"Facility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lourdes which the family had taken in hope that the holy cure might help her mother's lame knee, and too much else to relate here. Senorita Diane was exceedingly loquacious: her little tongue wove in and out of the new idiom with surprising facility, forever wagging in a low, sweet babble of nothings. Adelle, as has been sufficiently indicated, absorbed passively the small and the large facts of life. Diane was like a twittering bird on a tiny twig that shook with the vehemence of her expression. She reacted ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... been awarded MacMorrogh Brothers. President directs that you afford contractors every facility, and that you confer with Mr. North in ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... the nature of a practical joke in the facility with which Plato's bitter enemies, the poets, have fitted to themselves his superlative praise of the philosopher's virtue. [Footnote: See the Republic, VI, 485, ff.] The moral instincts of the philosopher are unerring, Plato declares, because the philosopher's attention ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... split one way than another, the line of cleavage or stratum of break being at any angle and not necessarily parallel to its bed. A striking example of this is seen in slate, which may be split in plates, or laminae, with great facility, though this property is the result of the pressure to which the rock has been for ages subjected, which has caused a change in the molecules, rather than by "cleavage" as the term is strictly understood, and as existing in minerals. Mica is also another ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... often, as in dogs, greater than those on which distinctions of species are in other cases founded. They can show that it is a matter of dispute whether some of these modified forms are varieties or separate species. They can show, too, that the changes daily taking place in ourselves—the facility that attends long practice, and the loss of aptitude that begins when practice ceases—the strengthening of passions habitually gratified, and the weakening of those habitually curbed—the development of every faculty, bodily, moral, or intellectual, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... little hesitation in deciding that the first was the most tenable ground; but, from the peculiar circumstances of the case, it merited consideration, if the principle could be saved, whether facility in the provision might not result from a compliance. An attentive examination of the subject and papers, however, soon convinced me that to furnish all the papers would be highly improper, and that a partial delivery of them would leave the door open ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Every facility for teaching Elocution, which I have so often needed, but never before found, is exactly furnished in this work:—principles are clearly and concisely laid down, and are very happily adapted to the comprehension ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... after all. Upon my honour, my dear Sir, I think I deserve some credit for hitting on this plan—it makes everything so right and straight, and suits of course the wishes of all parties! I need hardly say that you shall have every facility for seeing Margaret, under the restrictions—under the restrictions, you understand. People may talk about your visits; but having got the certificate, and knowing it's all safe and settled, I shan't care for that. Well, what do you say? take time to think, if you wish it—only ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... was the facility with which the Baron made a catspaw of him. For the old Vicomte slowly stepped down as it were from his high standpoint of indifference, and allowed himself to be interested in the financier's schemes. It was out of keeping with the attitude which my patron had assumed a few ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... with one distance, namely, 6.4 centimeters; and on only one region, the forearm. Furthermore, in these experiments no attempt was made to control the factor of pressure by any mechanical device. The experimenter relied entirely on the facility acquired by practice to give a uniform pressure to the stimuli. The number of judgments is also relatively small. Again, the open and filled spaces were always given successively. This, of course, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... but the parallelism between the difficulty of making a first cross, and the sterility of the hybrids thus produced—two classes of facts which are generally confounded together—is by no means strict. There are many cases, in which two pure species can be united with unusual facility, and produce numerous hybrid-offspring, yet these hybrids are remarkably sterile. On the other hand, there are species which can be crossed very rarely, or with extreme difficulty, but the hybrids, when at last produced, ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... intuitive perception of the peculiar difficulties of the American people, and ever showed the utmost readiness and skill in meeting them. He had a matchless power of laying bare the wants of the human heart, and an equal facility of pointing out the light and strength of Catholicity for their supply. His immense sympathy for an aspiring and guileless soul deprived of the truth, was most evident; he always looked it and spoke it and ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... have seen, Luca's chief interest, like that of Pollaiuolo, lay in the effort to render movement of limb with facility, and therefore his attention was concentrated on the muscles and their action. We do not know how long he studied anatomy from the dead and living model in the Florentine workshop, nor have we any example of his gradual development, for when he first appears before us ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... manner that they are all different one from the other; some incline to reddish, others to bluish, while some are dark and others lighter, and in short, all are varied and worthy of consideration; and what is more, it is said that he wrought this work with so great facility and readiness, that being called once by the Prior, who was bearing his expenses, to his dinner, at the very moment when he had made the intonaco for a figure and had begun it, he answered: "Pour out ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... in the wilderness, separated almost entirely from civilized man, and in frequent intercourse with the Indians, they relapse, with a facility common to human nature, into the habitudes of savage life. Though no longer bound by engagements to continue in the interior, they have become so accustomed to the freedom of the forest and the prairie, that they look back with repugnance upon the restraints of civilization. Most ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... chief quarters of the county constabulary, he said. 'I shall be obliged to tell the truth about my business down there, because I want every facility for what I'm going to do. If you'd like to see the water dragged, you can meet me at twelve o'clock in the grove. You'll ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of a lively swimmer for drowning, and the capers of a lively mare for bolting. But there was no mistaking a house on fire when you saw one. People in a burning house, moreover, would be likely to give every facility possible for their own rescue, and the chances were one would not find many competitors to deprive one of the glory. On the whole, I warmed up ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... ends with the majesty of law, without unseemly haste, providing things honest in the sight of all men. That he did not do so, when he could have done so, has been intuitively felt; and to the instinctive resentment thus aroused among his countrymen has been due the facility with which the worst has been too ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master any subject with facility. It shows him how to accommodate himself to others, how to throw himself into their state of mind, how to bring before them his own, how to influence them, how to come to an understanding with them, how to bear with them. He is at home in any society, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... half-hour. He used to bring Archer Butler's sermons to read with us, and I well remember the pleasant talks that ensued. The two minds were drawn together by common tasks and habits of thought. Both had great facility in acquiring languages, and interest in all questions of philology. Both were also readers of German writers on Church history and of critical interpretation of the New Testament, and I think it was a help to the younger man to be able to discuss ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who [under Roucoulles] has had charge of his learning hitherto, cannot speak of him without enthusiasm. 'C'est un esprit ange'lique (a little angel),' she is wont to say. He takes up, and learns, whatever is put before him, with the greatest facility." [Van Loen, Kleine Schriften, ii. 27 (as cited in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... time in which, it was written. The characters are decidedly and distinctly those now called the Roman: they have not many abbreviations, as far as I could judge, and they are written with much clearness and regularity. They are not the literae cursivae, or those used in writing for the sake of facility and connection: they seem rather formed more in imitation, of printed letters. SECUNDUM—This imperfect attempt to present one of the words, will explain my meaning. But I had better not weary you any more with my crude notions. I shall ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... his body into the likeness of a bow, thereby only illustrating and confirming the profound wisdom of the maxim, non omnia possumus omnes. Should our awkward attempts be classed together, I shall nevertheless indulge the hope, that better acquaintance with you will increase my facility of saying nothing with grace, and improve my manners, even as I doubt not that under the tuition of Monsieur Pied, the aforesaid countryman might, in time, be taught to make ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... to repair the main-top-sail-yard. On the 3d of February the sun was seen from the main-top of the Hecla, for the first time since the 11th of November. By the 7th, there was sufficient day-light, from eight o'clock till four, to enable the men to perform, with facility, any work on the ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... speak better from women and children in three months, than from men in a year. Such a situation, too, will render more easy a due attention to economy of time and money. Having pursued your main studies here, about two years, and acquired a facility in speaking French, take a tour of four or five months through this country and Italy, return then to Virginia, and pass a year in Williamsburg, under the care of Mr. Wythe; and you will be ready to enter on the public stage, with superior advantages. I have proposed to ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... to give, was met by a swift precision, responding to quick vision. Again and again he would have brought the end, but Lempriere heavily foiled him. The wound which the Seigneur got at last, meant to be mortal, was saved from that by the facility of a quick apprehension. Indeed, for a time the issue had seemed doubtful, for the endurance and persistence of the Seigneur made for exasperation and recklessness in his antagonist, and once blood was drawn from the wrist of the great man; but at length Lempriere went upon the aggressive. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... homeliness and facility of the style, together with characteristic phrases which occur in his other writings, indicate Defoe's hand. Likewise homely similitudes and comparisons, specific parallels with his known work, and characteristic ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... with inappropriate facetiousness—"you must, Job, it's as easy as catching flies." I suppose that I must have said it to satisfy my conscience, because although the expression conveys a wonderful idea of facility, as a matter of fact I know no more difficult operation in the whole world than catching flies—that is, in warm weather, unless, indeed, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... He was the friend of Mirabeau, the disciple and translator of Bentham,—a man of elegant acquirement, but, in the judgment of Gallatin, "without original genius." De Lolme was in the class above Gallatin. He had such facility in the acquisition of languages that he was able to write his famous work on the English Constitution after the residence of a single year in England. Pictet, Gallatin's relative, afterwards celebrated as a naturalist, excelled all ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... quelled him, and he at once went away with his blunderbuss, still muttering his many doubts. But still one cannot drop a love declaration and pick it up again with the facility of a tailor resuming his work on a waistcoat. One can't say: "Where was I? How far had I gone before this miserable interruption came?" In a word I found mysef stammering and stuttering and wasting ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... was an Italian opera composer, whose music "shows great facility, but no invention." He also wrote ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... been friendly, though the Cranford ladies had been cool; he had answered small sarcastic compliments in good faith; and with his manly frankness had overpowered all the shrinking which met him as a man who was not ashamed to be poor. And, at last, his excellent masculine common sense, and his facility in devising expedients to overcome domestic dilemmas, had gained him an extraordinary place as authority among the Cranford ladies. He himself went on in his course, as unaware of his popularity as ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... now prepared to consider the testimonies of an earlier period. Here Justin Martyr is a very weighty witness, since he lived so near the apostolic age, and had every facility for investigating the history of the gospel narratives. He was born near the beginning of the second century, and his extant works date from about the middle of the same century. Before his conversion to Christianity ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... strange thing, that I James Boswell, Esq., "who am happily possessed of a facility of manners,"—(to use the very words of Mr. Professor Smith,[25] which upon honour were addressed to me. I can produce the Letter in which they are to be found) I say it is a very strange thing that I should ever be at a loss how to ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... could do by the hour,—sometimes repeating whole pages from Dante or Petrarch or Tasso or his favorite of all, Alfieri,—and sometimes extemporizing sonnets, or terzine, or odes, with that wonderful facility which Nature has given to the Italian improvvisatore and denied to the rest of mankind. It has often been remarked that the study of medicine goes hand in hand with a certain boldness of speculation not altogether in harmony with the lessons of the priest. No one who has lived in Italy long enough ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... moral contagion as an efficient agent in the wide-spread demand for a revision, of wages and hours of labour. Identical theories and demands, preferred simultaneously in Austria, Germany, France, England, and America, must be largely due to the force of example operating through the modern facility of communication. A universal movement in favour of shorter hours would seem best fitted to secure the amelioration of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... chief and head off the crowd. They would come right up to him at his table and shove a piece d'identite under his nose, with a tremulous request for a vise; he would turn upon them and growl, "Bas bossible; keine Zeit; laissez mois dranquille, nom de D——!" He switched languages with wonderful facility, and his cuss words were equally effective in any language that he tried. Just as with us, everyone wanted something quite out of the question and then insisted on arguing about the answer that they got. A man would come up to the General ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... attached to it without being untrue to the covenant you have made. It is necessary that a young member of Parliament should bear this in his mind, and especially a member who has not worked his way up to notoriety outside the House, because to him there will be great facility for ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... teaching in mediaeval universities were few and simple in comparison with those of our own times. The task of the student was merely to become acquainted with a few books and to acquire some facility in debate. The university exercises were shaped to secure this result. They consisted in the Lecture, the Disputation or Debate, the Repetition, the Conference, the Quiz, ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... to say, that captain Willoughby had christened Bess by the sobriquet of Great Smash, on account of her size, which fell little short of two hundred, estimated in pounds, and a certain facility she possessed in destroying crockery, while 'Mony went by the milder appellation of "Little Smash;" not that bowls or plates fared any better in her hands, but because she weighed only one hundred ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... the action of the waves, and it would be necessary to create an entirely new front by sinking a foundation for a sea-wall some yards in advance of the present face. There would be no engineering difficulty in the formation of a boat-harbour, to combine by extensive pile-jetties the facility of landing in all weathers. A very cursory view of Larnaca exhibited a true picture of its miserable financial position. The numerous stores kept by Europeans were the result of a spasmodic impulse. There was no ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... carnotite was federal property. It was stolen from a loading platform at our Grand Junction facility. We know this, because there is no record of any transaction, and we can identify the source by the chemical composition ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... not unreasonable to suppose that had this lame girl's workmates enjoyed the privilege of the same elementary training, they might have shown an equal facility in the humble task of pasting and labeling and tissuing paper boxes. "Lame Lena" knew how to work; she knew how to husband every modicum of nervous energy in her frail, deformed body; and thus she was able to make up—more than make up—for her physical inferiority. "Lame Lena" ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... man of action and of thought to be prodigal of words. And she knew that a facility in making pretty speeches is in nine cases out of ten merely the refuge of those who desire to conceal indifference or shallowness ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... — N. skill, skillfulness, address; dexterity, dexterousness; adroitness, expertness &c. adj.; proficiency, competence, technical competence, craft, callidity[obs3], facility, knack, trick, sleight; mastery, mastership, excellence, panurgy[obs3]; ambidexterity, ambidextrousness[obs3]; sleight of hand &c. (deception) 545. seamanship, airmanship, marksmanship, horsemanship; rope-dancing. accomplishment, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... most trifling presages, from which, according to the rules of divination, any knowledge of futurity could be derived. He informed Libanius of his progress as far as Hierapolis, by an elegant epistle, which displays the facility of his genius, and his tender friendship for ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... boots for a softer rest, and crushing delicate coverings with his big body and his great black head, had the same brute selfishness at the bottom of it. The softly moving hands that were so busy among the dishes had the old wicked facility of the hands that had clung to the bars. And when he could eat no more, and sat sucking his delicate fingers one by one and wiping them on a cloth, there wanted nothing but the substitution of vine-leaves ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... be made from long wools, especially for the garments of ladies, are now being introduced in great variety, and are becoming daily more popular and of more general use. Another cause for the continued and increasing demand for these wools is the facility with which they can be used for the purpose of making imitations of Lama fabrics and Alapacas; and I have no doubt that factories for the manufacture of these goods will rapidly multiply in New England and elsewhere, and will soon, ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... and made a face at him, as if she wished to show him that she really was some horrible fiend; the unusual sharpness of her mobile and youthful features gave her a particular facility for doing so. And she fully attained her end, for he drew back with a look of horror, stretched out his arms to repel her, and exclaimed as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... adopted it, not only at the time of its adoption, but as long as the child lived. Hence the custom of adoption was not so much the want of natural affection as the sacrifice of it to this systematic facility of traffic in native and foreign property. Hence, also, parents may have had in their family adopted children, and ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... end of the tender, and the driver placed well in advance of the fire-box, so that the maximum weight of both engine and tender rested upon the drivers. In thus removing the drivers from the proximity of the fire-box, abundant facility is afforded for widening the fire-box, so as to obtain a grate area as large as that of the Wootten engine or of a stationary boiler. It seems to me the increase of grate area can be obtained only by widening; for a length of more than six or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... whole, they made many efforts to break them with their beaks; failing in this, the younger ones gave up the spoil, but some of the older ducks carried parts of the biscuit to a pool of standing water, and held them to soak, till sufficiently soft to be broken and swallowed with great facility. I must leave it to metaphysicians to determine whether this process was the result of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... Majesty's Favour to all who had the Happiness of having it convey'd through Your Hands: A Secretary of State, in the Interests of Mankind, joined with that of his Fellow-Subjects, accomplished with a great Facility and Elegance in all the Modern as well as Ancient Languages, was a happy and proper Member of a Ministry, by whose Services Your Sovereign and Country are in so high and flourishing a Condition, as makes all other Princes ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... The facility with which gods were thus called into existence had a powerful moral effect. The manufacture of a new one cast ridicule on the origin of the old Incarnation in the East and apotheosis in the West were fast filling Olympus ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... not. Horses are abundant, but are small, and are not up to heavy weights. They are entirely unshod, and, though their hoofs are very shallow and grow into turned-up points and other singular shapes, they go over rough ground with facility at a scrambling run of over four miles an hour following a leader called a "front horse." If you don't get a "front horse" and try to ride in front, you find that your horse will not stir till he has another before him; and ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... "memoire pour servir," materials to assist some future inquirer in the formation of a more detailed and systematic account of the fauna of the island. My design has been to point out to others the extreme richness and variety of the field, the facility of exploring it, and the charms and attractions of the undertaking. I am eager to show how much remains to do by exhibiting the little that has ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... trade, any supplies which suited their convenience." Now, gentlemen, this is the principle which humanity expects, for your own and for mankind's benefit, to see maintained by you, and not yonder fatal course, which permits tyrants to draw from your country every facility for the oppression of their nations, but forbids nations to buy the means of defence. That was not the principle of your Washington. When he speaks of harmony, of friendly intercourse, and of peace, he always takes care to apply ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... distinguished himself by his extraordinary memory. He learned every thing to which he applied himself with the utmost ease. In the most voluminous works no fact was too minute for his retention, and no study was so abstruse but that he could master it; but any advantages he might have derived from this facility were neutralised by his ungovernable passions and his love of turmoil and debauchery. He was involved in continual difficulty, as well with the heads of the college as with the police of Rome, and acquired so bad a character that years could not remove it. By the aid of his ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... hung up, the machinery was in motion gathering the nation's top biochemists, animal geneticists, agricultural and animal husbandry experts and a baker's dozen of other assorted -ists, ready to package and ship them by plane and train to the main AEC facility at Frenchman's Flat and ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... out an eye, and lodged in the cavities which their removal had occasioned. He now got upon his back, and drove him into the sea; for the moment he lost his sight he lost also ferocity, and became as tame as possible: the sling was placed as a bridle in his mouth; he was guided with the greatest facility across the ocean, and in less than three hours they both arrived on the opposite shore, which is about thirty leagues. The master of the Three Cups, at Helvoetsluys, in Holland, purchased this marine horse, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... improvvisatore, and the subjects which events cast in his way were like the themes which the improvvisatore receives from his audience. He applied his poetic faculty to their celebration with marvelous facility, and, doubtless, regarded the results as rhetorical feats. His poetry was an art, not a principle; and perhaps he was really surprised when people thought him in earnest, and held him personally to account for what he wrote. "A man of sensation, rather ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... (or floor-disposition).—The plans of Roman buildings are striking from their variety and the vast extent which in some cases they display, as well as from a certain freedom, mastery, and facility of handling which are not seen in earlier work. Their variety is partly due to the very various purposes which the buildings of the Romans were designed to serve: these comprised all to which Greek buildings had been appropriated, ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... economic isolation of the parish made its people versatile after their own crude fashion. The habitant was a handy man, getting pretty good results from the use of rough material and tools. Even at the present day his descendants retain much of this facility. At the opposite end of the house was a bedroom. Upstairs was the attic, so low that one could scarcely stand upright in any part of it, but running the full length and breadth of the house. Here the children, often a round dozen of them, were stowed at night. A shallow iron bowl ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... work must be done, before that substance can be obtained. Conversely, if a substance evolves heat during its formation, its component parts evolve energy when the said substance is being produced; and therefore the mere act of combination is accompanied by a facility for doing work, which work may be applied in assisting some other reaction that requires heat, or may be usefully employed in any other fashion, or wasted if necessary. Seeing that there is a tendency in nature for the steady dissipation of energy, it follows that an exothermic ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... say with one voice that there shall be no more wars and there will be none. Nor am I ignoring the complexities of the situation; but I believe that all the details, the first step once taken, would settle themselves with unexpected facility through the medium of international tribunals. Of course this will be called visionary: but whosoever is tempted so to call it, let him read history in the records of contemporary writers and see how visionary all great forward movements in the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... he was doing for the dean was interesting. He was making drawings to illustrate a history of Anglo-Norman times which the dean was writing. He drew well and with great facility; but these drawings, many of which were architectural, required special care and accuracy, with the closest attention to detail, which made the work fatiguing, particularly as he had to do it at night, his only leisure time just then; and more than once ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... resistless, than his astonishing penetration. Nor does the exercise of it seem to cost him an effort. On the contrary, it is as easy as vision. I am persuaded that his eyes do not fly over a landscape and take in its various objects with more promptitude and facility, than his mind embraces and analyzes the ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... sight. She is not regularly beautiful, but has lovely dark eyes and eyebrows, with fair complexion and fair hair, and an expression of the most perfect goodness, with very amiable manners. I was surprised by hearing her sing several very difficult Italian songs with great expression and wonderful facility. She has a fine contralto, which has been cultivated; but some Spanish ballads, and little songs of the country, she sang so delightfully, and with so much good-nature and readiness, that had it not been a first visit, I should have begged her to continue during half the morning. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... archipelago of 2,300 islands; Diego Garcia, largest and southernmost island, occupies strategic location in central Indian Ocean; island is site of joint US-UK military facility ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... not the smoothest in the world, being broken in some places by rocks, and encumbered by fallen timber in others. Here is where the jumping powers of the kangaroo came in handily, as he could clear rocks and logs with the utmost facility, and he had the ability to select a comparatively smooth spot to come down upon. His jumping is done with the muscles of his very powerful hind legs. He doesn't use his fore legs at all in walking or jumping, ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... be anxious. desde since, after, from. desdicha misfortune. desear to desire. desembarcar to disembark. desembocar to empty, pour. desencajar to force from its place, socket, etc. desencanto disenchantment, disillusion. desenfado facility, boldness. desenganar to undeceive. desengano undeceiving, disillusion. desenojar to appease, placate. desenterrar to disinter. desentumecer to relieve of numbness or swelling. desenvolver to unfold. deseo desire, ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... east-south-east, and where, they said, the people gathered gold out of the sand with candles at night, and afterwards made bars of it with a hammer. They told him this by signs; and we have only one more instance of the Admiral's facility in interpreting signs in favour of his own beliefs. It is only a few days later that in the same Journal he says, "The people of these lands do not understand me, nor do I nor any other person I have with me understand them; and these Indians ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... compared to this, will scarce deserve the name of a miracle: though, indeed, to speak pro- perly, there is not one miracle greater than another; they being the extraordinary effects of the hand of God, to which all things are of an equal facility; and to create the world as easy as one single creature. For this is also a miracle; not only to produce effects against or above nature, but before nature; and to create nature, as great a miracle as to contradict or transcend her. We do too ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... strong arm and a broad back, King Pewee was sure to have the worst of it. A very convenient partnership had therefore grown up between him and Will Riley. Riley had muscle enough, but Nature had made him mean-spirited. He had—not exactly wit—but a facility for using his tongue, which he found some difficulty in displaying, through fear of other boys' fists. By forming a friendship with Pewee Rose, the two managed to keep in fear the greater part of the school. Will's rough tongue, together with Pewee's rude fists, were enough to bully ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... adaptable to nearly all conditions, and it is these that we have discussed. Remember, note-taking is one of the habits you are to form in college. See that the habit is started rightly. Adopt a good plan at the start and adhere to it. You may be encouraged, too, with the thought that facility in note-taking will come with practice. Note-taking is an art and as you practise ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... wrapped up, a letter dropped out, which Oscar found was directed to himself. He opened it, and a smile lit up his countenance as he glanced over the sheet, which was filled up with drawings and writing of an amusing character. Benjamin was quite famous among the boys for the skill and facility with which he made sketches, and in this letter he had given a curious specimen of his artistic talent. The following is a copy of ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... fixed, and does not move, and we have lately invented another means by which we can do the same, over several thousands of miles, without even a connecting wire. With another instrument we have gone far beyond the facility with which the Printing press enabled us to communicate our thoughts to our fellow human beings, we can actually imprint our very words and laughter upon a wax cylinder and send it to the antipodes, and our friends there, with a similar instrument, can not only hear and recognise our very voice, ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... Government agency operating a plant, mine or facility, possession of which has been taken by the President under section 3 of the War Labor Disputes Act, directing such agency to apply to the National War Labor Board, under section 5 of said act, for an order withholding or withdrawing ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... God's righteousness, with the purity of his holiness, can hardly be persuaded, that any thing can compense that infinite wrong that is done to his Majesty, though ordinarily the small and superficial apprehension of sin makes a kind of facility in this, or an empty credulity of the gospel. The reason why most men do not question and doubt of the gospel, and of their acceptance before God, is not because they are established in the faith, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... skin should be quickly rubbed as dry as possible, an application of alcohol rubbed over the wet part, and a dry blanket snugly fitted over the animal. If the hot applications appear to benefit, they may be tried on three or four consecutive days. Unless every facility and circumstance favors the application of heat in the foregoing manner, it should not be attempted. If the weather is very cold or any of the details are omitted, more harm than good may result. Mustard may be applied by making a paste with a pound of freshly ground mustard mixed with warm ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... telling them in a broken voice that he had a wife and twelve infant children dependent on his support, supplicated a little charity. Popanilla was about to empty part of his pocketfuls into the mendicant's cap, but his companion repressed his unphilosophical facility. 'By no means!' said his friend, who, turning round to the beggar, advised him, in a mild voice, to work; calmly adding, that if he presumed to ask charity again he should certainly have him bastinadoed. ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... the night side of nature, I was soon promoted to the post of night nurse, with every facility for indulging in my favorite pastime of "owling." My colleague, a black-eyed widow, relieved me at dawn, we two taking care of the ward, between us, like the immortal Sairy and Betsey, "turn and turn about." I usually found my boys in the jolliest state of mind their condition allowed; for ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... 19th, and 22d of this month, and have forwarded yours for the Count de Vergennes. From the reports which I have received from the Jerseys, it appears, that the care of the Legislature and the vigilance you have excited in the Executive, have produced happy effects in stopping the facility, with which supplies were sent to New York. I well know the impossibility of preventing that commerce by means of military guards; but in putting the zeal of the good citizens in activity, I am persuaded some bounds may be ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... facility with which sounds are heard at a considerable distance in severely cold weather, has often been a subject of remark; but a circumstance occurred at Port Bowen which deserves to be noticed, as affording a sort of measure ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... her, (and he cannot stand by her,) my Lady Townshend, by a very happy expression, says, "he is always setting his dress." Have you heard of a Countess Chamfelt, a Bohemian, rich and hideous, who is arrived here, and is under the protection of Lady Caroline Petersham @ She has a great facility at languages, and has already learned, "D—n you, and kiss me;" I beg her pardon, I believe she never uses the former, but upon the miscarriage of the latter: in short, as Doddington says, she has had the honour of performing at most ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... laughed at the prim, demure mountain girl she saw in the glass. After a good breakfast had still farther raised her spirits she ventured upon a little pleasantry about the dramatic possibilities of a young lady who couls assume different characters with such facility. ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... natural forces. Nature, internally, performs the rest.' But here are the very forces that we want. If man were, indeed, naturally and constitutionally, that mere species of 'vermin' which, under certain modes of culture, with great facility he becomes, there would be no use in spending words upon this subject. Science could not undertake the common-weal in that case. If nature's word had been here dissolution, isolation, single intention in the parts and members of that ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... an eagle-like and hostile curvature,—his compressed lip, sarcastic and cold expression, and the fine classical chin, a feature in which so many of the Saxon race fail, a haughty scorn that caused strangers usually to avoid him. Eve drew with great facility and truth, and she had an eye, as her cousin had rightly said, "full of tints." Often and often had she sketched both of these loved faces, and never without wondering wherein that strong difference ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the thoughts of the multitude so marshalled as to make the unit of Public Opinion. As we already remarked, the thinking power of the ordinary man does not go far, wide, nor deep. His facility of absorbing ideas is far greater than his power of valuating them. He generally accepts as real value any thing that bears the stamp of current opinion. His belief in the value and weight of number is without recall; his absolute trust in ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... literature in popular ballads is partially explained by the facility with which such things were composed. The Spanish ballad, or romance, was a stanza (redondilla, roundel) of four eight-syllable lines with a prevailing trachaic movement—just the metre, in short, of "Locksley Hall." Only ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Zauberfloete to a bad libretto with as great a perfection as the music to Don Giovanni, which had a good one. The same inspiration was there, always apt to the occasion. Swinburne is ready to write in any known form of verse, with an equal facility and (this is the all-important point) the same inspiration. Loving the form of the drama, and capable of turning it to his uses, not of bending it to its own, he has filled play after play with music, noble feeling, brave eloquence. Here in this briefest ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... is deficient in spelling inevitably confines his vocabulary to narrow limits and so lacks facility of expression and nicety of diction. Accordingly, he suffers by comparison with others whose vocabulary is more extensive and whose diction is, therefore, more elegant. The consciousness of his shortcomings ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... pathetic facility for being touched common to fading beauties. Rising, she laid her pretty hand on his shoulder. "Poor darling, I am sorry I was cross. It is dear of you to mind. I hated it, too, at first, for poor old Ponty is a gentleman, and he is awfully cut up. But after all, it may not be a bad ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... appeared to be good reason for believing that the invasion of England was contemplated, the Government turned their attention to the defence of such portions of the coast as seemed to present the greatest facility for the landing of a hostile force. As the Kentish coast, from East Were Bay to Dymchurch, seemed more especially exposed, a line of Martello Towers was erected between these two points, at a distance from each other of from one-quarter to three-quarters of a mile. Other towers of the same kind ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... not only very early in his life a tall, strong country boy, but as he grew up he soon became a tall, strong, sinewy man. He early attained the unusual height of six feet four inches, with arms of proportionate length. This gave him a degree of power and facility as an ax-man which few had or were able to acquire. He was therefore usually able to lead his fellows in efforts of both muscle and mind. He performed the tasks of his daily labor and mastered the lessons of his scanty schooling with an ease and rapidity ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... most surprising things in the history of American art is the facility with which men of all trades turned to portrait painting, apparently as a last resort, and managed to make a living at it. During the first half of the last century, the country seems to have been overrun with wandering portrait painters, whose only equipment for ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... facility and lightness of touch, the queen began to play the base of the piece which had been arranged by the Count de Vaudreuil for four hands. But the longer she played, the more the laughter and the unrestrained gayety disappeared from the features of the queen. Her noble countenance ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... mine alone had not been pressed upon him for purchase, predisposed Mr. Compton to regard it with favor. Every facility was offered him, and Jack Holden, who thoroughly understood his business, gave him ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... material in which acting plays a part—is not written; it is constructed. You may write with the greatest facility, and yet fail in writing material for the vaudeville stage. The mere wording of a two-act means little, in the final analysis. It is the action behind the words that suggests the stage effect. It is the business—combined ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... Nature has found skilled interpreters both in poetry and painting, and technical facility and truth of representation now stand on one level with ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... resemblance in several countries of the half-domesticated dogs to the wild species still living there,—from the facility with which they can often be crossed together,—from even half-tamed animals being so much valued by savages,—and from the other circumstances previously remarked on which favour their domestication, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... chronology for these strata, and then to refer as far as possible to the same divisions, the several groups of Plutonic, volcanic, and metamorphic rocks. Such a system of classification is not only recommended by its greater clearness and facility of application, but is also best fitted to strike the imagination by bringing into one view the contemporaneous revolutions of the inorganic and organic creations of former times. For the sedimentary ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... aerial tower. The empty halls inside are of fair proportions and a noble size, and the views from the open colonnades in all directions fascinate. But the final impression made by the building is one of square, tranquil, massive strength—perpetuity embodied in masonry—force suggesting facility by daring and successful addition of elegance to hugeness. Vast as it is, this pile is not forbidding, as a similarly weighty structure in the North would be. The fine quality of the stone and the delicate though simple mouldings of the windows ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... of May; on which occasion Prince William, Duke of Clarence, who, in the course of his naval training, had visited the West India islands, and who, conceiving that the state of society there did not justify the pictures drawn of it by the abolitionists, opposed the abolition with great facility of elocution. The friends of immediate abolition were very few in the house of lords; and in order to retard the business, a committee for the hearing of evidence at the bar of the house was proposed. This was objected to by Lords Grenville, Porchester, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... ladder of civilisation. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings, whom he further tends to resemble by the facility with which he allows himself to be impressed by words and images—which would be entirely without action on each of the isolated individuals composing the crowd—and to be induced to commit acts ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... said: I, Evan Edward Smith, watched Sarah Jacob for two consecutive nights, (i. e., nights 22d and 23d of March) at the request of Mr. H. H. Davies, surgeon. The parents gave every facility to investigate the matter. I watched her with all possible care, and found nothing to suspect that food or drink was given her by foul means. I am quite sure she had nothing during my watch. I was dismissed on account of being suspected to doze on the ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... cerebral hemispheres—the seat of our consciousness and volition. In all cases there seems to exist a profound antagonism between the same movements, as directed by the will and by a reflex stimulant, in the force with which they are performed and in the facility with which they are excited. As Claude Bernard asserts, "L'influence du cerveau tend donc a entraver les mouvements reflexes, a limiter ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... Province, he always preferred to style himself El-Hichmakani, a facetious "lackab" or surname, meaning "Of No-hall, Nowhere." He had travelled far and wide with his eyes open; as appears by his "couplets." To a natural facility, a knack of language learning, he added a store of desultory various reading; scraps of Chinese and old Egyptian; of Hebrew and Syriac; of Sanskrit and Prakrit; of Slav, especially Lithuanian; of Latin and Greek, including Romaic; of Berber, the Nubian dialect, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... Glasgow, where, apprehending him, he delivered him to the Council, who executed him immediately. He returned to the Lewis, banished those whose deportment he most doubted, and settled the rest as peaceable tenants to his nephew; which success he had, with the more facility, because he had the only title of succession to it by his wife, and they looked on him as their just master. From thence he invaded Glengarry, who was again re-collecting his forces; but at his coming they dissipated and fled. He pursued ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... thighs were disjointed, skipped amid such a flying upwards of their petticoats that the lower portions of their frames were displayed. They kicked their feet up above their heads with astounding facility, balanced their bodies, wagged their backs and shook their sides, shedding around them a powerful scent of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... part of the day had passed, and time hung heavy on my hands. I ought, perhaps, to blush at recollecting what has been often objected to me by the dear friend to whom this letter is addressed, viz. the facility with which I have, in moments of indolence, suffered my motions to be, directed by any person who chanced to be near me, instead of taking the labour of thinking or deciding for myself. I had employed for some time, as a sort of guide and errand-boy, a lad named Benjamin, the son of one widow ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Telecommunications: fairly modern communication facilities maintained for domestic and international services; 52,000 telephones; broadcast stations - 4 AM, 3 FM, no TV; 75,000 radio receivers (est.); international high-frequency radio communication facility; access to international communications carriers provided via Hong Kong and China; 1 ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... they seemed to be endeavouring to raise themselves on these hands, but of course, with the increased weight of terrestrial conditions, this was impossible. There is reason to suppose that on Mars they may have progressed upon them with some facility. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... this construction offer for our seaport towns, their utility toward supporting within our waters the authority of the laws, the promptness with which they will be manned by the seamen and militia of the place in the moment they are wanting, the facility of their assembling from different parts of the coast to any point where they are required in greater force than ordinary, the economy of their maintenance and preservation from decay when not in actual service, and the competence ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... widely different from this? Some may satisfy themselves by recollecting that England is an old and America a young country; though, to my mind, this affords no reasonable explanation of the contrast—since, from the possession of surplus capital, complete machinery, and facility of communication, et cet., the advantages for commerce and manufactures, under a system of perfectly unrestricted exchange, must preponderate greatly in favor of the former. But whatever the solution of the difficulty, it is quite evident that the statesman who would elevate the moral standard ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... can do it at all, what he had hitherto been doing unconsciously. It is an axiom as regards actions acquired after birth, that we never do them automatically save as the result of long practice; the stages in the case of any acquired facility, the inception of which we have been able to watch, have invariably been from a nothingness of ignorant impotence to a little somethingness of highly self-conscious, arduous performance, and thence to the unselfconsciousness of easy mastery. I saw one year a poor blind lad of about ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... will have a considerable output. That has occasioned the command that the privileges of miners in those islands be observed, by a decree of September 22, 1636. They also abound in copper, which is brought from China with so much facility that the best artillery imaginable is cast in Manila, with which they supply their forts, the city of Macan and other cities of India, and it is taken to Nueva Espaa; for the viceroy, the Marqus de Cerralvo, sent the governor, Don Juan Nio ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... of these trees were destroyed on account of a worm, or caterpillar, by which they were infested. Poplar-wood is soft, light and generally of a pale-yellow color; it is much used for toy-making and for boarded floors, 'for which last purpose it is well adapted from its whiteness and the facility with which it is scoured, and also from the difficulty with which it catches fire and the slowness with which it burns. A red-hot poker falling on a board of poplar would burn its way without causing more combustion than the hole ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... corresponding strength of his knowledge. But Aristotle, who deals with this Socratic doctrine in the third book of the Ethics, very sensibly remarks, "It is ridiculous to lay the blame of our wrong actions upon external causes rather than upon the facility with which we ourselves are caught by such causes, and, while we take credit for our noble actions to ourselves, lay the blame of our shameful actions upon pleasure."[34] "The facility with which we are caught"—there is the religious understanding there is that perversion ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... printing-press: No one can question the immense advantages which have flowed from the increased facility for transmitting ideas. But may it not be true that the thousandfold increase in such transmission by the rotary press has also tended to muddy the current thought of the time? True it is that the printing-press has piled up great treasures of human knowledge which make this age the ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... employers, he devoted the greater part of his leisure to Latin; and, though he was but slightly assisted, he was able in ten months to read Horace with tolerable facility, and had made some progress in Greek. Having but little time for these pursuits, he accustomed himself to decline the Greek nouns and verbs during his walks to and from the office, and he thereby acquired a habit of studying while walking, that never deserted ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... I have endeavoured to maintain the simplicity which is the ideal of this series. It is more difficult, however, to be simple in a topic which, even in its illustrations, demands of the reader more or less facility in the exploration of his own mind. I am persuaded that the attempt to make the matter of psychology more elementary than is here done, would only result in making it untrue and so in defeating its ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... you in this after-portion of the day's work?" asked Lewis. "I may not, indeed, claim to use the pencil with the facility of our friend Slingsby, but I am not altogether destitute of a little native talent in that way. I will promise to give you both as many cigars as you choose, and will submit my sketches to Mademoiselle's criticism, which ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... 20th of August, 1842, and the scene was sufficiently interesting, if not imposing. The long line of English warships and transports, drawn up opposite to and within short range of the lofty walls of Nankin; the land forces so disposed on the raised causeways on shore as to give them every facility of approach to the city gates, while leaving it doubtful to the last which gate would be the real object of attack; and then the six small Chinese boats, gayly decorated with flags, bearing the imperial commissioners and their attendants, to sign for the first time in history a treaty of defeat ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... should go by Harwich, we might take a round by Newmarket and Bury, and so come down to Ipswich, and go from thence to the seaside. He was easily put off from this, as he was from anything else that I did not approve; and so, with all imaginable facility, he appointed to be ready early in the morning to go with ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... except in the case of intentional fraud, to go behind parliamentary titles.[44] In cases in which the land was let at low rents, and in cases where tenants held under leases which would soon expire, the facility of raising the rents was constantly specified by the authority of the Court ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... but two or three really acquired any facility, but we considered that sufficient, for in time of need the others could easily be put to work at necessary matters which were ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... and commodious laboratory should be fitted up in the building, to enable every pupil to acquire experimentally that knowledge of chemical forces and action which books alone can never impart. A convenient observatory should afford facility for astronomical study ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... makes good use of such compound words as "brother-love" and "though-superior-in-rank-yet-comrade-in-arms-and- companions-in-death-affectionate," which linguistic facility enables the German writer to build up as he progresses in his narration words of a phenomenal calibre, and bowl the reader over, so to speak, at a long range. He finishes by mentioning that the general was named Gilbert, a man of colossal engineering skill, while ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... and its possession by the Church is brought to a practical test in the case of the Apostle Paul. After elaborate consideration of his letters, we came to the unhesitating conclusion that, instead of establishing the reality of miracles, the unconscious testimony of Paul clearly demonstrates the facility with which erroneous inferences convert the most ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... general desire to know the future. This ignorance and this curiosity had led to the utmost confusion in human knowledge; all things were still mere personal experience; the nomenclatures of theory did not exist; printing was done at enormous cost; scientific communication had little or no facility; the Church persecuted science and all research which was based on the analysis of natural phenomena. Persecution begat mystery. So, to the people as well as to the nobles, physician and alchemist, mathematician and astronomer, astrologer and necromancer were six attributes, all meeting ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... speaks with such facility and who is always in good humor could not have such a crime on ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... farce life is! I shall go on, Heaven knows how! I cannot live long. Men like me soon bloom and fade. What I may come to, I dread to think. There is a dangerous facility in my temper; I know it well, for I know more of myself than people think; there is a dangerous facility which, with May Dacre, might be the best guaranty of virtue; but with all others, for all ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... to the Austrian authorities for leave to have transcripts made in the archives. The permission was negotiated by the American consul (then a young painter of the name of Ferris), who reported a mechanical facility on the part of the authorities,—as if, he said, they were used to obliging American historians of Venice. The foreign tyranny which cast a pathetic glamour over the romantic city had certainly not appeared to grudge such publicity as Elmore wished to give her heroic memories, though it was ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... the whole work, perfectly agreeing with the character of the lady as described by Michel Angelo, and which suits the advanced age at which she is painted. The execution is like that of the picture in the Florentine Tribune, in the wonderful facility of its execution. In the coloring a carnation hue is remarkable, like that in Michel Angelo's Roman works. The hands of the figure are thought to be by some other artist. Only the head and part of the person seem to be by the author. The picture has suffered little from time, some ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... difficulty. Visitors are relieved from the labor of the experiment; and fair copies, made in a clear round hand, are placed, each copy side by side with the original, and all are stitched together in a portfolio, where they may be perused with the utmost facility. The letters, which to those inclined to ponder on the anatomy of the human heart afford a melancholy moral, are chiefly remarkable for the boisterous eager tone of the king's passion towards his lady-love, which, expressed in terms that would hardly ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... except the very smartest ladies (who liked her for her utter fearlessness and sang-froid as well as for her own sake)—thought it a fine thing to be on intimate terms with "Maud Bearwarden," as they loved to call her, and being much afraid of her, made up to her with the sweet facility ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... apparent manoeuvring, to see more of De Vayne at various men's rooms, and he generally made a point of sitting next to him when he could. He had naturally a most insinuating address and a suppleness of manner which enabled him to adapt himself with facility to the tastes and temperaments of the men among whom he was thrown. There were few who could make themselves more pleasant and plausible when it suited them ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... Coleridge, generally so wayward and one-sided, but sometimes desperately opposed to every mode of truth, have been the means of exposing in William Wordsworth a weakness of resistance—almost a criminal facility in surrendering his own rights—which else would never have been suspected. We will take one of the worst cases. Readers acquainted with Wordsworth as a poet, are of course acquainted with his poem (originally so fine) upon Gipseys. To a poetic mind it is inevitable—that ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... place in her soul quite independently of her will; but as she had had from infancy the most ardent desire of being obedient to Jesus and to his Church, God had bestowed upon her those special graces which give a natural facility for practising obedience. Every faculty of her soul was directed towards the Church, in the same manner as a plant which, even if put into a dark cellar, naturally turns its leaves upwards, and appears to seek ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... half of water. I finished two bottles of brandy, having diluted it with large quantities of water. I believe this was the only thing which kept me alive, the heat was so intense and prostrating in the day-time. I am astonished to see these people descend into the wells with such facility. I expected, on the contrary, to see them break their necks. They descend by the sides, only assisted by their hands and feet, clinging to naked stones, the interstices of which in some places not even allowing space on which to rest the foot. Here again ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... tastes, had been altogether delightful to Lady Laura; who was always trying to improve herself, as she called it, and travelled from one pursuit to another, with a laudable perseverance, but an unhappy facility for forgetting one accomplishment in the cultivation of another. Thus by a vigorous plunge into Spanish and Calderon this year, she was apt to obliterate the profound impression created by Dante and Tasso last year. Her music suffered by reason of a ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... demand the gradual introduction of possession in common in home colonies embracing two to three thousand persons who shall carry on both agriculture and manufacture and enjoy equal rights and equal education. They demand greater facility of obtaining divorce, the establishment of a rational government, with complete freedom of conscience and the abolition of punishment, the same to be replaced by a rational treatment of the offender. These are their practical measures, their theoretical principles do not concern us here. ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... to the eastward. It was then known that a battle was about to be fought at Solferino. I was very anxious to witness a battle. General Crittenden, of the United States army, was attached as an aid to the French army, and I sought the same facility, but the authorities would not permit it. I was assured that my horse would be taken from me, especially as I could not speak French, and that I would be treated as a spy unless I was formally attached to a particular command. I therefore gave up my contemplated trip and awaited ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... were, of course, far busier than anybody else, and hurried and impatient in the highest degree. Every body expected a good picture in less time than was necessary to do a slovenly one. The artist saw that high finish was quite out of the question, and that all he could do was to dazzle by the facility, rapidity, and smartness of his execution. He had to content himself with catching the general expression, neglecting the more delicate details, and not attempting to attain the individuality and reality of nature. Besides this, every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... in interpreting sound morality in the field of play the Y.M.C.A. has already made a successful contribution to the moral life of the Sunday-school boy. Nothing could be more startling to the religious leader, who insists upon facing the facts, than the facility with which the "good" Sunday-school boy turns away from the lofty precepts of his teacher to the brutal ethics of the "win-at-any-price" mania. The Sunday-School Athletic League under the guidance of the Y.M.C.A. tends ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... let not to affirm that the greedy corruption of the promoters on the one side, facility in dispensing with good laws and first breach of the same in the lawmakers and superiors and private respects of their establishment on the other, are the greatest causes why the inferiors regard no good order, being always so ready to offend without any faculty one way as ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... servants, or more, do add to the impressiveness of a house that is a palace and are a fitting part of the picture. And yet a neat maid servant at the door can divest a guest of his hat and coat, and lead the way to the sitting-room, with equal facility. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Zadig was the only Person that concluded it was LIFE. He solv'd every AEnigma propos'd, with equal Facility. Itobad, when he heard the Explications, always said that nothing in the World was more easy, than to solve such obvious Questions; and that he could interpret a thousand of them without the least Hesitation, were ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... defence (probably in a peculiar odour or taste) which saves it from attack. Now the arched costa and falcate form of wing is generally supposed to give increased powers of flight, or, as seems to me more probable, greater facility in making sudden turnings, and thus baffling a pursuer. But the members of the Polydorus-group (to which belongs the only unchanged Celebesian Papilio), being already guarded against attack, have no need of this increased power of wing; and "natural ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... and friends to continue their good works in extending the circulation of our paper. On our part we promise to leave nothing undone that it is possible for faithful, earnest work—aided by money and every needed mechanical facility—to do to make the paper in every respect still better than it has ever ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... more than it could stand. With a very bad grace it hobbled off to the Durian tree, ascended it with a sort of lazy, lumbering facility, and hurled down some of the fruit without warning ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... attract the notice of those who shared the mats with me. In spite of these obstacles, however, I determined forthwith to make the attempt. To do so with any prospect of success, it was necessary that I should have at least two hours start before the islanders should discover my absence; for with such facility was any alarm spread through the valley, and so familiar, of course, were the inhabitants with the intricacies of the groves, that I could not hope, lame and feeble as I was, and ignorant of the route, to secure my escape ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville |
