"Utility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the rider alights, without the use of the reins for that purpose. At first a foreigner is apt to regard the equipments of a Peruvian horse as superfluous and burthensome; but he is soon convinced of their utility, and, when the eye becomes familiar to them, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... it be not good, yet at least it is fit; and those things, which have long gone together, are as it were confederate within themselves; whereas new things piece not so well; but though they help by their utility, yet they trouble by their inconformity." These words, of one whose worldly wisdom was more profoundly studied than ever Browning's was, might stand as a motto for the poem. But the pregnant sentence of Bacon which ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... function cannot be so delegated. At least we know of no human society in which the birth and rearing of children has not been the essential function of the family. From a sociological point of view the childless family is a failure. While the childless family may be of social utility to the individuals that form it, nevertheless from the point of view of society such a family has failed to perform its most important function and must be considered, therefore, ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... confessed that he was baffled by many of Bergson's notions. James certainly neglected many of the deeper metaphysical aspects of Bergson's thought, which did not harmonize with his own, and are even in direct contradiction. In addition to this Bergson is no pragmatist, for him "utility," so far from being a test of truth, is rather the ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... means of evading the canonical prohibitions of usury, and became the loanmongers of prince and subject alike. To the crown the Italians were more useful than the Jews had been. The value of the Jews to the monarch had been in the special facilities enjoyed by him in taxing them. The utility of the Italian societies was in their power of advancing sums of money that enabled the king to embark on enterprises hitherto beyond the limited resources of the medieval state. The Italians financed ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... as her own life was concerned, she seemed to have found, not a haven, but a broad sea upon which she could triumphantly sail. That shame at being merely a woman, with no task, no utility, no independence, had been lifted from her. So, in gratitude, everywhere, at all times, she essayed to help other women to a similar independence. She did not go so far as to say that it was the panacea for all ills, but she was convinced ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... probably was, ashamed. He would certainly take her away from Prague. He had already perceived that his marriage with a Christian would be regarded in that stronghold of prejudice in which he lived with so much animosity as to impede, and perhaps destroy, the utility of his career. He would go away, taking Nina with him. And he would be careful that she should never know, by a word or a look, that he had in any way suffered for her sake. And he swore to himself that he would be soft to her, and gentle, loving her with a love more demonstrative than ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... The utility of the strait was highly rated. It secured perpetual renown to Bass, whose name it bears: this was given by Governor Hunter at the recommendation of Flinders, whose candour is always conspicuous in awarding ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... the Veda must be demonstrated and established. Though its interest in such abstract speculations is but secondary yet it briefly discusses these in order to prepare a rational ground for its doctrine of the mantras and their practical utility for man. It is only so far as there are these preliminary discussions in the Mima@msa that it may be called a system of philosophy. Its principles and maxims for the interpretation of the import of words and sentences have a legal value even to this day. The sutras of Mima@msa are attributed to Jaimini, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... that a faulty place is not discovered until after the work is cleaned off; the skill of the polisher is then required to paint it to match the other. A box containing the following colours in powder will be found of great utility, and when required for use they should be mixed with French polish and applied with a brush. The pigments most suitable are: drop black, raw sienna, raw and burnt umber, Vandyke brown, French Naples yellow (bear in mind that this ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... studiously in view in the creation of debt by negotiations of loans or otherwise: First, moderate interest; second, general distribution; third, future controllability; and, fourth, incidental utility. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... abortive attempts at prayer, his appeal for life, his fear of a violent death; and, after declaring his belief that the poor victim died without hope of salvation, concludes with a warm eulogy upon the gallows, being more than ever convinced of its utility by the awful dread ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of the Kalendar[588] and the correction of the irregularity in the reckoning of time were handled by him skilfully, and being completed were of the most varied utility. For it was not only in very ancient times that the Romans had the periods of the moon in confusion with respect to the year, so that the feasts and festivals gradually changing at last fell out in opposite seasons of the year, but even with respect to the solar year at that time nobody kept any ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... were placed so as to form a horseshoe before her desk, and at the further extremity of this semicircle was a chair evidently for himself. She was a little nettled at his premature action, although admitting the utility of the change, but she was still more annoyed at his absence at such a moment. It was nearly the school hour when he appeared, to her surprise, marshaling a file of some of the smaller children whom he had evidently picked ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... contagion; and perhaps no power ascribed to it, has ever been so universally acknowledged. But upon what series of experiments are these pretensions founded? From all the attention which I have bestowed on this investigation, I have been unable to discover any evidence of its utility in this respect, except what arose from the prejudices of the ignorant, or the obstinacy of those who are slaves to the practice of it. The bare assertion of Deimerbroek, "that it kept off the plague," without a single corroborative fact, ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... innumerable occasions men do substitute truth in posse or verifiability, for verification or truth in act, is a fact to which no one attributes more importance than the pragmatist: he emphasizes the practical utility of such a habit. But he does not on that account consider truth in posse,—truth not alive enough ever to have been asserted or questioned or contradicted, to be the metaphysically prior thing, to which truths in act are tributary and subsidiary. ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... C, if these are not to have an advantage of natural opportunity over D. Hence equity is secured when A pays 3, D, 2 and C, 1 into a common fund for the common use of all—to be expended, say in digging a well, making a road or bridge, building a school, or other public utility. Is it not manifest that here the tax which A, B and C pay into a common fund, and from which D is exempt, is not a tax on their labor products (though paid out of them) but a tax on the superior advantage which they enjoy over D, and to which D has just ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of well-being; they call for the best thought that the man confronted by them can muster; the perils hidden in a wrong decision overcome even the clamors of vanity. It is in such situations that the superior mental grasp of women is of obvious utility, and has to be admitted. It is here that they rise above the insignificant sentimentalities, superstitions and formulae of men, and apply to the business their singular talent for separating the appearance from the substance, and so exercise ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... significance,—neither his house, nor his manner of blowing the fire, nor his ways of eating; his habits, morals, and opinions will vividly illustrate the history of the valley. This renegade serves to show the utility of democracy; he is at once its theory and its practice, its alpha and its omega, in short, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Broadsides, and Ballads: a curious byway of book-collecting this, for the knowledge to be gleaned from these curiosa is not probably of great value. Nor can a great deal be said in favour of their utility. Perhaps, however, the first two would be classed more properly with No. 22—Facetiae and Curiosa, leaving Ballads only under this heading. The Earl of Crawford and Balcarres' 'Bibliotheca Lindesiana: a Catalogue of a Collection of English Ballads ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... country from Rolfe, on Mistake Creek, on which to shear the sheep. I shore 800. My salary was now L80 per year, for which I acted as overseer, bookkeeper, and giving a hand as general utility at all kinds of work. After shearing, the sheep were taken down to Chambers' Camp, on the same creek, whilst I took the wool to Port Mackay. When crossing the Expedition Range, before reaching Clermont, on my way from Mistake Creek, I rode over to a small diggings to purchase meat. ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... teeth are very long and sharp, and have a certain amount of play in the socket, but I am unable to state whether they are ever used for any purpose, whether of utility or defence. Its call is a hoarse, sharp bark, whence it takes its name of barking deer. What Jerdon says about the length of its tongue is true; it can certainly lick a good portion of its face ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... which I heard him deliver at Edinburgh, had animadverted on the Johnsonian style as too pompous; and attempted to imitate it, by giving a sentence of Addison in The Spectator, No. 411, in the manner of Johnson. When treating of the utility of the pleasures of imagination in preserving us from vice, it is observed of those 'who know not how to be idle and innocent,' that 'their very first step out of business is into vice or folly;' which Dr. Blair supposed would have ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... beauty; his methods are far from being accidental; by deliberate aims and principles he holds himself close to the regions of the decorative. He likes the rococo and the Victorian, ornament without any obvious utility, grace without any busy function. He refuses to feel confident that the passing of elegant privilege need be a benefit: "A maze of clipped box, old emerald sod, represented a timeless striving for superiority, for, at least, the illusion of triumph over the littorals of slime; and their destruction ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... a stronger theatrical effect; he called for a scene more majestically ornamented; and, lastly, he frequently endeavoured to give to his pieces a political or philosophical interest altogether foreign to poetry. His labours hare unquestionably been of utility to the French stage, although in language and versification (which in the classification of dramatic excellences ought only to hold a secondary place, though in France they alone almost decide the fate of a ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... the most hostile, in an inverted, relationship towards each other. In the beginning value is apparently determined on rational principles, by the costs of production of an article and by its social utility. Subsequently it transpires that value is a purely accidental determination, which does not need to have any connection at all either with the costs of production or with social utility. The magnitude of wages is in the beginning determined by a free contract ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... profit of one's self or other people with self. But it requires the outside world—means of satisfying itself—therefore means of subsistence, an individual of the other sex, books, convention, argument, activity, these means and matters of satisfaction are matters of utility and labor. Feuerbach's system of morality either predicates that these means and matters of satisfaction are given to every man per se, or, since it gives him only unpractical advice, is not worth a jot to the people who are without ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... prompted by any animosity to our public schools and did not propose to exterminate or annihilate them. But he was convinced that in the best interests of the nation they ought to be purged of the excrescences and anomalies which militated against their utility. The Bill accordingly provided that, pending the extinction of the hereditary peerage, peers or peers' sons, if they insisted on going to public schools, should be carefully segregated and kept in a state of perpetual coventry. It was not advisable that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... chief of all, God. "There is no power except from God." (Rom. xiii. 1.) But the right of ruling is not necessarily conjoined with any special form of commonwealth, but may rightly assume this or that form, provided that it promotes utility and the common good. But whatever be the kind of commonwealth, rulers ought to keep in view God, the Supreme Governor of the world, and to set Him before themselves as an example and a law in the administration of the State. For as God, in things ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... but nations had not yet learned civilised methods of guarding themselves against their enemies. At a time when distrust was general, it was easier, like Machiavelli, to erect deceit and fraud into a science, and to teach the vile utility of lying, than to scrutinise character and weigh motives. It was then generally understood that opponents might legitimately be hoodwinked to the limits of their gullibility; but it was reserved for Lord Chesterfield, two centuries later, to show how a man's passions must be studied ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... adventure to the expedition; and certainly Papuan warriors are foes as wild and weird as any adventurer can desire to meet. The rescuing of wrecked mariners at Tahiti added a spice of adventure of another sort. From beginning to end, indeed, this voyage must have been as full of charm as of utility. ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... with its sloping hills covered with turf, and its open valleys. I was not previously aware how intimately what may be called the moral part is connected with the enjoyment of scenery. I mean such ideas, as the history of the country, the utility of the produce, and more especially the happiness of the people living with them. Change the English labourer into a poor slave, working for another, and you will hardly recognise the same view. I am sure ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... animal, a race, or an individual, a higher utility or social dominance must always be influenced by any change in the environment. As the wheel of life slowly revolves, that which was lowest comes continually uppermost, and that which was dominant ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... observations were thrown together as the result of communications with several gentlemen locally acquainted with the Isthmus of Panama, and who expressed to the writer their astonishment, that amidst the numerous undertakings, of more or less utility, which science has realised in our time, one so important to the whole commercial world, so easy of accomplishment, and so certain to be productive of ample remuneration to the undertakers, as a Ship Canal through that Isthmus, had not been taken up. The idle objection, ...
— A Succinct View of the Importance and Practicability of Forming a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Panama • H. R. Hill
... sixty feet in height above the sea. In this tower, which contains six chambers, one above another, prisoners for life are confined; and thither I was accordingly conveyed. It is the policy of the Spanish laws, to render the punishment of criminals subservient to public utility; and this is in some degree effected even by solitary confinement. The prisoners confined in these towers are employed in turns, night by night, in trimming the lamps—which are a beacon to the vessels at sea. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... make no apology for troubling you with the detail of a very simple piece of domestic economy, being satisfied that you think nothing beneath your attention that tends to utility; the matter alluded to is the use of rushes instead of candles, which I am well aware prevails in many districts besides this; but as I know there are countries also where it does not obtain, and as I have considered the subject with some degree of exactness, I shall proceed in my humble ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... officers, in the city of New York especially, bear decided testimony to the utility of open competitive examinations in their respective offices, showing that—These examinations and the excellent qualifications of those admitted to the service through them have had a marked incidental effect upon the persons previously in the service, and particularly ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Sergeant Daw, who went quietly into the room and took the seat vacated by the Doctor. I still remained outside; but every few minutes looked into the room. This was rather a form than a matter of utility, for the room was so dark that coming even from the dimly-lighted corridor it was hard ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... abundance after two or three months: it has often done its best in six or seven weeks. Heavy rains are most destructive to mushrooms: therefore care should be taken to remove the wet straw, or litter, and directly replace it with dry. Hence the utility of a covered shed, ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... had no definite role to play, but who did general utility all over the house, was enabled to observe various episodes from various points of view. When the actual test came she had little more aptitude for the social graces than her mother had, and she imitated her mother's own cautious reserve. She did not meet Mrs. Ingles at all, but ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... this cursed cracking of whips; one feels the prick of the whip-cord in one's brain, which is affected in the same way as the mimosa pudica is by touch, and which lasts the same length of time. With all respect for the most holy doctrine of utility, I do not see why a fellow who is removing a load of sand or manure should obtain the privilege of killing in the bud the thoughts that are springing up in the heads of about ten thousand people successively. (He is ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... among neighbors is an absurd attention to the quantity and to the cost of possessions, with a comparative indifference to their intrinsic beauty or to their utility. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the rapidly altering styles of woman's dress. One season silk stockings and low-cut waists are worn in the middle of winter: the next, expensive furs appear in mid-summer. With little ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... consider those bituminous strata of fossil coal in relation to that change of situation which has happened more or less to every stratum which we examine; but which is so much better known in those of coal, by having, from their great utility in the arts of life, become a subject for mining, and thus been traced in the earth at great expense, and for a ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... Stone, Alice Potkins, and J. Archer, of Cranbrooke, weaver. The two first of these had not received condemnation, but the others were sentenced to the fire. Foster, at his examination, observed upon the utility of carrying lighted candles about on Candlemas-day, that he might as well carry a pitch fork; and that a gibbet would have as good an effect ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... indulgent towards criticism in general. He found it difficult to admit the utility of these thousands of artists who formed a Fourth or Fifth Estate in the modern community: he read in it the signs of a worn-out generation which relegates to others the business of regarding life—feeling ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... result of his long, final imprisonment, and published in his thirty-first year, possesses similar attributes, aggrandized, or improved. A great work, involving an inquiry into the first principles of government, and, therefore, of infinite practical utility in the career reserved for him, it wants too obviously the elevation of a Montesquieu, the philosophy of a Bolingbroke, or the comprehensive profundity of a Burke. It is a work of genius, but by a partisan, an advocate, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... left there. Designing to turn their conquest to account, they offered it to the Florentines for 80,000 florins, which, by the advice of Simone della Tosa, was refused. This resolution, if they had remained in it, would have been of the greatest utility to the Florentines; but as they shortly afterward changed their minds, it became most pernicious; for although at the time they might have obtained peaceful possession of her for a small sum and would not, they afterward wished to have ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... superimposed details; the more raw but promising efforts of Berlin, marked, like the jewelry from the same city, by faithful study of Nature; and, blending the decorative with the economic, the works of the English Wedgwoods and Mintons, infinite in variety of style and utility, and often pleasing in design. Italy, though supplying from her ancient stores so many of the models and so much of the inspiration of the countries named, seems to have forgotten Faenza and Etruria, and to prefer solid stone as a material to preparations ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... show, by abundant facts, that such statements, made by persons unacquainted with the fluctuations of disease and the fallacies of observation, are to be considered in general as of little or no value in establishing the truth of a medical doctrine or the utility of a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... seek these elements in the country, Mr. Editor, avoid all turnpikes, rail-roads, and steamboats, those abominable inventions by which the usurping Yankees are strengthening themselves in the land, and subduing every thing to utility and common-place. Avoid all towns and cities of white clapboard palaces and Grecian temples, studded with "Academics," "Seminaries," and "Institutes," which glisten along our bays and rivers; these are the strong-holds of Yankee usurpation; but if haply you light upon some rough, ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... it. He didn't pretend to control Miriam's intimacies, it was to be supposed; and if he had encouraged her to adopt a profession rich in opportunities for comradeship it was not for him to cry out because she had taken to it kindly. He had already descried a fund of utility in Mrs. Lovick's light brother; but it irritated him, all the same, after a while, to hear the youth represent himself as almost indispensable. He was practical—there was no doubt of that; and this idea added to Peter's ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... for himself could not be possible if all were to live together. In course of time, in addition to utility, certain more sensitive individuals began to see a charm, a beauty in this consideration for others. Gradually a sort of sanctity attached to it, and nature had once more illustrated her mysterious method of evolving from rough and even savage ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... however, lies much farther back, and between it and the range now in sight the land has no rest, but is continually steep up and steep down, as if Nature had determined to try how much mountain she could place upon a given space; she had, however, still some regard for utility, for the mountains are rarely precipitous—very steep, often rocky and shingly when they have attained a great elevation, but seldom, if ever, until in immediate proximity to the West Coast range, abrupt ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... no end, ranging all the way from the sober blue of the army nurse and the pretty white of the Red Cross, to bizarre but smart effects carried smartly by well set up girls representing scores of service corps, some invaluable, some of doubtful utility. ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... the main, care very little for elaborate household furniture. Even in homes of wealth, articles of household furniture are few and are chosen merely for utility's sake, save in homes where western ideas are finding their way and a growing desire to ape western manners takes possession of a family. Some years ago, a wealthy Hindu gentleman welcomed the writer into his fine new three-storied bungalow, whose front ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... did not remain to learn. At that moment I only clearly comprehended this—I had a way opened, an exceedingly slight one to be sure, of doubtful utility, yet still a way, which might lead me into the guarded mystery of that ship. The time for action had arrived, and that was like a draught of wine to me. Eagerly I slipped back through the increasing crowd of gaping countrymen, to where the negro had found ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... contrary, Gregory says in a homily (vi in Evang.): "An idle word is one that lacks either the usefulness of rectitude or the motive of just necessity or pious utility." But an idle word is an evil, because "men . . . shall render an account of it in the day of judgment" (Matt. 12:36): while if it does not lack the motive of just necessity or pious utility, it is good. Therefore every word is either good or bad. For the same reason every other action is either ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... For utility's sake, as well as for truth's, I would have the public enlightened. Exposed to ruthless criticism, our Commons might be shamed into an attempt at proficiency in the art of speaking. Then the sessions would be comparatively brief. After ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... at first under the name of La Petite-Aurelie, to distinguish her from one of her rivals far less clever than herself, belongs to the highest class of those women whose social utility cannot be questioned by the prefect of the Seine, nor by those who are interested in the welfare of the city of Paris. Certainly the Rat, accused of demolishing fortunes which frequently never existed, might better ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... which this result follows depends in some considerable degree on the temperament of the population. In any community where such an invidious comparison of persons is habitually made, visible success becomes an end sought for its own utility as a basis of esteem. Esteem is gained and dispraise is avoided by putting one's efficiency in evidence. The result is that the instinct of workmanship works out in an ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... of a few thinking men whose belief marks the point to which the civilization of the age must struggle to rise. In America, we may even now confess our obligations to the writings of Mr. Spencer, for here sooner than elsewhere the mass feel as utility what a few recognize as truth. The reader acquainted with the admirable papers upon Education, which have been republished and extensively circulated in this country, has recognized their author's fresh and vigorous spirit, his power of separating the essential ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Mr. Bulwer has said, that, in the hands of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword. Suffer yourself to be astonished at their numbers, but permit yourself to withdraw from their vicinity without questioning too closely their present utility or future destination. No personal affront to the public or the nineteenth century is intended by the superfluity of their numbers or the inadequacy of their capacities. Their rapid increase is attributable not to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... of both the rolling stock and the right-of-way have seriously reduced the capacity and utility of the system; a project to restore Nigeria's ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... earlier stories. Montaigne—whose "Essays" was Daudet's bedside book and who may be accepted not unfairly as an authority upon egotism—assures us that "there is no description so difficult, nor doubtless of so great utility, as that of one's self." And Daudet's own interest in himself is not unlike Montaigne's,—it is open, innocent ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... 1741, was a mere simple nomenclature of the astronomers of every age, and of every country; the dates of their birth and death; the titles of their works. The utility of this precise enumeration of dates and titles did not alter the ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... lofty duties, in the discharge of which it employs the trained minds and practised pens of the greatest literary talent of the time, the press has other functions, which, if not of such paramount importance, yet possess no small utility and value. By no means the least of these is that of merely furnishing the news of the day; and that this was the primary intention of the newspaper its very name proves. Comment, argument, and reasoning were after additions. There are thousands of persons at the present day even, who patronize ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... collected in the old world. They were locked; but through the glass doors I could gaze and admire, and make them all my own. An elegant escritoire was open on the table, the only thing with which I could associate the idea of utility. Yes, there was a harp, that seemed supported by a marble cherub,—a most magnificent instrument. I sighed to think it was useless to me; but Ernest's hand would steal music from ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... pays 2-1/2 per cent or 6-1/2 per cent to its original shareholders? In a very few small and special cases we have seen a railway line not pay for the working, and be closed. In a few other cases, where the dividend paid is less than 4- 1/2 per cent, it is possible that the utility of the line to the public is less than the loss of the shareholders in a non-paying investment. I say this is a possible and conceivable case—in some very short lines or in some very thinly inhabited districts. ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... than where there are stirps of nobles. For men's eyes are upon the business, and not upon the persons; or if upon the persons, it is for the business' sake, as fittest, and not for flags and pedigree. We see the Switzers last well, notwithstanding their diversity of religion, and of cantons. For utility is their bond, and not respects. The united provinces of the Low Countries, in their government, excel; for where there is an equality, the consultations are more indifferent, and the payments and tributes, more cheerful. A great and potent nobility, addeth majesty to a ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... an ambitious undertaking to attempt to supply a counterpart to the compendium of this honored scholar, with its clear and simple summation of the results of his much admired five volumes on Greek philosophy; and it has been only in regard to practical utility and careful consideration of the needs of students—concerning which we have enjoyed opportunity for gaining accurate information in the review exercises regularly held in this university—that we have ventured to hope that ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... to dissipate, until Louis XIV. wore a bunch of the flowers of the potatoe, in the midst of his court, on a day of mirth and festivity. The people then, for the first time, obsequiously acknowledged its utility, and began to express their astonishment at the apathy which had so long prevailed with ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... lies in this vibrating balance; from quick marriage of mind and heart, reason and sense, in the French nature, all the clear created forms of French life arise, forms recognised as forms with definite utility attached. Controlled expression is the result of action and reaction. Controlled expression is the essence of culture, because it alone makes a sufficiently clear appeal in a world which is itself the result of the innumerable interplay of complementary or dual laws and forces. ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... training hammer. 18 point cross-cut saw. 9 point rip saw. Large screw driver, wooden handle. Small screw driver. Nail puller. Stanley smooth-plane, No. 3. Bench hook. Brace and set of twist bits. Manual training rule. Steel rule. Tri square. Utility box—with assorted nails, screws, etc. Combination India oil ...
— A Catalogue of Play Equipment • Jean Lee Hunt
... costs, as old MacKeller, his first chief, had done, and not, like so many American engineers, to become a part of a professional movement, a cautious board member, a Nestor de pontibus. He happened to be engaged in work of public utility, but he was not willing to become what is called a public man. He found himself living exactly the kind of life he had determined to escape. What, he asked himself, did he want with these genial honors and substantial comforts? ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... have toiled at. Pulling these apart the maid led her into an inner hall fifty or sixty feet long, the first sight of which banished all diffidence about her shoes; for never had she seen such medley of East and West, such toning down of Oriental mysticism with the sheer utility of European importations; and that ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... fish-acclimatization during the last half-century. Fish-culture is now a recognized industry; every trout-stream of note and value is restocked from time to time as a matter of course; salmon-hatcheries are numerous, though their practical utility is still a debated matter, in Great Britain at any rate; coarse fish are also bred for purposes of restocking; and, lastly, it is now considered a fairly simple matter to introduce fish from one country to another, and even from continent to continent. In England ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... a grumbling Puritan, tainted with republican reveries. He did not appreciate the profitable example given by kings in those grand Babylonian gaieties, which, after all, maintain luxury. He did not understand the utility of vice. Here is a maxim: Do not extirpate vice, if you want to have charming women; if you do you are like idiots who destroy the chrysalis whilst they delight ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... of information so near to the lips of all who thirst for understanding—when so many of the secrets of nature have been revealed—when the impalpable and all-pervading electricity, and the infinite elasticity of steam, have been made subservient to purposes of human utility,—the advantages of knowledge, in an utilitarian point of view, the utter hopelessness of a successful attempt on the part either of individuals or classes to maintain their position in society if they neglect the means of self-improvement, are truths too obvious ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... often imagined myself living as Wordsworth did in Dove Cottage, as Thoreau did in the Walden Woods, and the vision was delightful. I took an agricultural paper, and read it diligently, not because it was of the least practical utility to me, but because its simple details of country life seemed to me a kind of poetry. In my rambles I never saw a lovely site without at once going to work to build an imaginary cottage on it, and the views I had ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... of Grammont may be considered as unique there is nothing like it in any language. For drollery, knowledge of the world, various satire, general utility, united with great vivacity of composition, Gil Blas is unrivalled: but, as a merely agreeable book, the Memoirs of Grammont perhaps deserve that character more than any which was ever written: it is pleasantry ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... devoted his wealth to the erection of the Hospitals at Angers and Le Mans. It is a relief, as we have said—a relief which one can only get here—to see the softer side of Henry's nature represented in works of mercy and industrial utility. The bridge of Angers, like the bridges of Tours and Saumur, dates back to the first of the Count-Kings. Henry seems to have been the Pontifex Maximus of his day, while his care for the means of industrial communication points to that silent growth ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... to pronounce it distinctly, three or four times in concert, and the word will be very strongly impressed upon the mind. The reflecting teacher will find a thousand cases, in the instruction of his classes, and in his general exercises, in the school, in which this principle will be of great utility. It is universal in its application. What we say, we fix by the very act of saying it, in the mind. Hence reading aloud, though a slower, is a far more thorough method, than reading silently; and it is better, in almost all cases, whether in the family, or in sabbath, ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... the other way, lad. You know, for example, a vast deal more than Lindsay did when he came to me, six months ago. I fancy you know more than he does now, or ever will know; for he still pins his faith on the utility of a slashing blow, as if the sabre had a chance against a rapier, in the hands of a skilful man. However, I will give you a lesson every morning, and I should advise you to go to Van Bruff ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... to do with it," the master said; "and I am not going to discuss the utility of verses with you. I shall report you to Dr. Wallace, and if you will not work in your holidays, you will have to do so ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... Similarly Demosthenes, his state-rival, when the Athenians called upon him for his advice, refused to give it, saying, "I am not prepared." But this you will say, perhaps, is mere tradition without authority. But in his speech against Midias he plainly sets forth the utility of preparation, for he says, "I do not deny, men of Athens, that I have prepared this speech to the best of my ability: for I should have been a poor creature if, after suffering so much at his hands, and even still suffering, I had neglected how to plead my case."[19] Not that I would altogether ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... our sovereigns, it has not been felt that they would or could have the largeness of view, the foresight, the sympathy with leisure, elegance, and ease, to provide liberally and expensively for their own recreation and refreshment. A bald utility has been the anticipated genius of our public policy. Our national Mercury was to be simply the god of the post-office, or the sprite of the barometer,—our Pan, to keep the crows from the corn-fields,—our Muses, to preside over district-schools. It begins now to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... will not give me a living, nor open out an avenue to some other career, I must needs set my brains to work, to find therein something unknown hitherto, for the charm of novelty is unfailing, something which would prove of the highest utility in a particular case. In Milan, while I was fighting the battle against hostile prejudice, and was unable to earn enough to pay my way (so much harder is the lot of manifest than of hidden merit, and no man is honoured as a prophet in his own country), I brought to light much fresh knowledge, and ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... what is called absolute morality. Utilitarianism is the proper creed of hard unemotional natures, who do not respond to the more subtle moral influences. Such is the view natural to those who cannot dissociate the word "utilitarianism" from the narrow meaning of utility, as contrasted with the pleasures of art. The infirmity of human language excuses such errors; for the language in which controversy is conducted is so colored by sentiment that it may well happen that two shall agree on the thing, and fight to the death about the word. We ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... the man who knew with any degree of familiarity such a body of legal literature was a very erudite lawyer two hundred years since. But the student was advised to read this small library again and again, "common-placing" the contents of its volumes, and also "common-placing" all new legal facts. The utility and convenience of common-place books were more apparent two centuries since, than in our time, when books of reference are always published with good tables of contents and alphabetical indexes. Roger North held that no man could become a good lawyer who did not keep a common-place book. ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Christianity; all by the same man, at the same period of time, and with the like authority. By what criterion is the convert to distinguish the essential from the unessential? He swallows the nostrum whole; there has been no play of mind, no instruction, and, except for some brute utility in the prohibitions, no advance. To call things by their proper names, this is teaching superstition. It is unfortunate to use the word; so few people have read history, and so many have dipped into little atheistic manuals, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... also added to their interest. His many faults are largely those of his age. He wearies his readers with his didactic aims. He is narrow and prosy. He poses as a great moralist, but he teaches the morality of direct utility. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... heartfelt gratitude; but a work of art in bronze or marble, such as has been suggested, that would be creditable to our city, would require an outlay of money that I cannot conscientiously consent to have expended for the purpose of personal honor rather than of public utility. Several years ago the city authorities honored me by giving my name to the attractive plot of ground at the junction of Fulton and Greene Avenues. If my most esteemed friend, Park Commissioner Brower, will kindly have my name visibly and permanently ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... officers cannot escape exposure for any perversion of justice, or undue exercise of authority. Public nuisances are abated by the same means, and public grievances which the Legislature might else overlook, are forced upon its attention. Thus, in ordinary times, the utility of this branch of the press is so great that one of the worst evils to be apprehended from the abuse of its power at all times, and the wicked purposes to which it is directed in dangerous ones, is the ultimate loss of a liberty, which is essential to the public ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... to speak rhythmically, however, not merely in order to liberate their deepest emotions, but in order to remember things. Poetry has a double origin in joy and utility. The "Thirty days hath September" rhyme of the English child suggests the way in which men must have turned to verse in prehistoric times as a preservative of facts, of proverbial wisdom, of legend and narrative. Sir Henry Newbolt, I gather from his New Study of ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... to remember what they were eminent for. And the comparative obscurity (comparative, I mean, to the talent of the caricaturist) overtakes even the most justly honored names. M. Berryer was a splendid speaker and a public servant of real distinction and the highest utility; yet the fact that to-day his name is on few men's lips seems to be emphasized by this other fact that we continue to pore over Daumier, in whose plates we happen to come across him. It reminds one afresh how Art is an embalmer, a magician, ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... the labor unions should try to evade the law by withdrawing from registry under the act? Government thought once more, and produced another amendment by which the penalties for striking were extended to all trades engaged in supplying a utility or a necessity, whether such trades were ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... schoolmasters; yet not only do I not question in literature the high utility of criticism, but I should be tempted to say that the part it plays may be the supremely beneficent one when it proceeds from deep sources, from the efficient combination of experience and perception. In this light one sees the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... The utility of this emotional effect of expectation is perfectly obvious; 'natural selection,' in fact, was bound to bring it about sooner or later. It is of the utmost practical importance to an animal that he should have prevision ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... of the finest perfumes come from the East Indies, Ceylon, Mexico, and Peru, the South of Europe is the only real garden of utility to the perfumer. Grasse and Nice are the principal seats of the art; from their geographical position, the grower, within comparatively short distances, has at command that change of climate best fitted to bring ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... taboo upon all generalisations about women, taking exception to these on the threefold ground that there would be no generalisations which would hold true of all women; that generalisations when reached possess no practical utility; and that the element of sex does not leave upon women any general imprint such as could properly be brought up in connexion with the question of admitting ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... having only three fathoms upon it at low water. This patch is only one cable to the westward of the line of lights, and a continuance of similar growths will render the entrance at night exceedingly difficult, and probably destroy the utility of the present leading lights. The channel, however, at present maintains a depth in its shallowest part of 21 feet at low water, spring tides. The attached plan shows the position of the line of lights in relation ...
— Report on the Department of Ports and Harbours for the Year 1890-1891 • Department of Ports and Harbours
... wholesome view of the modern skeptical world I was accustomed to move in at home. I thought of roast beef and ale, motor-cars, policemen, brass bands, and a dozen other things that proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The effect was immediate and astonishing even to myself. Psychologically, I suppose, it was simply a sudden and violent reaction after the strain of living in an atmosphere of things that to the normal consciousness must seem impossible and incredible. ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... work which, though crumbling and darkly grey, does much honour to the hand which built it, whether it was the hand of Satan or of a monkish architect; for the arch is chaste and beautiful, far superior in every respect, except in safety and utility, to the one above it, which from this place you have not the mortification of seeing. Gaze on these objects, namely, the horrid seething pot or cauldron, the gloomy volcanic slit, and the spectral, shadowy Devil's ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... of the means by which selection may be effected. The endless varieties of cultivated flowers, fruits, roots, tubers, and bulbs are not products of selection by means of the struggle for existence, but of direct selection, in view of an ideal of utility or beauty. Amidst a multitude of plants, occupying the same station and subjected to the same conditions, in the garden, varieties arise. The varieties tending in a given direction are preserved, and the rest are destroyed. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... utterly obvious—principles which should have taught our race to submit to the guidance of the natural laws, rather than attempt their control. At long intervals some masterminds appeared, looking upon each advance in practical science as a retro-gradation in the true utility. Occasionally the poetic intellect—that intellect which we now feel to have been the most exalted of all—since those truths which to us were of the most enduring importance could only be reached by that analogy which speaks in proof tones to the imagination ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the orchard, the beauty and practical utility of which astonished me, the doctor, gave us a lecture on colonization, agriculture, gardening, horticulture, etc., which he flavored here and there with pious reflections. He pointed out with pride that all this was his own ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... him ever foremost in the sacrifices and processions; they knew that he was indefatigable in his services in the temple, and that all his spare time was devoted to works of benevolence and general utility; and as they bent devoutly as he passed through the streets they little dreamed that the high priest of Osiris was regarded by his chief brethren as ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... of the fact that the subject had received the attention it deserves, and my own suggestions, founded upon a series of careful experiments made during the last eight months, were thrown out for the simple purpose of calling attention to the utility and practicability of a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... the good, advantage, and utility of the public affairs of the Kingdom of France, to put two of our galleons, at present at Havre de Grace, with one ship belonging to Jehan Ango of Dieppe, of seventy tons burden or thereabouts, to equip, victual and fit these three vessels, to make the voyage ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... said time I were engaged in the industrial insurance work. worked from a green agent to dist mgr ship at present am engaged as a salesman and collector. But would accept position as jarnitor of general utility man ordainary cook the which I ve served in a short order house for whites only. And also in a house run for both races. In fact will serve in any honest capacity That I'm capeble of that pays well. Please excuse ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... me or induces me to say so much about him. He is a fly in amber, nobody cares about the fly; the only question is, How the devil did it get there ? Nor do I attack him for the love of glory, but from the love of utility, as a burgomaster hunts a rat in a Dutch dyke, for fear it ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... fine gentlemen and ladies meet to admire and be admired, needs other outlets for its imagination than that of the primrose way to Paradise. The labour of the fields had inspired Olivier de Serres with the prose Georgics of his Theatre d'Agriculture, a work directed towards utility; the romance of the fields, and the pastoral, yet courtly, loves of a French Arcady, were the inspiration of the endless prose bucolics found in the Astree of HONORE D'URFE. The Renaissance delight in the pastoral had passed from Italy to Spain; through the Diana ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... villager's life is better balanced. He produces written words of value, or material objects that offer utility and delight. He sings his songs. He has a good time.—From the Ink Pot (a ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... transit point for marijuana and opiate trafficking routes to Western Europe; organized crime launders money, but the lack of a well-developed financial infrastructure limits the country's utility as a ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... bias, set, leaning to, predisposition, inclination, propensity, susceptibility; conatus[Lat], nisus[Lat]; liability &c. 177; quality, nature, temperament; idiocrasy[obs3], idiosyncrasy; cast, vein, grain; humor, mood; drift &c. (direction) 278; conduciveness, conducement[obs3]; applicability &c. (utility) 644; subservience &c. (instrumentality) 631. V. tend, contribute, conduce, lead, dispose, incline, verge, bend to, trend, affect, carry, redound to, bid fair to, gravitate towards; promote &c. (aid) 707. Adj. tending &c. v.; conducive, working towards, in a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... hold twenty solidi in value in fields, vineyards, and dwellings; what shall have been given more the Church shall reclaim after the death of the one who manumitted.(141) But little things and things of less utility to the Church we permit to be given to strangers and clergy for their usufruct, the right of the ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... England. I have lost my hopes of utility and glory. September 9 the ice began to move, and we were in the most imminent peril. I had promised the sailors that should a passage open to the south, I would not continue my voyage, but would instantly ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... which Nature flung to it. He forges the mighty anchor and every lesser instrument; he drives the steamboat and drags the rail-car; and it was he—this creature of terrible might, and so many-sided utility and all-comprehensive destructiveness—that used to be the cheerful, homely friend of our wintry days, and whom we have made the prisoner of ...
— Fire Worship (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that of man is fashioned so much upon straight lines with consequent sharp points and angles. Is it not obvious that Art has had but scanty share in designing our towns and manufactories? Right angles, no doubt, stand for utility in a commercial age, but Nature with her longer purview has little use for them and prefers a more rounded way of progress. Nature inspires, but not in square-cut periods. It is a safe plan to turn to Nature, as to the diagram of God, if we find ourselves ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... clear genius of his leadership upon the yearning heart of England in every emergency of peace or war. Too great to be consistent, he never hesitated to change his tactics or his opinion when the occasion developed the utility of another course. Ordinary men have been more faithful to asserted principles, but no statesman more frequently departed from asserted principles to secure achievements which redounded to the honor of the nation. During the thirty years in which Pitt exercised ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... made sickness auspicious. King Edward had used it when he had stayed at the White House as "Baron Renfrew," and President Lincoln had also slept on it during his term of office, which perhaps accounted for its massive and rugged utility. ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... weakened her resistance though she strove against it. She had nerved herself to meet action. Now she seemed to count for little more than a bundle, of more or less value, that, having been secured, could wait its time for utility. Yet, before she had telescoped her vision to extend through and beyond Plimsoll, she had seen devils looking from his eyes, smug devils, but none the less menacing, risen from the man's own private ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... experience at travel we have yet to find a single object of beauty or utility that is not the product of skill, of genius, of great labor. Every monument bears testimony of struggle, of bloodshed, of hard-earned victory; beneath every tomb that honor has erected rests the body of incarnate intelligence, fidelity, and courage. In the shadow ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... memory among the poor that their material possessions are something sacred. I know poor men for whom it is the romance of their lives to refuse big sums of money for an old copper warming-pan. They do not want it, in any sense of base utility. They do not use it as a warming-pan; but it warms them for all that. It is indeed, as Sergeant Buzfuz humorously observed, a cover for hidden fire. And the fire is that which burned before the strange and uncouth wooden gods, like giant dolls, in the huts of ancient ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... grasp his latent severity when Mrs. Upton's vague sweetness of regard was affecting him somewhat as her dog's caressing little tongue had done. "If a fondness is one we have a right to, we can justify it,—and it can only be justified by its utility, actual or potential, to the world ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Emperor, it entailed some unforeseen and not altogether agreeable consequences. It was very much criticized in Germany as an exhibition of a theatrical kind, of the "decorative in policy," as Bismarck used to say, who saw no utility in decoration, and evidently did not agree with Shakspeare that the "world is still deceived by ornament." It was objected that the Emperor should have stayed at home to look after imperial business, that such a journey must excite suspicion in England ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... preferable as copies to the even surface of plates. I have myself been much gratified by furnishing flowers in wax to some of our first flower painters, who have assured me that they have proved of great utility, in cases where the evanescent properties of the flower of nature prevented the possibility of committing their similitude to canvas ere their beauty had faded. It affords me no small degree of satisfaction also, that my flowers were found useful as copies ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... with a frying pan, a tin cup, a spoon or two, a tin pail to serve as a tea kettle and sometimes a slightly larger pail for cooking. On his belt he carries a sheath knife, which he uses for cooking, skinning, eating and general utility. He rarely encumbers himself with ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... nature; he has no term in his language to express the sensation of shame; the feeling and the word are alike unknown. Many circumstances might be adduced in proof of this, but I have no desire to disgust the reader. Previously to our arrival here, there was not such an article of domestic utility known among them as a spoon; the unclean hand performed every office. They take their meals sitting in a circle round a kettle, and commence operations by skimming off the fat with their hands, and lapping it up like dogs; then every one helps himself to ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... that the Parable of a Pilgrim, so sketched by Dr. Patrick, remained for some years in the possession of the private friend for whom it was drawn up, until, it being supposed by others that the work might be of general utility, it was at length published in 1678.—Before that year the first edition of the Pilgrim's Progress had unquestionably made its appearance; but we equally acquit the Dean of Peterborough and the tinker of Elstow from copying a thought or idea from each other. If Dr. Patrick had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... in for his attention and he was puzzling over the utility of several wires that led from it through the engine room roof when a sudden thought flashed into his mind. With a cry of triumph he bent over a small lever marked "accelerator," beside which was a small gauge. He rapidly adjusted the gauge, so that it would not register any more ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... such unlikely items as tool-chests and cases of vegetable seeds, all of which would be washed ashore undamaged precisely when wanted. It is quite obvious that a cargo of, say, type-writers, or railway metals, would prove of doubtful utility to any castaways, nor would there be much probability of either of these articles floating ashore. My nephew, a slave to tradition, wished at once to construct a hut of palm branches close to the clear spring, as is always done in the books; he was also positively ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... James Mill) mark the line of succession—the school whose method subordinates imagination to observation, and whose doctrine lays the foundations of knowledge in experience, and the tests of conduct in utility. Yet, for all this, one of his most remarkable characteristics was less English than French; his constant admission of an ideal and imaginative element in social speculation, and a glowing persuasion that the effort and wisdom and ingenuity ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... myself willy-nilly, and that the 'Review' was only a save-all.") I suppose you mean really a REVIEW and not journal for original communications in Natural History. Of the latter there is now superabundance. With respect to a good review, there can be no doubt of its value and utility; nevertheless, if not too late, I hope you will consider deliberately before you decide. Remember what a deal of work you have on your shoulders, and though you can do much, yet there is a limit to even the hardest worker's power of working. I should deeply ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... higher aims of human life, such as the contemplation of truth. Not so, but by following the new aim we shall also arrive at a true knowledge of the universe in which we are, for without knowledge there is no power; truth and utility are in ultimate aspect the same; "works themselves are of greater value as pledges of truth than as contributing to the comforts of life."[56] Such was the conception of philosophy with which Bacon started, and in which he felt himself to be thoroughly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... entailed heavy expenses. The Prussian Chamber, made up for the most part of Liberals, did not appreciate its utility. Moreover, it was not in favor of increasing the number of officers, because they were recruited from the nobility. After having yielded with bad grace in 1860, the deputies refused the grants in 1861 and 1862. It was at this time that Bismarck ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... found both interesting and useful to many who have not had a Classical Education. The general plan of the book appears to be good, the practical utility of etymological information being much increased when words derived from the same source are brought together for comparison. The definitions are usually ...
— Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Publications July, 1890 • John Murray
... architect and client of to-day work out these problems with excellent results. Practical needs are considered just as worthy of the architect as artistic achievements. He is a poor excuse for his profession if he cannot solve the problems of utility and beauty, and work out the ultimate harmony of ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... that these vessels were probably built for service only, with thick walls and rude finish, we are at a loss to see why so much pains should have been taken in their embellishment. It seems highly probable that, generally, the inspiring idea was one of utility, and that the fabric served in some way as a support to the pliable clay, or that the network of shallow impressions was supposed to act after the manner of a degraissant to neutralize the tendency ...
— Prehistoric Textile Fabrics Of The United States, Derived From Impressions On Pottery • William Henry Holmes
... a few specimens of which have been preserved, is the potter's wheel, an invention which, so far as its utility is concerned, is declared to be absolutely perfect—the most complete of all the instruments of the world. "It never has been improved and admits of no improvement." In fact all that may be gathered concerning the ancient ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... more," he reflected, "of the spiritual Superior, and less of the individual. I should have spread my mantle over the frailties of my spiritual father, and done what I might to support his character, and, of course, to extend his utility among the brethren, as well as with others. The Abbot cannot be humbled, but what the community must be humbled in his person. Her boast is, that over all her children, especially over those called to places of distinction, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... and other wage-saving methods proceeds, calls the attention of the Government to its neglect of the interests of the people in not grappling with this social evil, and urges it to at once embark upon work of public utility with the object of (a) absorbing the present unemployed labour, (b) laying the foundation for a permanent reorganisation of ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... campaign; but even such a practice as that is not suited to modern conditions of warfare, though be it admitted that it takes less time to change one's wig than to have one's hair dyed. The latter practice may, of course, help a man to cut a fine figure on parade, but it is of no utility in the field. In a controversy which arose after the publication of Zola's novel "La Debaole," there was a conflict of evidence as to whether the cheeks of Napoleon III were or were not rouged in order ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Duchess of Teck, Her Majesty's mother, escapes her notice. No detail is too small if it makes for efficiency. She selected at random garments from the tables, and examined them for warmth, for quality, for utility. ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... into cities, battering-rams for breaching fortifications, defences for protecting soldiers in the attack, and everything that could injure his enemies and assist his friends—wherefore, being a person of the greatest utility to his country, he well deserved the permanent provision that the Signoria of Florence gave him. For this reason, when there was no war going on, he would go through the whole territory inspecting the fortresses and the walls of cities and townships, and, if any ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... fiend of evil, who thus intrigued for the final ruin of his unsuspecting victims, made them agree mutually to pass a short time in travelling around as naval cadets; then, tired and surfeited with their triumph over nature, they hoped to retire into the sphere of utility ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... examined the chamber of his father-in-law. The key of the iron chest was found in his pocket; but Philip had not yet looked into this darling repository of the old man. The room was full of bottles and boxes of drugs, all of which were either thrown away, or, if the utility of them was known to Amine, removed to a spare room. His table contained many drawers, which were now examined, and among the heterogeneous contents were many writings in Arabic—probably prescriptions. Boxes and papers were also found, with Arabic characters written ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... architecturally viewed, to please the eye or gratify the sense of beauty. No edifices in the world —not even the Pyramids—are more deficient in external ornament. The buttresses and the air-holes, which alone break the flat uniformity of the walls, are intended simply for utility, and can scarcely be said to be much embellishment. If any efforts were made to delight by the ordinary resources of ornamental art, it seems clear that such efforts did not extend to the whole edifice, but were confined to the shrine ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... to an end what we had to say in praise of culture, and in evidence of its special utility for the circumstances in which we find ourselves, and the confusion which environs us. Through culture seems to lie our way, not only to perfection, but even to safety. Resolutely refusing to lend a hand ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... its stream, as well as its appellation, to the Isis; rising a little above Winchelcomb, and being increased with several rivulets, unites both its waters and its name to the Thame, on the other side of Oxford; thence, after passing by London, and being of the utmost utility, from its greatness and navigation, it opens into a vast arm of the sea, from whence the tide, according to Gemma Frisius, flows and ebbs to the distance of eighty miles, twice in twenty-five hours, and, according to Polydore Vergil, above sixty ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... until he brought perspective to great perfection; he was the first who discovered a perfectly correct method of taking the ground plan and sections of buildings, by means of intersecting lines—"a truly ingenious thing," says Vasari, "and of great utility to the arts of design." Filippo freely communicated his discoveries to his brother artists. He was imitated in mosaic by Benedetto da Macano, and in painting by Masaccio, who were his pupils. Vasari says Brunelleschi ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... "A book of such utility—so concise, so clear, so well condensed from such varied and voluminous sources, cannot ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 30. Saturday, May 25, 1850 • Various
... gone willingly to the place where they believed they should find him, and unless every house in Cowes was searched from top to bottom there was no chance of finding them, carefully hidden away as they would be. He could not see, therefore, that the police could at present be of any utility whatever. It might be necessary finally to obtain the aid of the police, but in that case it was Scotland Yard and not Cowes that the matter must be laid before; and even this should be only a last resort, for above all things it was necessary for Bertha's sake that ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... "Believing earnestly in the utility of the proposed organization, which will convert useless impedimenta into a fourth arm, and realizing the dangerous nature of the proposed service, I respectfully offer my services to carry these ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... members in the House," or "there are a good many Radical members of the House that cannot &c."? Professor Bain, apparently admitting no exceptions to his useful rule, amends many sentences in a manner that seems to me intolerably harsh. Therefore, while laying due stress on the utility of the rule, I have endeavoured to point out ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... people, afford them lights, or instruction, prejudicial to our interest. These young merchants are not, it is true, sensible of these consequences: but again, these people never lose sight of what can be of any utility to them, and the detriment thence accruing is not ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... sources. His treatment of kinematics was not as closely reasoned as the later treatises of Reuleaux and Kennedy, which will be considered below. Rankine did, however, for the first time show the utility of instant centers in velocity analysis, although he made use only of the instant centers involving the fixed link of a linkage. Like others before him, he considered the fixed link of a mechanism as something quite different from the movable links, ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... dictionary would be equally beneficial to the country and to the service, for the utility of such a work in assisting those who are engaged in carrying on practical sea duties is so generally admitted, that it is allowable here to dilate upon its importance, especially when it is considered how much information a youth has to acquire, on his first going afloat, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... president. He opened the first session of the municipal council by a speech which was marked by the homage paid therein to Pius IX. "He considered not," said the orator, "whether the work be difficult. He sees its utility and hesitates not." The council almost unanimously elected to the post of Senator (Mayor) Prince Corsini, who was, at that time, devoted to the policy of the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... months passed away, and still they spared our Hubert. Others were taken away and met their most doleful fate, but the more youthful and active slaves were spared awhile, not out of pity, but because of their utility; and Hubert's fine constitution enabled him still to live. But he could not have lived on had he not still hoped. The tremendous inscription seen by the poet over the sombre gate of hell was not yet burnt into his young heart: All ye that ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... instance only one subject, and see whether traces of it still exist. Caesar in his Commentaries states of the Druids that, "One of their principal maxims is that the soul never dies, but that after death it passes into the body of another being. This maxim they consider to be of the greatest utility to encourage virtue and to ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... history of the anthropoid apes, Huxley passed to consideration of their relation to man, prefacing his observations with a passage defending the utility of the enquiry, a passage necessary enough in these days of prejudice, but ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... sequins, has induced some speculative spirit to commence excavations on a large scale. But these, I regret to say, have not as yet been attended with any success. A very fair road has been recently made through this pass, and the traffic which has resulted from it ought to convince the people of the utility of its construction. We met many ponies carrying merchandise from Livno to Mostar, while long strings of carts drawn by eight bullocks were employed in carrying wood to the villages in the plain of Duvno. These carts ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot |
