to enjoy herself. As soon as the glorious music was concluded, "Did you see Fanny?" was the exclamation, and the delinquent was dragged out before the last morsel was devoured; so there was proof positive. The next morning the cook told her mistress that she was in the habit of stealing such morsels as I have described, and hiding them, and that she only took them out to eat when she [the cook] was gone to church. Poor Fanny's reputation for ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... Rich had been seen before by several persons of the greatest distinction and veracity, who will do me the honour and justice to attest it; so that not only by them, but by Mr. Rich and Mr. Steele, I can (against all insinuation or positive affirmation) prove in the most clear and undeniable manner, if occasion required, what I have here upon my own honour and credit asserted. The Introduction, indeed, was not shown to the Lord Chamberlain, which, as I had not then settled, was ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... knows. I myself had almost forgotten. Tomorrow is exactly two weeks since the weather machine was destroyed. My father, Martin Robbins, built it. He told me then that its effects were so powerful that they lasted for two weeks, even with the machine turned off. Only positive action could bring an immediate reversal, of weather conditions. That's how ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... of the great revival of 1740 swept the country with positive rather than negative music. Even Jonathan Edwards admitted the need of better ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... partial and often irreconcilable testimony; and literal truth, when presented, needs to be accompanied by a discriminating analysis and estimate of the influence exerted upon the general result by individual occurrences, positive or negative. I say positive or negative, for we are too apt to overlook the vast importance of negative factors, of inaction as compared to action, of things not done in comparison with those that were done, ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... in evidence throughout the "Letters to his Son"—are rarely read: these latter have been, at least once and probably oftener, made into a schoolbook for translation into other languages—an office by no means likely to conciliate affection. And even when they are not suspected of positive immorality there is a too general idea that they are frivolously and trivially didactic—the sort of thing that Mr. Turveydrop the elder might have written on Deportment—if he had had brains enough. Yet again, unbiassed appreciation ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... morning Richard was invited to a conference by Philip of France, in which the latter, with many expressions of his high esteem for his brother of England, communicated to him in terms extremely courteous, but too explicit to be misunderstood, his positive intention to return to Europe, and to the cares of his kingdom, as entirely despairing of future success in their undertaking, with their diminished forces and civil discords. Richard remonstrated, but in ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... be made of the wounded man. No one could recall a house or settlement nearer than the Republican River, unless down the Beaver, which was uncertain, when the visitor came to the rescue. He was positive that some two years before, an old soldier had taken a homestead five or six miles above the trail crossing on the Beaver. He was insistent, and the foreman yielded so far as to order the herd grazed forward to the Beaver, which was some ten miles distant in their ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... them. I should have liked him better if he had not brought me down to Tretton, so as to extract from me whatever he can. I shall be more guarded in future in speaking of Mountjoy Scarborough; but to you I give my positive assurance, which I do not doubt you will believe, that I know nothing respecting him." An honest indignation gleamed in his eyes as he spoke; but still there were the signs of that vacillation about his mouth ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... if they would eat the juice of red grapes curdled, which the people might think to be blood, this would satisfy the judges. They answered: "God forbid we should dissemble our faith." We have elsewhere taken notice that the Christians then observed in many places the positive temporary law of the apostles.[2] Thamsapor and the governor, after a short consultation, condemned both to be stoned to death by the Christians. Joseph was executed at Arbela. He was put into the ground ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... that I have given you due warning of the danger of implicitly relying on any individual opinion, I may give my opinion with a clear conscience. I say that there has not been a positive marriage in this case. There has been evidence in favor of possibly establishing a ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... he shall have every advantage towards attaining his object. His natural disadvantages must have been, in some respects, unusually great; his voice, for instance, is not strong, and appeared to me to have a more positive defect than mere weakness. Doubtless he has struggled manfully against this defect; and it made me feel a certain sympathy, and, indeed, a friendliness, for which he would not at all have thanked me, had he known it. I felt, in his person, what a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there was no dissenting to so positive a command. We had signed new shipping-articles for the schooner, extending the engagements made when we entered on board the Crisis, to this new vessel, or any other she might capture. The wind was a steady trade, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... might get themselves in trouble, and be obliged to give authority, &c., for what they said—and what authority had they? a rumor—a vague report—an impression. Who knew, or ever knows, any thing more positive about a young man, except, indeed, young men—and they don't choose ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... abundance, and sells them in a fair and equitable manner, his profession is not much to be contemned; especially if, after having made a fortune, he retires from business, and spends the rest of his life in agricultural pursuits: in this case, he deserves even positive praise. There is another passage of Cicero, quoted by Dr. Vincent, in his Periplus, in which the same sentiments are expressed: he says, "Is such a man, who was a merchant and neighbour of Scipio, greater than ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... never terminates, to a decimal power that never terminates, in order to produce an integral number. Yet God has computed instantaneously every table of logarithms, and every other mathematical table,—no matter how difficult. Thus we have positive proof of the presence everywhere of a great intelligent Being, and we catch a glimpse of that mind that must be infinite. He created the whole system of mathematics, vast beyond our comprehension, at once. ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... but Lisele was positive that it would have a bad effect. She went, however, to tell the Christian natives what I had said, and to assure them that the comet ...
— Mary Liddiard - The Missionary's Daughter • W.H.G. Kingston
... Chillingworth had expected some excuse, for, notwithstanding all he had heard and seen of Sir Francis Varney, he could not believe that any amount of impudence would suffice to enable him to receive people as his guests, with whom he must feel that he was at such positive war. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... me quite and clean.—I am serious—very serious;—ay, and I have cause to be serious;— nay, I will submit my case even till yourself. [Whines.] Can any poor lassy be in a more lamentable condition, than to be sent four hundred miles, by the command of a positive grandmother, to marry a man, who I find has no more affection for me,—than if I had been his wife ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... his subordinates when in his cups, and set the whole place by the ears. Moreover, many of those under him wished to avoid giving the British Americans any provocation, in the hope that the war might be confined to Europe. But none dared to refuse a legal and positive order. So in May his expedition left for Canso, where there was a little home-made British fort on the strait between Cape Breton and the mainland of Nova Scotia. The eighty fishermen in Canso surrendered to du Vivier, the ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... circles with his left leg, and cut figures of eight, and inscribed upon the ice, without once stopping for breath, a great many other pleasant and astonishing devices, to the excessive satisfaction of Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Tupman, and the ladies: which reached a pitch of positive enthusiasm, when old Wardle and Benjamin Allen, assisted by the aforesaid Bob Sawyer, performed some mystic evolutions, which they ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... should be seized unless he were suspected of treachery or some criminal act; but apparently Bobadilla regarded it as necessary. We must remember that although he had only heard one side of the case it was evidently so positive, and the fruits of misgovernment were there so visibly before his eyes, that no amount of evidence in favour of Columbus would make him change his mind as to his fitness to govern. Poor James, witnessing these things and unable to do anything to prevent them, finds himself suddenly relieved from ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... established the truth of the whole was, a book in cyphers found among my papers, which exactly tallied with one found in his chest, after his disappearance. This, he observed, was a presumption very near positive proof, and would determine any jury in Christendom to find me guilty. In my own defence, I alleged, that I had been dragged on board at first very much against my inclination, as I could prove by the evidence of some people now in the ship, consequently ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... happy to do anything I can for you. I have always given you a passage on the boats when I could. I will act as I have done though I can give no positive promise for the future." ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... through the jungle toward the village of Mbonga. How she could get three goats and a sleeping mat out of the village and through the jungle to the cave of Bukawai, she did not know, but that she would do it somehow she was quite positive—she would do it or die. Tibo ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... naturally discontented one is one of the marked differences of innate temperament, but we can do much to cultivate that habit of dwelling on the benefits of our lot which converts acquiescence into a more positive enjoyment." ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... not? That is a frank and positive way which perfectly suits me. I want to be reconciled with you, and you know the price attached to ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... pure obedience to his father's orders, he learned in the academy to ride, dance, and fence, whence he acquired that easy behavior which he retained ever after. But these exercises, as matters of amusement, did not hinder his close application to the study of the Greek and Hebrew languages, and of positive divinity, for six years, under the famous Genebrard and Maldonatus. But his principal concern all this time was a regular course of piety, by which he labored to sanctify himself and all his actions. Pious ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... be much depressed, in order that there may be little or no danger to our own men. Much positive injury may be inflicted on the enemy in this way, besides the advantages of dividing his attention at such ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... weak and imperfect State, by no mean suited to the Temptations, which his Maker knew he would shortly be exposed to, and overcome with; and all his Posterity, had they been tried one by one, would, it seems, have failed as he did, Page 72. If all this does not amount to something equal to a positive Assertion, that God willed the Fall of Adam, and in Consequence of it, the Guilt and Desert of eternal Death, which is said to be thence derived, to all his prosperity, I do not know what is, or can be equal to it; and indeed all this, and much more, may easily ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... genial towards one another; in fact, there appeared to be a secret enjoyment of one another's infirmities, wherefore it was hard to tell, unless that each individual might fancy himself to possess an advantage over his fellow, which he mistook for a positive strength; and so there was sometimes a sardonic smile, when, on rising from his seat, the rheumatism was a little evident in an old fellow's joints; or when the palsy shook another's fingers so that he could barely fill his pipe; or when a cough, the gathered spasmodic ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... system of duty-doing under a code of dry laws, Scriptural or natural; but is a special phase of religious experience, having for its basis spiritual intercourse with God. All religionists of the positive sort believe in a personal God, and assume that he is a sociable being. This faith leads them to seek intercourse with him, to approach him by prayer, to give him their hearts, to live in communion with him. These exercises and the various states and changes of the inner life connected ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... an almost irresistible desire to pack up and follow it. The ancestral response to the old god of war is more persistent than any of us imagine, I fancy. I was close to the lines some weeks later, when I went into the Zone des Armees, and it is quite positive that not only does that dreary and dangerous region exert a sinister fascination but that it seems to expel fear from your composition. It is as if for the first time you were in the normal condition of life, which during ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and vestigial structures of animals are in themselves proof positive of a natural history of change. The few illustrations can be reinforced by countless examples offered by every group of living animals. If such structures have not evolved naturally by degenerating from more efficient ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... make us shudder; but what they describe is something positive and self-justified, something deeply rooted in our animal nature and inspiring to our hearts, something which, like every vital impulse, is pregnant with a morality of its own. In vain do we deprecate it; it has ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... to her that Miss Gardner was going away, leaving her to the unmitigated coldness and politeness of the other ladies. She grieved the more when, on the last morning, Jane made positive advances of friendship, and talked affectionately of ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... value of having some definite principle by which to test friendship is not confined to the positive attachments made. The necessity for a system of selection is largely due to the necessity for rejection. The good and great intimacies of our life will perhaps come to us, as the wind bloweth, we cannot tell how. But by regulating our course wisely, we will ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... bulletined to lecture at the Young Men's Union upon "The Philosophy of Expression" I went to hear him, more by way of routine than with any expectation of being enlightened or even interested, but his very first words surprised and delighted me. His tone was positive, his phrases epigrammatic, and I applauded heartily. "Here is a ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... constant advice he gave, too, when consulted about the choice of a wife, a profession, or whatever influences a man's particular and immediate happiness, was always to reject no positive good from fears of its contrary consequences. "Do not," said he, "forbear to marry a beautiful woman if you can find such, out of a fancy that she will be less constant than an ugly one; or condemn yourself to the society of coarseness and vulgarity ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... our heads and show the black sky alone above us, we should not feel utterly homeless while this fire burned,—at least I can recall such a feeling of protection when once left suddenly roofless by night in one of the wild gorges of Mount Katahdin. There is a positive demonstrative force in an open fire, which makes it your fit ally in a storm. Settled and obdurate cold may well be encountered by the quiet heat of an invisible furnace. But this howling wind might depress one's spirits, were it not met by a force as palpable,—the ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Lenore, I blush to tell you this, but I've been mobbed by girls. They have a thousand ways of letting a soldier know! I could not begin to tell them. But I do not actually realize what it is that is conveyed, that I know; and I am positive the very large majority of soldiers misunderstand. At night I listen to the talks of my comrades, and, well—if the girls only heard! Many times I go out of hearing, and when I cannot do ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... absorbed in the pleasures of the table. A divine, true to his cloth, swallows his soup with the highest gout. Not less gratified is the gentleman palating a glass of wine. The man in a black wig is a positive representative of famine; and the portly and oily citizen, with a napkin tucked in his button-hole, has evidently burnt his mouth ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... knowledge increaseth sorrow. I know you will indulge these expressions to one more in earnest than in former years, more philanthropic, more confident that he knows in whom he has believed, more impressed with the duty of bearing everywhere a testimony to the convictions which have given him a positive hold at once of ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... of Wallace, but looked down in manifest confusion during this address; and then, without reply, turned to Lord Athol, and called on him to open the charge. Athol required not a second summons; he rose immediately, and, in a bold and positive manner, accused Wallace of having been won over by Philip of France to sell those rights of supremacy to him which, with a feigned patriotism, his sword had wrested from the grasp of England. For this treachery, Philip ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... advocacy of righteousness; not with their ears to the ground, but with eyes looking upward, their pulpits speak plainly "Things pertaining to the Kingdom of God." Nothing at this stage does the Negro stand in greater need of than fearless and positive guidance ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Listen, Flamby, I was wrong to try to deceive you as well as the others. Besides, it is not necessary. You are unusual. I stopped a stray piece of shrapnel a fortnight after I went back and was sent to a hospital in Burton-on-Trent. The M.O.'s have a positive genius for sending men to spots remote from their homes and kindreds—appalling sentence. In this case it was a blessing in disguise. By some muddle or another my name was omitted from the casualty list, or rather it was printed as ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... many little children indulge in, while permitting my eyes to rove over the seemingly interminable mass of old grey stone, and then to fall upon the pleasant flowers around me. I loved silence, for nothing that fell on the ear seemed in accordance with what so charmed the eye; and thus a positive evil found entrance in the midst of much enjoyment. I acquired that habit of dreamy excursiveness into imaginary scenes, and among unreal personages, which is alike inimical to rational pursuits and opposed to spiritual- mindedness. To a period so early as the middle ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... an exchange of blows, had the dispute taken place at school; but here, at Brenlands, it seemed a different matter—bad blood and rough language were out of keeping with the place, and the punching of heads seemed a positive crime. ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... them," said Canalis, smiling upon her, "we are neither beaten, nor caught in a contradiction. Every work of art, let it be in literature, music, painting, sculpture, or architecture, implies a positive social utility, equal to that of all other commercial products. Art is pre-eminently commerce; presupposes it, in short. An author pockets ten thousand francs for his book; the making of books means the manufactory of paper, a foundry, a printing-office, a ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... creed [31]. But a symbolical worship—the creation of a separate and established order of priests—never is, and never can be, the religion professed, loved, and guarded by a people. The multitude demand something positive and real for their belief—they cannot worship a delusion—their reverence would be benumbed on the instant if they could be made to comprehend that the god to whom they sacrificed was no actual power able to effect evil and good, but the type of a ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it seemed as if nothing short of positive inspiration could justify his views, spoke of the bell slightingly as a poor exhibit, and wondered what the Pittsburg foundries meant by sending such stuff to an ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... out only the negative virtues that belong to apathetic classes, such as patience, endurance, self-sacrifice, exhausting the brain-forces, ever giving, asking nothing in return; the other, the outgrowth of the two supreme powers in nature, the positive and negative magnetism, the centrifugal and centripetal forces, the masculine and feminine elements, possessing the divine power of creation, in the universe of thought and action. Two pure souls fused into one by ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the kingdom of Narsymga, since it marches with all Bengal, and is at war with her; and it marches with all the kingdom of Pegu and with the MALLACA Sea. It reaches to the kingdom of Cambaya, and to the kingdom of Dakhan; and they told me with positive certainty that it extends as far as Persia. The population thereof is light coloured, and the men are of good physique. Its king has much treasure and many soldiers and many elephants, for there are numbers of these in this country. (My informants) know this well, and they say ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... do," said the colonel, in his soft but positive voice. "My young friend and I have been traveling hard ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... contamination the microscopic findings are verified by animal inoculations. The presence of negri bodies in a specimen is of great value owing to the rapidity with which a diagnosis can be made. In one case a positive diagnosis was reported within twenty minutes after the specimen entered the laboratory and within the next hour and a half the patient bitten by the dog the same day had begun her course of protective injections and ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... for a third, imprisonment for life. Under the age of sixteen, they are put in an institution. "A mendicant who has made himself liable to arrest by the police," says the circular, "is not to be released except under the most positive assurance that he will no longer beg; this course will be followed only in case of persons worthy of confidence and solvent guaranteeing the mendicant, and engaging to provide him with employment or to support him, and they ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the word of his command when he said—"This do in remembrance of me." St. Luke xxii: 19. This is the command of Christ. It is a plain, positive command. Jesus did not give this command to the apostles only, or to his ministers, or to any particular class of his followers, but to all of them. It was given first to his apostles, but it was not intended to be confined to them. Jesus does not say—"This ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... was the case, and has embalmed for us the speculations upon the origin of living beings, which were among the earliest products of the dawning intellectual activity of man. In those early days positive knowledge was not to be had, but the craving after it needed, at all hazards, to be satisfied, and according to the country, or the turn of thought, of the speculator, the suggestion that all living things arose ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... {169} The justification of all persons who have freed themselves from toil is now founded on experimental, positive science. The scientific theory ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... more numerous as they proceeded farther north toward the equator, for it must be remembered that they had landed south of it, and at times the little animals became a positive nuisance. ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... she was to have a taste of freedom! No father to scold and plead; no much-superior sister to torment her with reproaches; no peering through grated windows at one little rectangle of outside sunshine. To be sure, Popova had received explicit and positive instructions ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... known customs, the practice and decisions of courts, as well as positive statutes, acquire the authority of laws; and every proceeding is conducted by some fixed and determinate rule. The best and most effectual precautions are taken for the impartial application of rules to particular ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... of prophet, I shall take care not to recount here, in advance, events that are about to happen. I marvel at people who are so sure of their facts. The future has not the least obscurity for them; it has much for me. I confine myself to protesting against the positive assertions which have contributed but too greatly to mislead the opinion of Europe. My humbles theory is this: the defeat of the South is probable; the return of the conquered South to the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... In vain did he protest that he would rather meet death than part from her irresistible charms; and her irresistible charms protested that he should never see them more, unless he departed immediately. Thus was he forced to obey. However, he was allowed to flatter himself, that these positive orders, how harsh soever they might appear, did not flow from indifference; that she would always be more pleased with his return than with his departure, for which she was now so urgent; and having generously ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... that is in their bodies, hear no voices but their own, exert a common effort to a common end day after day, until the days become weeks and the weeks marshal themselves into calendar months—no two men born of woman can sustain this enforced intimacy over a long period without acquiring a positive attitude toward each other. They achieve a contemptuous tolerance, or they achieve a rare and lasting friendship. It was the fortune of Tommy Ashe and Wesley Thompson to cultivate the latter. They arrived at it by degrees, in many forty-below-zero camps along the Peace, in the shadow of those ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... invented to travesty the truth, and when French politicians say they are going to the right it is an almost sure sign that they are going to the left; nevertheless, is it possible to blame the Italians who read in these assurances a positive promise ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... nations, and even between towns of the same country, was interrupted. In those times of social confusion, there were periods of such poverty and distress, that for want of money commerce was reduced to the simple exchange of the positive necessaries of life. When order was a little restored, and society and the minds of people became more composed, we see commerce recovering its position; and France was, perhaps, the first country in Europe in which this happy change took place. Those famous cities of Gaul, which ancient ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... not answer me; but after a little more, when my expostulations had become more positive, Handy Solomon dropped the halliard, and ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... me," Glyde said, "is proof positive that she loved him. Of course she feared him. It is obvious. My ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... property) was requested by the president to look at the prisoners, and did so with great attention and for a long time. He stated that the clothing of his abductors was exactly like that worn by the four gentlemen; but he declared that the trouble of his mind had been such that he could not be positive that the accused were really ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... indefinitely under the incompetent government of Louis XV, and when, on the other hand, the generation which had been brought up under the influence of Montesquieu and Voltaire came to maturity. A host of new writers, eager, positive, and resolute, burst upon the public, determined to expose to the uttermost the evils of the existing system, and, if possible, to end them. Henceforward, until the meeting of the States-General closed the period of discussion and ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... principles which may even raise it into a science are self-evident; they are drawn from the heart of man, and they depend on the nature and connexion of human events! We presume we shall demonstrate the positive existence of such a faculty; a faculty which Lord Bacon describes of "making things FUTURE and REMOTE AS PRESENT." The aruspex, the augur, and the astrologer have vanished with their own superstitions; but the moral and the political predictor, proceeding ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... would all have made for themselves, each insisting on not being in fault, and throwing the blame on her companion; but Mrs. Teachum silenced them by a positive command; and told them, that she saw they were all equally guilty, and as such ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... spirit of nationalism is such an acquired trait, and while it should therefore follow that the chief agency in divesting men of it must be disuse of the discipline out of which it has arisen, yet a positive, and even something of a drastic discipline to the contrary effect need not be altogether ineffectual in bringing about its obsolescence. The case of the Chinese people seems to argue something of the sort. Not that the Chinese are simply and neutrally unpatriotic; they appear ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... apply the characteristic assumed to the second leading Idea, namely, to Truth. In the first place, we take it for granted, that no one will deny to the perception of truth some positive pleasure; no one, at least, who is not at the same time prepared to contradict the general sense of mankind, nay, we will add, their universal experience. The moment we begin to think, we begin to acquire, whether it be in trifles or otherwise, ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... him. Better find him than live in doubt! Besides, the world would be uncharitable enough to hint that you had made away with him: it's what ought to have been done when first he appeared. I give you my word, Ann, he was a positive monster! The object was ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... you how Marcia feels about it," said his wife, reprovingly. "You know how intense she is—it gives her positive satisfaction to show her gratitude by working her fingers off and spending all the money she's got. She wants to make it a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... will you? Has the fire-engine company started to join in the celebration?" whooped Phil Parker, who was along with the rest, though barred from the football squad because of an injury to his leg, and also positive orders from headquarters at home to avoid all strenuous ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... he fixed his eyes upon Edmund; for although the ardour of his spirits rendered him a great dealer in positive assertions, he was yet so conscious of his inferiority in knowledge to his eldest brother, that he seldom felt satisfied with them, unless they were stamped by ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... see me, but asked a good many questions which I had some difficulty in answering. She saw this, and held me to the matter till I had satisfied her. When this was done it was late and cold, and we decided to come to the tavern for the night. And we came! Nothing shall ever make me deny so positive a fact. We came, and this man ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... one would choose to drink, but the Admiral was convinced that it was the habitual beverage of all English people, and had actually sent his steward ashore to procure the precious liquid. It was a delicate attention, but it so happened that both ladies had a positive aversion to stout; they drank it bravely notwithstanding, and we all assumed expressions of intense delight, to the Admiral's ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... space, which can vibrate as light, which can be sheared into positive and negative electricity, which in whirls constitutes matter, and which transmits by continuity and not impact every action and reaction ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... were sent to symbolize all the different elements of spring association. The Blue-Bird seems to represent simply spring's faint, tremulous, liquid sweetness, the Song-Sparrow its changing pulsations of more positive and varied joy, and the Robin its cheery and superabundant vitality. The later birds of the season, suggesting no such fine-drawn sensations, yet identify themselves with their chosen haunts, so that we cannot think of the one without the other. In the meadows, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... against the wall, having that moment returned to the room from ministering to her daughter's baby. She held the infant in her arms, waiting Sol's descent from the witness-chair so she might settle down in her place without disturbing the proceedings. When she heard her husband make this positive declaration, her mouth fell open and her eyes widened ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... had slipped into my room and removed the picture while I slept. That was obvious. Why had she done that? The fleeting impression that I couldn't be positive about would give her ...
— The Gallery • Roger Phillips Graham
... this relic matter a little overdone? We find a piece of the true cross in every old church we go into, and some of the nails that held it together. I would not like to be positive, but I think we have seen as much as a keg of these nails. Then there is the crown of thorns; they have part of one in Sainte Chapelle, in Paris, and part of one also in Notre Dame. And as for bones of St. Denis, I feel certain ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Neapolitan or Sicilian laborer, he would take the laborer every time, for his brain and brawn and heart make the better foundation on which to build the institutions of our Republic. Miss Kate Claghorn and other experienced workers agree in this view, and think it would be a positive misfortune to make ability to read the deciding test. Nor would these experts favor the money test. They believe the inspectors should have more leeway, as judges of human nature, and would rather rely on their judgment as to the character of the applicant than ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... the night of this last awful day that a withering sense of his helpless, desperate state came in its full intensity upon his blighted soul; not that he had ever held any defined or positive hope of mercy, but that he had never been able to consider more than the dim probability of dying so soon. He had spoken little to either two men, who relieved each other in their attendance upon him; and they, for their parts, made no effort to rouse his attention. ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... crown. Many of the best blood and of the highest chivalry of the land still held loyal devotion to the exiled Stuarts, while the mass of the nation, disgusted by the sordid and unpatriotic acts of the existing dynasty, regarded it with sentiments of dislike but little removed from positive hostility. A sullen discontent paralyzed the vigor of England, obstructed her councils, and blunted her sword. In the cabinets of Europe, among the colonists of America, and the millions of the East alike, her once glorious name had ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... titles to his younger sons would be a positive injury to them in working for their bread, and he relied upon your Majesty's unvarying kindness for appreciating his reluctance to prefer himself to his children. He may, with entire truth, add that the knowledge that ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... half as much again as she was worth if he'd sell me the mineral rights at a fair price, and he'd do it. He never had no use for 'em, an' I didn't know as I should either; but that young engineer o' yourn talked so positive I thought I might as well git 'em inside my pasture-fence." He sat back and looked at Keith with ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... position of sufferance in the school, and she would almost have preferred to be handed over to the Emigration Society, and deported to New Zealand. That her father should be called an adventurer seemed the cruellest cut of all. The reason for his long silence she could not fathom, but she was positive he would never abandon her, and her faith in him did not waver. Some day, if he were still alive, she knew he would come to claim her; and in the meantime, though life was dark, for the sake of her own self-respect she must show a brave front. ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... idea of seizing the emperor and detaining him until he had consented to the concessions demanded of him; others merely say that the constable, before leaving him, was very urgent with him that he should enter into some positive engagement as to Milaness. "No," said Charles, "I must not bind myself any more than I have done by my words as long as I am in your power; when I have chastised my rebellious subjects ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... time when he, too, was surprised and indignant. No man is, after all, born wise, though he may be born with an instinct for wisdom. Thus Anatole France touches us most nearly when he describes his childhood. The innocent, wayward, positive, romantic little Pierre Noziere[4] is a human being to a degree to which no other figures in the master's comedy of unreason are. And it is evident that Anatole France himself finds him by far the most attractive of them all. He ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... the World of Divine Ideas. "They who see here any image or resemblance of the things which are there receive a shock like a thunderbolt, and are, after a manner, taken out of themselves." Schopenhauer explained, the shock of first love as the Willpower of the Soul of the Race. The positive psychology of Spencer declares in our own day that the most powerful of human passions, when it makes its first appearance, is absolutely antecedent to all individual experience. Thus do ancient thought and modern—metaphysics ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... it. If you're honest it's unavoidable; only some people claim that they make the attack from duty, while I find a positive pleasure in the thing." ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... authority for granting the application. It is apparent, however, from some of the cases that such an examination must have been permitted; for instance, in Fulton v. Hood (34th Penn. State Reports, 365), expert testimony was received in corroboration of positive evidence to prove that the whole of an instrument was written by the same hand, with the same ink, and at the same time. It is inconceivable how testimony of any value could be given as to the character of ink with which ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... to the common weal. Instead of imitation or passive acceptance of patterns on the part of the majority, it stimulates active construction. As contrasted with the liberty favored in competing groups, cooperation would emphasize positive control over natural forces, over health conditions, over poverty and fear. It would make each person share as fully as possible in the knowledge and strength due to combined effort, and thus liberate him from many of the limitations which ...
— The Ethics of Coperation • James Hayden Tufts
... were in tears. Cally retired to a fitful rest. At nine o'clock next morning, papa telephoned for Dr. Halstead, who came and found temperature, and prescribed a pale-green medicine, which was to be shaken well before using. The positive command was that the patient should not get out of bed ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the Moros to believe that he was not abandoning the post, sent in pursuit of them Don Juan de Morales Valenzuela, with two caracoas, to the islands called "Orejas de Liebre," on January 2, 1663; but on the fourth of the same month he received a new and more positive order from the captain-general, dated October 11, that without delay or any excuse he must abandon Zamboanga. At sight of this, Bobadilla warned Morales that the withdrawal must be made, as was done on ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... though with great deference to authority, is blue, when very light, necessarily cold; and if so, has it not an activity which, being the great quality of light, assimilates it with light, and thus takes in to itself the surrounding "radiance?" A very little positive warm colour, as it were set in blue, from whatever cause, gives it a surprising glow. We desire to see the theory of colours treated, not with regard to their corresponding harmony in their power one upon the other, nor in their light and shadow, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... general De Caen to let me go at this time, when I knew so much of the island and an attack upon it was expected, would be to contradict all the reasons hitherto given for my detention; and therefore, that unless he had received a new and positive order, he could not with any degree of consistency set me at liberty. This state of suspense, between hope and apprehension, continued until the 28th, when an express from the town, sent by M. Pitot, brought the following ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... true conception of the known facts about the internal tendencies in organisms including man, which we call hereditary. The principles underlying plant, animal, and human breeding. Any progress in behavior, in legislation, or in public opinion in the field of eugenics, negative or positive, must come from the ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... doubt can I have? I know it for a positive certainty, and he knows, of course, that I do know it, and has purchased my silence pretty handsomely, although I must confess that nothing but my positive necessities would have induced me to make the large demands upon him that I have, and I hope soon to ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... remains, something like Brahma to Goethe's Bayadere; her love, her love above all for his intrepid intellect, has raised him to a sacredness so great, that his whim, his fame, his peace, his very petulance can be refused nothing; and that, on the other hand, any concession taken from him seems positive sacrilege. Hence her refusal of marriage, her answer, "that she would be prouder as his mistress—the Latin word is harlot—than as the wife of Caesar." Fifty years later, in the kind, passionate, poetical days of St. Francis, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... and to advise him if it was worth republication, and what form of publication was best suited to it. As soon as Murger retired, Monsieur Jules Janin took up the newspapers. Few bibliopoles in Paris are more delicate than Monsieur Janin; it is positive pain to him to peruse any volume, unless the margin be broad, the type excellent, the printing executed by a famous printer, and the binding redolent of the rich perfume of Russian leather. These newspapers were torn and tattered, stained with wine and coffee and tobacco. They were not so much as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... is withdrawn in ed. 4 (II. p. 328 n. 3), but objection is still taken to the words 'they taught' as conveying 'too positive a view of the case.' On the character of this withdrawal see below, p. ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... king: depending upon promised strength, I swore allegiance to thee, and to thy government. Just so, my dear sovereign Master, must I go on: rejoicing in its privileges, subjecting myself cheerfully to its restrictions; studying with care its positive commands, and setting myself to obey; submitting with meekness to its discipline; claiming thy kingly power to subdue the corruptions of my heart, to defend from foes within and foes without; and ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... carefully until he was assured that there was no one there. It seemed to me to be an unnecessary caution, for we knew Whitney was down-stairs and would probably be there a long time. But he seemed to think it necessary. Positive that we were alone, he made a hasty survey of the rooms. Then he seemed to select as a starting-point a table in one corner of the sitting-room on which lay a humidor and a heavy metal ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve |
