"Assimilating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the young men sauntered diffidently across the room and added himself to the group with the remark that it was a fine day. He was received a little grudgingly, Jill thought, but by degrees succeeded in assimilating himself. A second young man drifted up; reminded the willowy girl that they had worked together in the western company of "You're the One"; was recognized and introduced; and justified his admission to the circle by a creditable imitation of a cat-fight. Five minutes later he ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... be States, becoming conscious, through common perils, victories, and hopes, of national unity and life, and ordaining institutes of national government binding upon all. The strong vitality of the new nation is proved by its assimilating to itself an immense mass of immigrants from all parts of Europe, and by expanding itself without essential change over the area of a continent. It triumphs again and again, and at last in a struggle that shakes the world, over passions and interests ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... chaos," and the like. {2} You may use common words in an unwonted sense, keeping some private interpretation clearly before you. Thus you may speak, if you like to write partly in the tongue of Hellas, about "assimilating the ethos" of a work of art, and so write that people shall think of the processes of digestion. You may speak of "exhausting the beauty" of a landscape, and, somehow, convey the notion of sucking an ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... them. They will read of the bad being daily done and will learn to abhor such dastardly actions. With such a mission to perform our newspapers should contain the essence of truth and good and sensible instructions; for its power of assimilating bad influences is equal to the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... imaginable[4] similarity to the historical life of Jesus, except that he once rode into Jerusalem on an ass; a deed which cannot have been peculiar to him, and which Jesus moreover appears to have planned with the express[5] purpose of assimilating himself to the lowly king here described. Yet such an isolated act is surely a carnal and beggarly fulfilment. To ride on an ass is no mark of humility in those who must ordinarily go on foot. The prophet clearly means that the righteous king is not to ride on a warhorse ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... contagious, and his earnest desire to learn was flattering to his teachers. When it came to assimilating Spanish, however, he did not appear to be so apt a pupil. He managed, after many trials, to acquire "buenos dias" and "buenos tardes," and "senorita" and "gracias," and a few other short terms. Dick was indeed ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... months' extensive experience is that this movement of non-co-operation has come to stay, and it is most decidedly a purifying movement, in spite of isolated instances of rowdyism, as for instance at Mrs. Besant's meeting in Bombay, at some places in Delhi, Bengal, and even in Gujarat. The people are assimilating day after day the spirit of non-violence, not necessarily as a creed, but as an inevitable policy. I expect most startling results, more startling than, say, the discoveries of Sir J.C. Bose, or the acceptance by the people of non-violence. If the Government could be assured beyond ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... river-sediment solely, but are in part due to the actions of waves and tidal currents on the coasts. In the second place, we find that Hutton's conception of upheaval by subterranean forces, has not only been modified by assimilating these subterranean forces to ordinary earthquake-forces; but modern inquiries have shown that, besides elevations of surface, subsidences are thus produced; that local upheavals, as well as the general upheavals ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... tongue, it seems as if much originality of character was lost. I suppose at one time the two countries of England and Scotland were considered as almost speaking different languages, and I suppose also, that from the period of the union of the crowns the language has been assimilating. We see the process of assimilation going on, and ere long amongst persons of education and birth very little difference will be perceptible. With regard to that class, a great change has taken place in my own time. I recollect old Scottish ladies and gentlemen who really spoke Scotch. It was not, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... omission of intermediate stages. But it must be taken into consideration that long before, in the Judeo-Hellenic and in the Arabic-Spanish period, the Jews had passed through their "century of reason." In spite of the intervening ages of suffering and gloom, the faculty of assimilating new principles had survived. For the descendants of Philo and Maimonides the rationalistic movement of the eighteenth century was in part a repetition of a well-known historical process. They had had the benefit of a similar course of studies before, and, therefore, ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... devoid of the capacity for any more useful part in the progress of mankind than that which was heretofore allotted to the proletariat. It cannot be gainsaid that there are races on the globe which are incapable of assimilating the higher forms of civilization, but which might well be made to render valuable services in the lower without either suffering injustice themselves or demoralizing others. And it seems nowise impossible that one day these reserves may ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... quality as a student. Nothing. He passed all his examinations, he had all his facts—and he had just as much knowledge—as a rotating bookshelf containing the Times Encyclopedia. And he doesn't know anything now. He's Winkles, and incapable of really assimilating anything not immediately and directly related to his superficial self. He is utterly void of imagination and, as a consequence, incapable of knowledge. No one could possibly pass so many examinations and be so well dressed, so well done, and so successful ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... love of Perfect Wisdom; Perfect Wisdom and Perfect Goodness are identical; the Perfect Good is God; philosophy is the "Love of God."[665] Ethically viewed, it is this one motive of love for the Supreme Wisdom and Goodness, predominating over and purifying and assimilating every desire of the soul, and governing every movement of the man, raising man to a participation of and communion with Divinity, and restoring him to "the likeness of God." "This flight," says Plato, "consists in resembling God (omoiosis ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... temperament which would have secured its survival and raised it to distinction in barbaric ages, but which will as surely, unless powerfully modified, necessitate its extinction in the present age. For the Kurts are incapable of assimilating civilization. An excess of physical vigor in the first Kurt who settled in Norway takes the form of lawlessness and an entire ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... enabled to catch a reflection of a truth which we are not capable of apprehending in any other way. Nettleship points out, for instance, that bread can only be itself, can only be food, by entering into something else, assimilating and being assimilated, and that the more it loses itself (what it began by being) the more it "finds itself" (what it is intended to be). If we follow carefully the analysis Nettleship makes of the action of bread in the physical world, we can see that to ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... was one of incredible fructification and output. He scarcely recognized for his own the mind which now was reaching out on all sides with the arms of an octopus, exploring unsuspected mines of thought, bringing in rich treasures of deduction, assimilating, building, propounding as if by some force quite independent of him. He could not look without blinking timidity at the radiance of the path stretched out before him, leading upward to dazzling heights ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... speech of England. In the American continent full-blooded Indians preside over commonwealths which speak the tongue of Cortes and Pizarro. In the lands to which all eyes are now turned, the Greek, who has been busily assimilating strangers ever since he first planted his colonies in Asia and Sicily, goes on busily assimilating his Albanian neighbors. And between renegades, janizaries, and mothers of all nations, the blood of many a Turk must be physically anything rather than Turkish. The ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... an appendage to the palace and honour of Hampton Court; and though far from assimilating to that splendid pile, it is better fitted for rural enjoyment, whilst its contiguity to the metropolis almost gives it the character of rus in urbe.[1] The residence is a handsome structure, and its arrangement is altogether well calculated ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... of slavery, upon the right bank it is identified with that of prosperity and improvement; on the one side it is degraded, on the other it is honored; on the former territory no white laborers can be found, for they would be afraid of assimilating themselves to the negroes; on the latter no one is idle, for the white population extends its activity and its intelligence to every kind of employment. Thus the men whose task it is to cultivate the rich soil of Kentucky are ignorant and lukewarm; while those who are active and enlightened either ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... to herself, after Marjorie had gone for her drive, "whether that child is impervious to discipline or whether she is unusually capable of receiving and assimilating it." ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... left his hotel very soon. To people of discernment and judgment it was not difficult to submit to the will of this full-bearded, broad-chested man, who knew so much better than they did what they ought to do if they wanted to get all the good out of Sadler's which they were capable of assimilating. ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... times as large as the other, and load them so that they both weigh the same; then ask some one to lift them and tell which is the heavier. He will have no doubt at all that the smaller box is the heavier; it may seem two or three times as heavy. Young children, however, get the opposite illusion, assimilating the weight to the visual appearance; but older persons switch over to the contrast effect, and perceive in opposition to the visual appearance. What seems to happen in the older person is a motor adjustment for the apparent weights, as indicated by their visual appearance, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... DA(1559-1613), Italian painter, architect and poet, was born at Cigoli in Tuscany. Educated under Alessandro Allori and Santi di Tito, he formed a peculiar style by the study at Florence of Michelangelo, Correggio, Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo. Assimilating more of the second of these masters than of all the others, he laboured for some years with success; but the attacks of his enemies, and intense application to the production of a wax model of certain anatomical preparations, induced an alienation of mind which affected ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... undervalue letters. Their opinion has weight, because they had means of knowing the opposite opinion. We look that a great man should be a good reader, or in proportion to the spontaneous power should be the assimilating power. Good criticism is very rare, and always precious. I am always happy to meet persons who perceive the transcendent superiority of Shakspeare over all other writers. I like people who like Plato. Because this love does ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... nature is an accepted fact,[3] then the acceptance of the unity of art must follow. Art must be considered as the selection of natural phenomena by individual minds capable of assimilating and reproducing them in certain forms and with certain materials adapted to the national taste, needs, and power of appreciation. If man cannot originate materials, he can invent combinations;—and this ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... himself—how many generations of his ancestors had stoically toasted their shins while their backs were freezing! It must be, as Margarita teasingly insists, that my pathetic care for my rheumatic old bones was at the bottom of it all, and that I was rapidly assimilating one of the cardinal doctrines of the swollen purse, that no sum could be ill spent when spent for ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... predominant, it is termed the nervous temperament; if the lungs and blood vessels constitutionally predominate, the sanguine; if the muscular and fibrous systems are in the ascendency, the bilious; and when the glands and assimilating organs are in the ascendency, it is termed ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... of the Caesars, gradually effacing all national peculiarities, and assimilating the remotest provinces of the empire to each other, augmented the evil. At the close of the third century after Christ, the prospects of mankind were fearfully dreary. A system of etiquette, as pompously frivolous as that of the Escurial, had been established. A sovereign almost invisible; ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... through coming centuries men can only approximate, must present to the child the precise step in knowledge which he waits for, and upon which he is able to raise himself with that glow of pleasurable activity which God gives to exertion directed to a comprehensible end. The feeblest mind is capable of assimilating knowledge with a satisfaction the same in kind as that which rewarded the maturest labors of Humboldt or Newton. There are sequences of facts every one of which, imparted in its natural order, brings an immediate interest. It is no nebulous scheme of combining instruction ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... our end up," he said, "in the legitimate branch of our profession. You needn't grin like that," he added, a little irritably. "There is a legitimate side, and a very wonderful side, only a brain like yours is not capable of assimilating it. You should have heard my paper to-night upon ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as we said, a youth needs good assimilating power, if he is to grow in this world! Noltenius aud Panzendorf, for instance, they were busy "teaching Friedrich religion." Rather a strange operation this too, if we were to look into it. We will not look ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... material products and of immaterial ideas. Probably the vastest conception which ever entered into the mind of a conqueror was that which was profoundly meditated, and, in its initial steps, practically carried out, by Alexander the Great. He was engaged in a clearly defined project of assimilating the populations of Europe and Asia, when, at the early age of thirty-three, he was killed—I tremble to state it here—by a too eager indulgence in an altogether too munificent public dinner! Alexander's weapon was force, but it ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... palaces. Actually, Montezuma was a democratically elected war chief of a confederation of three tribes which militarily dominated most of the Mexican valley. There was no empire because Indian society, being based on the clan, had no method of assimilating newcomers. The Aztec armies could loot and they could capture prisoners for their sacrifices, but they had no system of bringing their conquered enemies into the nation. They hadn't reached that far in the evolution of society. The Incas could have taught ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... be a species of universal matiere premiere, is probably rather a general reserve for the elaborating work of the plant. If now the aldose groups tend to pass over into the starch form, representing a temporary overflow product of the assimilating energy, it would appear that the ketose or levulose groups are preferentially used up in the elaboration of the permanent tissue. We must also take into consideration the researches of Lobry de Bruyn showing the labile functions of the typical ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... Frying-pans and dutch-ovens, camp-stools and trout-scales, receive the same designation. And now comes the crowning triumph of this versatile term, as well as a happy illustration of what might be called its agglutinative and assimilating powers; for when horses and wagon have received their load of tent and equipments, and father, mother and the babies have filled up every available space, this whole establishment, this omnium gatherum of outfits, becomes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... a process that continually gives us new material to digest. We handle this intellectually by the mass of beliefs of which we find ourselves already possessed, assimilating, rejecting, or rearranging in different degrees. Some of the apperceiving ideas are recent acquisitions of our own, but most of them are common-sense traditions of the race. There is probably not a common-sense tradition, of all those which we now live by, ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... themselves wildly on you. The age of miracles is not past. But I would raise no false hopes of myself. I am no thaumaturgist. Do you awake with a sinking sensation in the stomach? Have you lost the power of assimilating food? Are you oppressed with an indescribable lassitude? Can you no longer follow the simplest train of thought? Are you troubled throughout the night with a hacking cough? Are you—in fine, are you but a tissue ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Epicure," by "All Souls." There were about sixty of these fragments. I have examined most of them; some are fanciful and far-fetched; some are apt and felicitous; but all foreshadow the independent thinker and observer, and show that this "Intellectual Epicure" was feeding on strong meat and assimilating it. ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... have followed out the course of a literary development, beginning in grey antiquity with biblical narratives, assimilating Persian doctrines, Greek wisdom, and Roman law; later, Arabic poetry and philosophy, and, finally, the whole of European science in all its ramifications. The literature we have described has contributed its share to every spiritual result achieved by humanity, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... appointed in its stead accepted the bill without serious demur. More difficulty was found in Upper Canada, where the Family Compact, still entrenched in the Legislative Council, feared the risk to their own position that union would bring and shrank from the task of assimilating half a million disaffected French Canadians. But with the support of the Reformers and of the more moderate among the Family Compact party, Sydenham forced his measure through. A confirming bill passed the British Parliament; and on February ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... must be limited by some arrester of metamorphosis; if it is not, the system suffers, and the man is what is called 'overworked.'.... Intellectual labor also exercises the demand for food, and at the same time, unfortunately, injures the assimilating organs; so that, unless a judicious diet is employed, waste occurs which cannot ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... character, were thrown away, because a rumor had become universally current "that at the very time when the city was in flames, Nero, going on the stage of his private theatre, sang The Destruction of Troy, assimilating the present disaster to that catastrophe ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... advanced grammar unencumbered with hard words, abstruse thoughts, and difficult principles, is not altogether an easy matter. These things enhance the difficulty which an ordinary youth experiences in grasping and assimilating the facts of grammar, and create a distaste for the study. It is therefore the leading object of this book to be both as scholarly and as practical as possible. In it there is an attempt to present grammatical facts as simply, and to lead the student to assimilate them as thoroughly, as possible, ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... are all apt to fall into this passionate egoism of imagination, not only toward our fellow-men, but toward God. And the future which she turned her face to with a willing step was one where she would be continually assimilating herself to some type that he would hold before her. Had he not first risen on her vision as a corrective presence which she had recognized in the beginning with resentment, and at last with entire love and trust? She could not spontaneously think of an ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... exception of Brazil, the other South American States, as well as Mexico and the Central American countries, are all rapidly approximating a uniform coinage, which the needs of commerce will unquestionably soon harmonize with that of the United States. Curiously enough, the great force that is assimilating the alien branches of the human race is not Christianity ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... Shelley's mind disinherited itself out of allegiance to itself, because it was too sensitive and too highly endowed for the world into which it had descended. It rejected ordinary education, because it was incapable of assimilating it. Education is suitable to those few animals whose faculties are not completely innate, animals that, like most men, may be perfected by experience because they are born with various imperfect alternative instincts rooted equally in their system. But most animals, and a few men, are not of ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... meaning of the word snudge is easily guessed in this place, but it is completely explained by T. Wilson, in his "Rhetoric," 1553, when he is speaking of a figure he calls diminution, or moderating the censure applied to vices by assimilating them to the nearest virtues: thus he would call "a snudge or pynche-penny a good husband, a thrifty man" (fo. 67). Elsewhere he remarks: "Some riche snudges, having great wealth, go with their hose out at heels, their shoes out at toes, and their cotes out at both elbowes; ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... peninsulas of Scandinavia, subject to his sway. Neither, however, over the Ostrogoths nor over any of the other subject nations included in this vast dominion are we to think of Attila's rule as an organised, all-permeating, assimilating influence, such as was the rule of a Roman Emperor. It was rather the influence of one great robber-chief over his freebooting companions. The kings of the Ostrogoths and Gepidae came at certain times to share the revelries of their lord in his great log-palace ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... delayed the literary renascence through the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Queen Mary. When Elizabeth came to the throne, in 1558, a more settled order of things began, and a period of great national prosperity and {65} glory. Meanwhile the English mind had been slowly assimilating the new classical culture, which was extended to all classes of readers by the numerous translations of Greek and Latin authors. A fresh poetic impulse came from Italy. In 1557 appeared Tottel's Miscellany, containing songs and sonnets by a ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... manifestations, each having its own rate of vibration, occupying the same point of space at the same time. A slight consideration of the phenomena of the physical world would perhaps aid such persons in assimilating the concept in question. For instance, as every student of physics knows, a single point of space may contain at the same time vibrations of heat, light of many shades, magnetism electricity, X-Rays, etc., each manifesting ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... pupils must be, for the greater part of the time, upon intellectual matters. It is out of the question to keep direct moral considerations constantly uppermost. But it is not out of the question to aim at making the methods of learning, of acquiring intellectual power, and of assimilating subject-matter, such that they will render behavior more enlightened, more consistent, more vigorous than ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... when the times threaten to overwhelm one. The point about the present age, so far as I am able to judge the world, is that it does not threaten to overwhelm; that at the worst, by my standards, it maintains its way of thinking instead of assimilating mine. ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... timidity as spring loosens the streams from the grasp of winter, and sends them forth in a rejoicing rush. The mind of youth, when impelled by this original strength and enthusiasm of Nature, is keen, eager, inquisitive, intense, audacious, rapidly assimilating facts into faculties and knowledge into power, and above all teeming with that joyous fullness of creative life which radiates thoughts as inspirations, and magnetizes ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... beardless boy of sixteen or seventeen years, at all assimilating to the character of a warrior and mighty slayer of men, is of itself an insuperable obstacle to the complete personification of certain characters by a young gentleman of the age and stature of Master ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... worlds opening before them, the older folk who give a disproportionate share of their time and money to music or the theater, the voracious readers who pore over every new novel and magazine without really assimilating and using what they read, are turning what ought to be recreation or inspiration into dissipation, and thereby seriously impairing their efficiency. It is so much easier to read something new than to meditate fruitfully upon what one has read, to pass from ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... loves nor his other dissipations ever permanently dulled the intellectual side of his nature. While he was writing morbid letters to Behrisch, he was directing the studies of his sister with all the seriousness of a youthful pedagogue. Though he neglected the lectures of his professors, he was assimilating knowledge on every subject that appealed to his natural instincts. In truth, all the manifold activities of his later years were foreshadowed during his sojourn in Leipzig, as, indeed, they had already been foreshadowed ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... vegetables or as plant-animals, are incapable of organising mineral matter. The so-called vegetative life of animals—for I believe the term to be exceedingly inexact—is applied to their growth, that is, to the increase in their weight. This increase takes place by their power of reorganising, or of assimilating to the nature of their own organisms, certain of the substances elaborated by plants, and destined to ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... spiritual growth, but they can do no more. And often how bitterly are they disappointed when they see that, in spite of admonition and instruction and entreaty and example, and every external help and incentive, the inner nature, the heart, the soul of child or pupil is not assimilating spiritual truth, is not growing "in grace and in the nurture and ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... tissue of the leaf is composed of very loose, thin-walled cells, containing numerous chloroplasts. Between them are large and numerous intercellular spaces, filled with air, and communicating with the breathing pores. These are the principal assimilating cells of the plant; i.e. they are principally concerned in the absorption and decomposition of carbonic acid from the atmosphere, and the manufacture ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... is capable of assimilating, by well-determined and thoroughly specialized processes, the nutrient matter contained in its environment, precisely as the "primordial germ" develops under its environing conditions. From the moment they strike their ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... ablation of all genitals. In India the followers of Brahma never placed their women in charge of eunuchs. In Italy it was customary to emasculate boys that they might grow up with the faculty of taking the female parts in comedies, their voices thereby assimilating to that of the other sex, this being on the same principle that the basso-profundos were infibulated that they ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... of fat, without shape or form, like a feather pillow. The belly is dependent, and almost trailing on the ground, the legs very short, and the tail so small as to be little more than a rudiment. It has a ravenous appetite, and will eat anything that the wonderful assimilating powers of its stomach can digest; and to that capability, there seems no limit in the whole range of animal or vegetable nature. The consequence of this perfect and singularly rapid digestion is an unprecedented ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... formalities right—never mind about the moralities Give thanks that Christmas comes but once a year Good protections against temptations; but the surest is cowardice Goody-goody puerilities and dreary moralities Habit of assimilating incredibilities Human pride is not worth while Hunger is the handmaid of genius If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank Inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances It is easier to stay out than get out Man is the only ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... have a nation brimful of intelligence, quick of apprehension, with a genius for selecting from the polity and procedure of other States exactly those features best fitted to promote prosperity and efficiency and an unmatched power for assimilating and reproducing them in the form suitable to its own tradition of development, following the Western Powers along the crooked path of their early dealings with industrialism and allowing the very conditions which stunted and degraded the Lancashire cotton operative of ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... were sworn to celibacy, while they submitted themselves to penances of such rigour that their lives were often endangered, if not shortened. Below them were the mass of believers who were allowed to marry and to live in the world, assimilating themselves so far as possible to the ideal set before them by the higher caste. From the Perfected were chosen officers with the names of bishop and deacon, the latter acting as assistants to the chief ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... long in discovering that it rests in great part on a misunderstanding: men mistake coexistence for amalgamation. I do not fear to affirm that the second would be as undesirable as the first would be desirable. Why dream of blending or of assimilating the two races? Why pursue as an ideal frequent marriages between them, and the formation of a third race: that of mulattoes? America does right to resist such ideas, and to inscribe her testimony against such a future, evidently very little in conformity with the ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... offence and defence. Theoretical instruction was given on half a hundred subjects ranging from the hygiene of the person to the role supposed to be played by the cavalry and artillery in a general action. All ranks were quick at assimilating knowledge. Perhaps the best results were obtained during the informal talks which took place between officers and men in the "sit easy" periods. The specialists were given opportunities for paying greater attention to their own peculiar work, and ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... the company in sonorous periods, which, however, did not prevent him from assimilating a prodigious amount of food. Between forkfuls of chicken baked in macaroni, "I rejoice that my ministrations are acceptable to Him," he pronounced; "three souls Wednesday last, two adults and ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Stoicism and Paulinism have been frequently pointed out, and the similarity in language and thought can scarcely be accounted for by coincidence. There are, however, elements in Stoicism which St. Paul would never have dreamt of assimilating. The material conception of the world, the self-conscious pride, the absence of all sense of sin, the temper of apathy, and unnatural suppression of feelings were ideas which could not but rouse the apostle's strongest antagonism. But, on the other hand, there were ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... current of my warm affections, and I had learned to look with comparative indifference on whatever crossed my changeful path; but no one with a latent spark of kindly feeling can long repress it among the Irish. There is an ardor of character, an earnestness in their good will, a habit of assimilating themselves to the tastes and habits of those whom they desire to please —and that desire is very general—that wins on the affections of those who possess any, a grateful regard, and leaving on the scenes that have witnessed ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... is an entire absence of his strong and flickering colours: on the contrary all is dim—the scenery natural to the animal, for it partakes of its proper colours, (and this is strictly true, as the hare and the fox conceal themselves by their assimilating earths and forms.) The spectator advances upon the scene, unaware of the stealthily lurking danger. The dimness and repose are of a terror, that contrast and forcible colour would at least mitigate; the surprise ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... the cells directs the work, of course—drawing upon the body of the mother for nourishment and supplies. The nourishment in the mother's blood, which supplies the material for the building up of the child's body, is obtained by the mother eating and assimilating the vegetable cells of plants, directly or indirectly. If she eats fruit, nuts, vegetables, etc., she obtains the nourishment of the plant life directly—if she eats meat she obtains it indirectly, for the animal ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... of a century, and speak the language that was his, that was to become in a measure the language of the next generation. But he did it with the tact of a scholar also. English, for a quarter of a century past, has been assimilating the phraseology of pictorial art; for half a century, the phraseology of the great German metaphysical movement of eighty years ago; in part also the [16] language of mystical theology: and none but pedants ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... genial warmth, which should beget flaming enthusiasm, fervent love, burning zeal, and should work transformation into its own fiery substance. The rejoicing power, the quick energy, the consuming force, the assimilating action of fire, are all included in the symbol, and should all ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... sides of the Channel when Geoffrey wrote his book, about 1145. As a matter of course, this King Arthur, the ideal hero of later ages, was a less commanding personage in the early forms of the legend than when it had acquired its splendid distinction by borrowing and assimilating ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... absolutely true since He is known to be a Divine Teacher Who has given it. And Reason now begins her new work, not of justifying Faith, but, so to say, of interpreting it; not of examining His claims, since these have been once for all accepted, but of examining, understanding, and assimilating all that He reveals. ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... all marriage ceremonies are essentially religious, as involving the conception of something strange and dangerous in the contact of men and women; they are intended, he thinks, to neutralize dangers by reversing taboos and by assimilating the two persons each to the other, the dangers in question being not merely distinctly sexual but those of contact in general. Though he carries his application of the principle of taboo too far, he has collected a large number of examples which ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... There are students and practical men, authors and mechanics, editors, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, school teachers, actors, artists, singers, and representatives of all kinds of trades and avocations. All are now on the same platform, and, for a time, class distinctions disappear beneath the assimilating conditions of the new profession. Political strifes occur, but are rarely virulent. Generally the association together of men holding different political views, in a common cause, and subject to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... This habit of assimilating what pleased me and giving it out again as my own appears in much of my early correspondence and my first attempts at writing. In a composition which I wrote about the old cities of Greece and Italy, I borrowed ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... missed the point and failed to perceive the poetry of Gothic architecture. Its symbolical significance was lost upon them; perhaps we ought to say that the Italian temperament, in art as in religion, was incapable of assimilating the vague yet powerful ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... look that dazzled him. Her very eyelids seemed radiant with thankfulness. The beauty that had fixed his regard was now but a mask through which her soul was breaking, assimilating it. His eyes sank before the look, and he felt himself catching his breath like a drowning man. When he raised them again he saw tears streaming down her face. He rose, and saying he would call again in the evening, left ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... bathing at Tunbridge Wells. For instance, though the matter was hushed up at the time, it is an open secret among their friends that Miss Gladys Devereux broke off her engagement to young Percy Gore-Mont on account of his gaucherie when assimilating this weed at a dinner-party. It seems that he simply threw himself at the stuff, and that one of the servants had to comb the melted butter out of his hair before he could appear in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... arrange themselves into two nearly parallel rows. We may then say that the keel of the animal is laid down, and in it we have the first rudiments of a backbone and a continuous spinal chord. But during the progress and completion of this first organic process no changes have been observed assimilating the nascent embryo to any of the inferior animals. The next series of changes in the germinal membrane are of two kinds—in one the nervous system, the organs of motion, the intestinal canal, the heart and blood-vessels are ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... source of great comfort to that devoted friend of science that those who yet survive of the highly-excited party which attempted to cast on him reproach and ridicule for that proposition, and especially for assimilating those establishments to light-houses of the skies, have recently admitted the wisdom of his advice by making ample appropriations to accomplish the very object he ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... purpose. Old institutions get new names; new institutions are set up alongside of them. But the old ones are never swept away; they sometimes die out; they are never abolished. This comes largely of the absorbing and assimilating power of the island world. But it comes no less of personal character and personal circumstances, and pre-eminently of the personal character of the Norman Conqueror and of the circumstances ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... European opportunity. Oh, she was enough of an artist herself to know that there must be fallow periods—that the impact of new impressions seldom produced immediate results. She had allowed for all that. But her past experience of Nat's moods had taught her to know just when he was assimilating, when impressions were fructifying in him. And now they were not, and he knew it as well as she did. There had been too much rushing about, too much excitement and sterile flattery... Mrs. Melrose? Well, yes, for a while... the trip to Spain had been a love-journey, ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... portico, (namely, the pediment), and destroying at once the august appearance which it gives to the building; we find in all the churches of Sir Christopher Wren the campanile to form a distinct projection from the ground upwards; thus assimilating nearer to the ancient form of building them entirely apart from the main body of the church. I should conceive, that if this idea was followed by introducing the beautiful detail of Grecian architecture, according to Wren's models it would raise our church ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... cannot here enter into the details of this question. It seems obvious to me, however, that in the already considerable time during which the American negroes have been under the influence of European culture, they ought to have often demonstrated their power of assimilating it and of developing it independently, according to their own genius, if their brains were capable of so doing. Instead of this, we find that negroes in the interior of the island of Haiti, formerly civilized by France, then abandoned to themselves, have, with the exception of a few mulattoes, reverted ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... expected from him, but that he will write his own words, and only his own words. A strict, I was going to say a Puritan, genius will act thus, but most men of genius are susceptible and versatile, and fall into the style of their age. One very unapt at the assimilating process, but on that account the more curious about ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... remembered the adventures at all. If it had not been for the quiet and persistent guardianship of her cowboys she might almost have forgotten Don Carlos and the raiders. Madeline was assured of the splendid physical fitness to which this ranch life had developed her, and that she was assimilating something of the Western disregard of danger. A hard ride, an accident, a day in the sun and dust, an adventure with outlaws—these might once have been matters of large import, but now for Madeline they were in order with all the rest of ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... exactness and minuteness of such descriptive character sketches, but even the shortest and most general is necessary to the proper appreciation of every play, even if it is being merely read. When a student is assimilating a role for rehearsing or acting, these additions of the author are as important ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... which it presented to us in Japan! We were more than mere participators in this civilization. We had grafted upon our own life, old, balanced, remote, isolated, the creator of great traditions, the newer and different ideas of Europe, assimilating the best of them without losing these that were strong and potent among our own. They had been fused into our life and, in the process, had enabled us to make an enlarged contribution to human progress. We had become so much a part of the world that nothing in it was alien ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... who is truly a man cease to care about living a certain time?—he knows, as women say, that no man can escape fate, and therefore he is not fond of life; he leaves all that with God, and considers in what way he can best spend his appointed term;—whether by assimilating himself to the constitution under which he lives, as you at this moment have to consider how you may become as like as possible to the Athenian people, if you mean to be in their good graces, and to have power in the state; whereas I want you to think and see whether ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... many find coffee made from browned wheat or corn the best drink. Depend for a time upon liquid food that can be taken up by absorbents. The juice of lemons and other acid fruits is usually grateful, and {280} assists in assimilating any excess in nutriment. These may be diluted according to taste. With many, an egg lemonade ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... maintained, there would be another revolution. Some writers vehemently objected to the proposition that the public should bear the expense of restoring the currency; some urged the government to take this opportunity of assimilating the money of England to the money of neighbouring nations; one projector was for coining guilders; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... yielding itself to the power of the highest. Hence she had not merely got used to the horror, but in a measure satisfied with it; never suspecting, because never caring enough, that she had at the same time, and that not very gradually, been assimilating to the horror; had lost much of what purity she had once had, and become herself unclean, body and mind, in the contact with uncleanness. One thing she did know, and that swallowed up all the rest—that ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... ideal; conceiving Israel, as did Reform Judaism, to be its own Messiah, not fated, however, to remain a minutely scattered leaven among nations who condemned or destroyed it, but destined according to the prophetic promise to re-establish itself upon Zion;[2] convinced that a true assimilating of the fruits of emancipation in contradistinction to an imitating of Gentile culture could only be effected by an emancipation from within, by an auto-emancipation;[3] the vision of a Jewish State grew into outline. ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... serious risks. Now and then, instead of absorbing the natives among whom they lived, they were absorbed by them, which meant a loss of so much fighting strength to the mother country; even under the most favourable conditions a considerable time must have passed before they could succeed in assimilating to themselves the races amongst whom they lived. At last, however, a day would dawn when the process of incorporation was accomplished, and Assyria, having increased her area and resources twofold, found herself ready ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... alphabet of forty-seven characters, used at present as an auxiliary to the Chinese. Within a very recent period, since the acquisition of knowledge has become a necessity in Japan, a society has been formed by the most prominent men of the empire, for the purpose of assimilating the spoken and written language, taking the forty-seven ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... John Bull without merging in him; to sink himself and yet not be absorbed, not to be and yet to be. The attempt to realize the asymptote in human mathematics was not quite successful, too near an approach to John Bull generally assimilating Jeshurun away. For such is the nature of Jeshurun. Enfranchise him, give him his own way and you make a new man of him; persecute him ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... denote, have by a constitution permitted such gifts to be first made, and not merely increased, after the celebration of the marriage, and have directed that they shall be called gifts 'on account of' (and not 'before') marriage, thereby assimilating them to dowries; for as dowries are not only increased, but actually constituted, during marriage, so now gifts on account of marriage may be not only made before the union of the parties, but may be first made as well ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... This similarity between the political character and methods of the Romans and Anglo-Saxons strikes any one who reads the history of the two peoples side by side. They show the same genius for government at home, and a like success in conquering and holding foreign lands, and in assimilating alien peoples. Certain qualities which they have in common contribute to these like results. Both the Roman and the Anglo-Saxon have been men of affairs; both have shown great skill in adapting means to an ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... the means requisite for assimilating Finland we can not help reckoning, first and foremost, with this fact, that by the will of Russian emperors that country has lived its own particular life for nearly a century and governed itself in quite a special manner. Another ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... and method of assessment have been indicated above.[12] Corporation taxation may be adjusted to this either by separate treatment and assignment to state purposes only, or more simply for most states, by assimilating it with the general taxation of wealth and allotting due shares of the proceeds to the various taxing divisions.[13] The national government can, because of its exclusive power of levying tariff duties and also because of its exclusive control over ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... herself, enjoyed haranguing her audience, and at last regarded her friends as the chorus in a tragedy, there only to give her her cues. In fact, she had a very fine collection of phrases and ideas, derived either from books or by assimilating the opinions of her companions, and thus became a sort of mechanical instrument, going off on a round of phrases as soon as some chance remark released the spring. To do her justice, Dinah was choke full ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... logical as an algebraic problem. At all events, the result was in both cases equally inexorable. It was useless to argue that she was his inferior in culture and social accomplishments; she was still young and flexible, and displayed an aptness for seizing upon his ideas and assimilating them which was fairly bewildering. And if purity of soul and loving singleness of purpose be a proof of noble blood, she was surely one ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and the effect of that constant environment will fulfil the aspiration of the apostle, "We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." Communion produces likeness. This even now is the test of our friendship with the Lord. Are we assimilating His mind, His way of looking at things, His judgments, His spirit? Is the Christ-conscience being developed in us? Have we an increasing interest in the things which interest Him, an increasing love of the things that He loves, an increasing desire to serve the purposes ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... given authority to the Friends, especially to the older and more conservative of them; has furnished a subtle machinery for assimilating new members into the community and thus has been ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... Professor Freeman so well points out, centres round the great name of Rome. For, of all the great divisions of the human race, it is the Aryan family which has come to the front. Assimilating, developing, and giving vastly wider scope to the highest forms of thought and religion originated by other families, notably the Semitic, the various Aryan nationalities form, and have formed for ages, the vanguard of ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... architects, Messrs. McKim, Mead and White - which proves conclusively to me that those who are most versed in the various forms of antique arts are also those who are most capable of accepting the application of new motifs when sufficiently proven, and of quickly assimilating genuine contributions to the growth of progressive art. By so doing they lend to them all that wealth of refined elegance that has come down through the ages. This acceptance in itself is fraught with much encouragement to the growing school of ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... a solution of the problem is the second step. The main agency is education, but this does not mean entirely education in the schools. Education through social contact is the principal means of assimilating the adult; for this purpose it is desirable that some means be found for the better distribution of the immigrant, and as immigration is a national problem, it is proper for the national government to attack that particular phase of ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... lamentably disorganised state, and presented a decidedly uninviting sphere for the maiden efforts of a young and inexperienced minister. But William Anderson was neither disheartened nor dismayed. He approached the work of reconstructing and assimilating his congregation in a spirit of love and charity, which, mingled with tact and firmness, succeeded in subduing the anarchy and mismanagement that had previously prevailed. His victory over the turbulent spirits under his charge was as signal and complete as that he had achieved over the ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... in the past, not so very long ago, the same apprehension and fears were felt with regard to higher education for our women. How ridiculous—the same people argued—is it for woman to study history, mathematics, philosophy, and chemistry, which are not only superior to the assimilating power of her deficient brain, but will make her presumptuous and arrogant and convert her into a hybrid being without grace or strength, intolerable and fatuous, with a beautiful, but empty head and a big, but dry heart! However, we admitted the women to our high schools and universities and ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... the great eruption of Skaptur Jokull in that year. It lasted for several months as a pale blue haze, and occasioned so much obscurity that the sun was only visible when twelve degrees above the horizon, and then it had a blood-red appearance. Violent thunderstorms were associated with it, thus assimilating it with that of 1883. Alike in 1783 and 1831 there was a pearly, phosphorescent gleam in the atmosphere, by which small print could be read at midnight. We know nothing regarding the ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... Romano-British towns, and is significant of their economic position. Such doubtless were most of the towns of Roman Britain—thoroughly Romanized, peopled with Roman-speaking citizens, furnished with Roman appurtenances, living in Roman ways, but not very large, not very rich, a humble witness to the assimilating power of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... intellectual culture, and all together do not realize the idea of life. The tame lion may be taught many arts, assimilating him to the intelligence of man; but these remove him so much further from his appropriate life. Thus there may be a cultivated intelligence, which constitutes no part of the creature's life; and this without considering the same ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... punished severely, often with death. Anything approaching the crime of incest, in which they include marriages out of the right line, they hold in the greatest abhorrence, closely assimilating in this last point with the North American Indians, of whom it is said in ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... great Experiment you—we have in view," he stammered, "is to do with the correct uttering of the names of some of the great Forces, or Angels, and—and the assimilating of their powers ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood |
