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Attainment   Listen
noun
Attainment  n.  
1.
The act of attaining; the act of arriving at or reaching; hence, the act of obtaining by efforts. "The attainment of every desired object."
2.
That which is attained to, or obtained by exertion; acquirement; acquisition; (plural), mental acquirements; knowledge; as, literary and scientific attainments.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Attainment" Quotes from Famous Books



... his head sorrowfully, which made me wonder the more that a man of his ability should be unhappy without this one bauble attainment. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... not deny that the intellectual ideal is difficult of attainment, still less that it is, and perhaps will be for years to come, unpopular with the crowd. It is so easy for people to have sympathy with suffering. It is so difficult for them to have sympathy with thought. Indeed, so little do ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... good powerful Maker, not subject to death because necessarily prior to Death (who only invaded the world late), seems easier of attainment than the notion of Spirit which, ex hypothesi, demands much delicate psychological study and hard thought. The idea of a Good Maker, once reached, becomes, perhaps, the germ of future theism, but, as Mr. Darwin says, the human mind was "infallibly led to various strange superstitions". ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... clothing which are necessary for the mere maintenance of the functions of the body in their normal state, cannot be obtained; in which men, women, and children are forced to crowd into dens wherein decency is abolished, and the most ordinary conditions of healthful existence are impossible of attainment; in which the pleasures within reach are reduced to bestiality and drunkenness; in which the pains accumulate at compound interest in the shape of starvation, disease, stunted development, and moral degradation in which the prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of unsuccessful ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple

... disposition of federal patronage, but in consequence of the acceptance by the people of that section of the principles and policies for which the National Organization stands. For the accomplishment of this purpose and for the attainment of this end time is the most important factor. Questionable methods that have been used to hold in abeyance the advancing civilization of the age will eventually be overcome and effectually destroyed. The wheels of progress, of intelligence, and of right cannot and will not move backwards, ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch

... that she was doubling the profit on these Western pictures which Robert Grant Burns was producing. She did not know that it would have hastened the attainment of her desires had her name appeared in the cast as the girl who put the "punches" in the plays. She did not know that she was being cheated of her rightful reward when her name never appeared anywhere save on the ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower

... rule."— L. Murray cor. "He mentioned that a boy had been corrected for his faults."—Alger and Merchant cor. "The boy's punishment is shameful to him."—Iid. "The greater the difficulty of remembrance is, and the more important the being-remembered is to the attainment of the ultimate end."—Campbell cor. "If the parts in the composition of similar objects were always in equal quantity, their being-compounded (or their compounding) would make no odds."—Id. "Circumstances, not of such importance as that the scope of the relation is affected ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... than one morning finding the weary labor of months wasted where the frozen substance had peeled from the framework and lay in fragments on the floor, without a murmur began the patient work again. That was during the trial; afterwards attainment. Was there no long ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... "stone-walled" by the Allies; and the other on the Vistula, in Poland, where the Russians, by sheer force of numbers and superior strategy, made very considerate progress in their march on Berlin; so that, on the whole, the horoscope remained most favourable to the Allies and the ultimate attainment ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 • Various

... with fitness of character, through a state of trial, for mutual association with the pure and lovely in the kingdom of heaven. This is presented in all the gospel, as the chief end of the Christian's life. Until Christ, no such reward was offered to mankind, nor means provided for its attainment. ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various

... they must possess, to an astonishing degree, the faculty to concentrate thought on a single object—the energic faculty that we call will. Therefore, though their intellect be not sound, it is exceedingly forcible for the attainment of what it desires. I will imagine such a person, pre-eminently gifted with this constitution and its concomitant forces. I will place him in the loftier grades of society. I will suppose his desires emphatically those of the sensualist—he ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... required to get results from any particular cross. Effort is being made to shorten this period by grafting scions of hybrid seedlings on dwarf stocks and growing the plants in pots. This will help some, but at best the attainment of results is some distance in the future. We are endeavoring to maintain a reasonably complete record of every step that is taken so that a complete history may be available for those who may ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... is the seventh or last part of the Jyotishtoma, for the performance of which it is not essentially necessary, but a voluntary sacrifice instituted for the attainment of a specific desire. The literal meaning of the word would be in conformity with the Praudhamanorama, "a sacrifice which procures the attainment of the desired ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... impossible to say. It was, and still is, very commonly believed that in his youth Louis Napoleon had been affiliated to one or other of the secret societies of Italy, that he was still pledged to this, was bound to obey its orders, and that Orsini was an agent to remind him that the attainment of high rank, far from releasing him from the bond, rendered it more stringent, as giving him greater power and facility for carrying out the orders he received. The independence of Italy was aimed at; and it had been ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... be last to leave their ships, and of boys who stand on burning decks whence all but they had fled. He had spent several hours shaking hands with total strangers and receiving with a frozen smile their felicitations on the attainment of his majority, and he could not have been called upon to meet a larger horde of relations than had surged round him that night if he had been a rabbit. The Belpher connection was wide, straggling over most of England; and first cousins, second cousins and even third and fourth cousins had ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... eager who impatiently desires to accomplish some end; one is earnest with a desire that is less impatient, but more deep, resolute, and constant; one is anxious with a desire that foresees rather the pain of disappointment than the delight of attainment. One is eager for the gratification of any appetite or passion; he is earnest in conviction, purpose, or character. Eager usually refers to some specific and immediate satisfaction, earnest to something permanent and enduring; the patriotic soldier is ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... inspiring to the youth of high aims every incident of the pathway that led from the frontier cabin to the Executive Mansion,—from the humblest position to the most exalted yet attained by man! In no other country than ours could such attainment have been possible for the boy whose hands were inured to toil, whose bread was eaten under the hard conditions that poverty imposes, whose only heritage was brain, integrity, lofty ambition, and indomitable purpose. Let it never be forgotten that the ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... cannot be. Among these exceptional mortals I do not count such as, having secured the corner of a couch within the radius of a good fire, forget the world around them by help of the magic lantern of a novel that interests them: such may not be in the least worth knowing for their disposition or moral attainment—not even although the noise of the waves on the sands, or the storm in the chimney, or the rain on the windows but serves to deepen the calm of their spirits. Take the novel away, give the fire a black heart; let the smells born in a lodging-house kitchen ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... distress, and you refuse relief; you are bankrupt in fortune, and you rave like a poet, when you should be devising and plotting for the attainment of boundless wealth. Revenge and ambition may both be yours; but they are prizes never won but by a cautious foot as well as ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and resumed his former expression, which was merely that of an uninterested gentleman waiting patiently for another. It is something of an attainment to watch closely without betraying undue curiosity, but others of the senses—hearing and smelling, for instance—can be keenly engaged while the observer possibly has the appearance ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah

... Voluptuaries made use of them to excite an appetite for food, and they used them after eating heavy meals to prepare the stomach for a second bout of gluttony. Many gourmands took an emetic daily. Celsus said that emetics should not be used as a frequent practice if the attainment of ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... half in the towns, were, or had been, convicts. It was not until 1865, under strong pressure from the other Colonies, that the system was finally abolished which threw Western Australia forty years behind its sister Colonies in the attainment of Home Rule. ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... have occasion to mention in another place, are by no means such as to raise that insuperable obstacle which many suppose. They may all be overcome by resolution and perseverance. As regards merely the use of unpremeditated language, it is far from being a difficult attainment. A writer, whose opportunities of observation give weight to his opinion, says, in speaking of the style of the younger Pitt—"This profuse and interminable flow of words is not in itself either a rare or remarkable endowment. It is wholly a thing of habit; and is exercised by every village ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware

... the great poets of the Greek people the material of their education, the Athenians attained a variety of objects difficult of attainment by any other one means. The fact is, the ancient poetry of Greece, with its finished form, its heroic tales and characters, its accounts of peoples far removed in time and space, its manliness and pathos, its directness and simplicity, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... being supernormal, drags us willingly or woefully in their wake, until at last our blind persistency is either routed or appeased and we advance our lauds or gnash our teeth as the occasion bids us. There is no tragedy more woeful than the victory of hate, nor any attainment so hopelessly barren as the sterility of that achievement; for hate is finality, and finality is the greatest evil which can happen in a world of movement. Love is an inaugurator displaying his banners on captured peaks and pressing forever to a new and more ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... the history of the progress of his real discoveries.—YOUNG, Works, iii. 621. Error is almost always partial truth, and so consists in the exaggeration or distortion of one verity by the suppression of another, which qualifies and modifies the former.—MIVART, Genesis of Species, 3. The attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.—HUXLEY: WARD, Reign of Victoria, ii. 337. Jede neue tief eingreifende Wahrheit hat meiner Ansicht mach erst das Stadium der Einseitigkeit ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... drawn up and approved and sent to the commanders of the cruisers in a confidential manner. Each commander was enjoined to pay the most strict attention to such signals as might be made under the regulations, and to co-operate by every means in his power for the attainment of the objects in view. These commanders were also to apprise the Customs Board of any matter which might arise in consequence thereof "fit for our cognisance." These signals were also communicated to the commanders ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton

... real meaning of Chivalry as expressed in the Order of the Thorn, and the reason why I was deemed worthy to be made a knight of it. There had already been some comment owing to the fact that the honor was not conferred immediately on the attainment of my majority. Perhaps my shortened career at college had something to do with it—perhaps the fact that I had brothers who were older and worthier than myself. I am not in the least blaming my father for the delay; rather am I now inclined ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... means for the attainment of that end? This, Sir, as I conceive it, is the only legitimate ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon

... making a genuine and trustworthy selection. There is, besides, an apparently constant antagonism in history between the qualities of strict accuracy and literary brilliancy. The two are not incompatible, but the striving after literary merit is as great a snare to the writer as its attainment by the writer is, in too many ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... a noble and genuine account of what goods may be realised by living. Modern theory has not done so much to help us here, however, as it has in physics. It seldom occurs to modern moralists that theirs is the science of all good and the art of its attainment; they think only of some set of categorical precepts or some theory of moral sentiments, abstracting altogether from the ideals reigning in society, in science, and in art. They deal with the secondary question What ought I to do? without having answered the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... mountains along the highway towards the city.' Already from the top of an high hill called 'Clear,' the Celestial City was in view; dangers there were still to be encountered; but to have reached that high hill and to have seen something like a gate, and some of the glory of the place, was an attainment and an incentive." There Bunyan could pause. Several years later the pilgrimage ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... second thing we have to learn is this, that on this earth there can be no rest for man. By rest we mean the attainment of a state beyond which there can be no change. Politically, morally, spiritually, there can be no rest for man here. In one country alone has that system been fully carried out which, conservative of the past, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... enterprise, is discretion; by which we carry on a safe intercourse with others, give due attention to our own and to their character, weigh each circumstance of the business which we undertake, and employ the surest and safest means for the attainment of any end or purpose. To a Cromwell, perhaps, or a De Retz, discretion may appear an alderman-like virtue, as Dr. Swift calls it; and being incompatible with those vast designs, to which their courage and ambition prompted ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... soul and body, to struggle afresh for a cleaner and a sharper air. Life had meant more to him in the beginning than a mere series of sensations—more even than any bodily conditions, any material attainment; and it was the final triumph of his austere vision that it should mean most of all when it seemed to a casual glance to ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... lunar, tends to reduce the axial movement of the body it acts upon. But the separation of satellites depends—according to the received view—upon the attainment of a disruptive rate of rotation. Hence, if solar tidal friction were strong enough to keep down the pace below this critical point, the contracting mass would remain intact—there would be no satellite-production. This, in all probability, actually occurred in the case both of Mercury and Venus. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... act at all—it by no means follows that we are bound to will what is expedient. In other words, the necessity laid upon us by the system of external causation is a necessity to adopt means for the attainment of ends; not a necessity to will the ends. And although in many cases this distinction may appear to be practically unmeaning—seeing that no man wills what he knows to be impossible of execution, and therefore that to say he is necessarily ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes

... named Benjamin Owens taught a Negro school in an old church located not far from the head of Main Street extended in Weston. A local historian believes also that one Doctor Gordon's daughter taught in the same school. It does not appear that Owens was a man of exceptional intellectual attainment, but he had well mastered the fundamentals of education when working in the printing office of Horace Greeley in New York, where he learned to manifest interest in the man far down, and to make sacrifices for his cause. His ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... that it tended to make him a bully. He was physically the superior of all in his class, and this superiority he exerted for what he deemed the discipline of younger and weaker boys, who excelled him in intellectual attainment. ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor

... contribution to the vocational guidance of youth provided in the average schoolroom. The ideals of success usually held up before school children seem to have been drawn from a mixture of Sunday school literature and the prospectuses of efficiency bureaus. Boiled down the rules prescribed for their attainment are two: first, "Be good;" and second, "Get ahead." The pupils are told about well-known men who became famous or rich, usually rich, by practicing these rules. Occasionally there is some prattle about the "dignity of labor," as ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz

... looked out from my room about ten o'clock at night. Almost below the open window a young woman was clinging to the flat wall for support, with occasional floundering movements towards the attainment of a firmer balance. In the dim light she seemed decently dressed in black; her handkerchief was in her hand; ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... necessary conditions are not possible of attainment through private instruction in the home. The child who is kept at home and given private instruction too often grows up to be timid, self-distrustful, and unfitted to cope with the difficulties ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright

... knowledge as such. It was not pursued as an end in itself, but as a means to the attainment of wisdom. Hence, he who stopped short of this end was regarded no higher than a convenient machine, which could turn out poems and maxims at bidding. Thus, knowledge was conceived as identical ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... with their hands, must seem unutterably sad. He says that while muscle work is the commonest and the simplest, so it is also the most poorly paid and the most degrading, and that while brain work is ennobling and the highest type of labor, it is so difficult of attainment and produced only by such grievous toil that most of us shirk it, even while reproaching ourselves at our lack of capacity and purpose. The pathetic burden of unfulfilled possibilities, he says, is the curse of labor, and only in sleep does man have temporary oblivion through which, for a time, he ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... persons would be none the less dishonoured and debauched! The existence of a man is so small a thing to take, so mighty a thing to employ! Alas!" he cried, "is there anything in life so disenchanting as attainment?" ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... by any means a perfect character. She was, in her way, quite as ambitious as her brother Sydney, although not quite so eager in pursuit of her own ends, her own pleasure and satisfaction. She was also more scrupulous than Sydney to the means which she would adopt for the attainment of her objects, and she desired that others should share with her the good things which fell to her lot; but she had never been taught, or had never adopted the rule, that mere self-denial, for self-denial's sake, was the soundest basis of morality and conduct. ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... conciliated by his frank attitude as to his own calling, by his perfect freedom from any pontifical airs of the mystery of authorship. "I could have written longer notes," he says in the great Preface to his Shakespeare, "for the art of writing notes is not of difficult attainment." "It is impossible for an expositor not to write too little for some, and too much for others." "I have indeed disappointed no opinion more than my own; yet I have endeavoured to perform my task with ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

... the whole super-Tory idea of a centralized British commonwealth of nations. It "hung the hide" of Lionel Curtis and his Round Table propaganda clubs to the Canadian National fence. It argued for "a progressive development in Canadian self-government to the point of the attainment of sovereign power to be followed by an alliance with the other British nations", who it was assumed would do likewise. For years before the war the Free Press had talked of this evolutionary Empire, deeply regretting ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... sweet strains, and saw the long shadows of the trees and the light of the rising moon, it was like the attainment of her dreamland; and Margaret proceeded to make known to her sisters Maitre Alain Chartier, the prince of song, adding, 'Thou, too, wast a songster, sister Elleen, even while almost a babe. ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... worldly ambition for success in his profession. What was consuming him was the double desire of mastering himself and at the same time of giving expression to the seething ideas and emotions which rendered that self-mastery so hard of attainment. From the moment of his return to Frankfort we see all the seeds fructifying which had taken root in him during his residence in Strassburg. He sends to Herder the ballads he had collected in Alsace, and sends him, also, translations from ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... Spain, and Rome were decidedly hostile; and all Catholic Europe aimed at the overthrow of England. Philip II. had adopted the dying injunction of his father to extinguish the Protestant religion, and the princes of the House of Valois were leagued with Rome for the attainment of this end. At home, Elizabeth had to contend with a jealous Parliament, a factious nobility, an empty purse, and a divided people. The people generally were rude and uneducated; the language was undeveloped; education was chiefly confined to nobles and priests; the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... seas cleared of corsairs and pirates. In short, without arms there would be no safety for cities, commonwealths or kingdoms. Besides, it is just to estimate a pursuit in proportion to the cost of its attainment. Now it is true that eminence in learning is purchased by time, watching, hunger, nakedness, vertigo, indigestion, and many other inconveniences already mentioned; but a man who rises gradually to be a good soldier endures all these, and far more. What is the hunger and poverty ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... regard must be paid to the taste of members of the chorus. If any of them express a wish for a particular piece, I let them have it. When it comes my time to select, they are with me. Keep some high attainment before the singers all the time. When the easier tasks are mastered, attempt something more difficult. It maintains enthusiasm to be ever after something better, and enthusiasm is a power everywhere. In music, this is ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... the sham reasons given, the real reason is, that a knowledge of those tongues is thought ladylike. It is not that the books written in them may be utilized, which they scarcely ever are, but that Italian and German songs may be sung, and that the extent of attainment may bring whispered admiration. The births, deaths, and marriages of kings, and other like historic trivialities, are committed to memory, not because of any direct benefits that can possibly result ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... could be proved that social evils were due neither to innate and incorrigible disabilities of the human being nor to the nature of things, but simply to ignorance and prejudices, then the improvement of his state, and ultimately the attainment of felicity, would be only a matter of illuminating ignorance and removing errors, of increasing knowledge and diffusing light. The growth of the "universal human reason"—a Cartesian phrase, which had figured ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... two men are in character and methods, his position resembled that of Martin Luther on quitting the Church of Rome. For the Buddhist monastic rule requires its members to be homeless, celibate, vegetarian, and here, like Luther, Shinran joined issue with them. To his mind the attainment of man lay in the harmonious development of body and spirit, and in the fulfilment, not the negation of the ordinary human duties. Accordingly, in his thirty-first year, after deep consideration, he married the daughter of Prince Kujo Kanezane, Chief Minister of the Emperor and head ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin

... which was that the Bohemian Diet should directly elect deputies to the delegations. The Nrodn Listy declared that the "fundamental articles" meant minimum demands, and that the Czechs would in any case work "for the attainment of an independent Czecho-Slovak state, as ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... of school restraint glide slowly over, "like wounded snakes," the clock, that chimes to liberty, sends forth the blood with a livelier flow; and pleasure thus derives a double zest from the bridle that duty has imposed, joy being generally measured according to the difficulty of its attainment. What delight in life have we ever experienced more exquisite than that, which flowed at once in upon us from the teacher's "bene, bene," our own self-approbation, and release from the tasks of the day?—the green fields ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... fresh sacrifice to his vain-gloriousness, the more firmly and desperately did he defend his wish to do so; and as he fought for the thing he desired, it acquired in his eyes a semblance of necessity and a number of reasons suggested themselves which made it appear both justifiable and easy of attainment. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... island a congenial home, and helps to make one for the islanders. English interiors, often incongruous and sombre in their decorations, at least produce the always pleasant sensation of physical comfort, the attainment of which the average Briton will class among the fine arts. Lovely as the Graces are, they need a little editing to harmonize them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... gifts, which, had they been assisted by greater industry and ambition, might easily have won him a very eminent rank in Europe as well as in his own country. An easy, pleasure-loving, tropical nature, flexible, facile, and disposed to sacrifice the future to the present, was the only obstacle to the attainment to a place level with the ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... conspicuous being the Virginians, who were afterwards denominated as the "aristocrats," but who in reality contributed more to the growth and prosperity of the frontier posts than any other element. From this class of Virginians, some of them men of learning and attainment, Harrison selected his retainers and henchmen. Chief among them was Benjamin Parke, one of the commanders at Tippecanoe, and the founder of the State law library in after years; and also Waller Taylor and Thomas Randolph, two of his aides in the Wabash campaign and of his immediate military ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... situation was serious enough it was not altogether desperate, the pirate leader being evidently anxious to escape from his present position, and as evidently disposed to look with friendly eyes upon all who might seem to have it in their power to assist him, either directly or indirectly, in the attainment of his purpose. ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... of injuring him, in a position which demands one of two sacrifices: the sacrifice of the other person, or the sacrifice of his own interests and his own desires. His neighbor's happiness, or his neighbor's life, stands, let us say, between him and the attainment of something that he wants. He can wreck the happiness, or strike down the life, without, to his knowledge, any fear of suffering for it himself. What is to prevent him, being the man he is, from going straight to his end, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... between pleasure and a cessation of pain. The last mistake he falls into in common with some others, which is this: that as virtue is the most desirable thing, and as philosophy has been investigated with a view to the attainment of it, he has separated the chief good from virtue. But he commends virtue, and that frequently; and indeed C. Gracchus, when he had made the largest distributions of the public money, and had exhausted the treasury, nevertheless spoke ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... abandoned the proper upanayana or thread ceremony, and simply invest boys with it at their marriage. In former times, when a boy became fit to bear arms, the ceremony of kharg bandai, or binding on of the sword, was performed, and considered to mark his attainment of manhood. The king himself had his sword thus bound on by the first of his vassals. The Rajputs take food cooked with water (katchi) only from Brahmans, and that cooked without water (pakki) from Banias, and sometimes from Lodhis ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... the race, as of the Yorkshire schoolmasters, in the past tense. Though it has not yet finally disappeared, it is dwindling daily. A long day's work remains to be done about us in the way of education, Heaven knows; but great improvements and facilities towards the attainment of a good one, have been ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... But it is far otherwise when the theory is to be applied, in all its pseudo-organization, to the separate departments of a particular art, and analogies the most subtle and speculative traced between the mental character and artistical choice or attainment of different races of men. Such analogies are always treacherous, for the amount of expression of individual mind which Art can convey is dependent on so many collateral circumstances, that it even militates against the truth of any particular system of interpretation ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... ventured a verse to the memory of the late Charles Skinner Matthews, Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, were he not too much above all praise of mine. His powers of mind, shown in the attainment of greater honours, against the ablest candidates, than those of any graduate on record at Cambridge, have sufficiently established his fame on the spot where it was acquired; while his softer qualities live in the recollection ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... pounce down on the bold affirmation by which it is followed; and then to lyrically proclaim that, not only was it a way they had in the Varsity to drive dull care away, but that the same practice was also pursued in the army and navy for the attainment of ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... I the whole aspect of the contest changes. The English were no longer conducting a great struggle for a statesmanlike ideal, as they had been under Edward I—however impossible he himself had made its attainment. There is no longer any sign of conscious purpose either in their method or in their aims. The nature of the warfare at once changed; Edward II, despite his father's wish that his bones should be carried at the head of the army till Scotland was ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait

... methods, the nature and just basis of suffrage, etc., are to be studied anew and brought to true adjustment; false barriers and artificial distinctions must be swept away, no child of Adam must be inhibited from wielding those prerogatives which by birthright or attainment he may be entitled to. The more obvious abuses, the flagrantly gratuitous distinctions, involving very gross inequalities and oppressions, will be the first to be exposed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... years of the seventeenth century that the ideal to which it was aspiring had been proclaimed frankly by the forgotten Furetiere in the preface to his "Roman Bourgeois." Furetiere lacked the skill and the insight needful for the satisfactory attainment of the standard he set up—indeed, the attainment of that standard is beyond the power of most novelists even now. But Furetiere's declaration of the principles which he proposed to follow is as significant now as it was ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... perhaps be, for herself, a lasting reproach. She wanted so simple a thing ... to be always with Martin, working, with all this confusing, baffling, mysterious religion behind her; this simple thing seemed incredibly difficult of attainment. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... process one of his highest gains is the liberation of his inward power and the attainment of self-knowledge and self-mastery. No man is free until he knows himself, and whatever helps a man to come to clear understanding of himself helps him to attain freedom. A man does not command his ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... conservation of the Hebrew commonwealth, we may see reason somewhat to modify our opinion. For the settlement of the Jews in Canaan and their restriction within its limits were not ends in themselves, but only means for the attainment of higher ends which were to affect the moral and spiritual condition of "all people that on earth do dwell." The promise made to Abraham was in this wise: "In thee and in thy seed shall all nations ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various

... of the Master is in essence one with the Oversoul, and therefore partaker of the Oversoul's all-wisdom and all-power. All spiritual attainment rests on this, and is possible because the soul and the Oversoul ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston

... daughter in marriage with a portion of 100,000 ducats, to revenge the death of her husband on the Portuguese, and to assassinate Albuquerque. Quitir accepted her offer, meaning to seize the city for himself. About the same time also, the king of Campar formed a similar design, for the attainment of which purpose he sent a congratulatory embassy to Albuquerque, from whom he demanded the office which had been conferred on Quitir. These plots having no consequences at this time, shall be farther ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... the common good of the whole; and if, upon the principle of natural law, this right is conceded by the very union of society, it seems difficult to assign any limit to this right which is compatible with the due attainment of the end proposed. If, therefore, any society shall deem the common good and interests of the whole society best promoted under the particular circumstances in which it is placed by a restriction of the right of suffrage, it is not easy to state any solid ground of objection ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... 1839 Sterling had written an article in the Westminster, which gave him intense pleasure; for while contemning praise in almost the same words as Byron did, he loved it equally well. In 1840 he had crossed the Rubicon that lies between aspiration and attainment. The populace might be blind or dumb, the "rattlesnakes"—the "irresponsible indolent reviewers," who from behind a hedge pelt every wrestler till they found societies for the victor—might still obscurely hiss; but Carlyle was at length safe ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... all, and are interested in their movements somewhat as we are interested in the movements of a puppet. And again, there is a prolongation of expectancy when, as in these movements of children, we are kept continually on the very point of attainment and ever turned away and tantalised by some humorous imperfection. This is altogether absent in the secure and accomplished movements of persons more fully grown. The tight-rope walker does not walk so freely ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... blessing. I shall give the Reader a short account of their names, and not say much of their fortunes. Edward, the eldest, was first made Knight of the Bath, at that glorious time of our late Prince Henry's being installed Knight of the Garter; after many years' useful travel, and the attainment of many languages, he was by King James sent Ambassador resident to the then French King, Lewis the thirteenth. There he continued about two years; but he could not subject himself to a compliance ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... the pony diverted the attention of the grizzly for a moment from the youth to the assailant. He was thoroughly roused, and made for the horse, who showed more sense than his master by dashing off at full speed. This being beyond the attainment of the bear, it may be said that Billy's ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis

... that I am not at all astonished at the failure of your plan. That spirit of freedom, which, at the commencement of this contest, would have gladly sacrificed everything to the attainment of its object, has long since subsided, and every selfish passion has taken its place. It is not the public but private interest which influences the generality of mankind; nor can the Americans any longer ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... outgrown the form of management by joint-stock companies, and when, therefore, the taking them over by the State has become economically inevitable, only then—even if it is the State of to-day that effects this—is there an economic advance, the attainment of another step preliminary to the taking over of all productive forces by society itself." "This necessity," he continues, "for conversion into State property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse and communication—the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... a direct, natural and spontaneous response, of the kind I have in my mind, to these famous works, were easy enough of attainment. Nothing, on the contrary, is more difficult to secure or ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... and convulsing nearly all the great monarchies, commercial affairs were nearly paralysed. The threatened disturbances in Ireland, and the chartist agitation at home, aggravated the evil effects which so many other causes produced. Banking accommodation was extremely difficult of attainment, and the funds fell very low. About the end of March affairs assumed some hopefulness, and the funds rose; but so many events crowded on in rapid succession, like dark clouds impelled by the storm, that these encouraging indications were checked. Still, public ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... them. And in the mean while he followed Elsie's tastes as closely as he could, determined to make some impression upon her,—to become a habit, a convenience, a necessity,—whatever might aid him in the attainment of the one end which was now the aim of ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... vessels of the Lord." Only when Israel proves by the nobility of his life that he deserves his holy vocation will the accomplishment of his mission be at hand. When all the peoples of the earth shall see that he is worthily called by the name of the Lord, the Divine name and law will be near to the attainment of their destined empire over the hearts of men' (Judaism as ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams

... sing while the head bends above a ledger; or, in other words, the faculty of dreaming with one side of the brain, while calculating with the other. Mrs. Browning's great Aurora Leigh helped me more to the attainment of that than any book ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard

... kings, and large numbers of the priests and people ceased to use their faculties and powers in accordance with the laws made by their Divine rulers, whose precepts and advice were now disregarded. Their connection with the Occult Hierarchy was broken. Personal aggrandisement, the attainment of wealth and authority, the humiliation and ruin of their enemies became more and more the objects towards which their occult powers were directed: and thus turned from their lawful use, and practised for all sorts of selfish and malevolent purposes, they ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot

... to the artist, a true Art-life is difficult of attainment. In the midst of illumination, there is the mystery: the subjective mystery, out of which issue the germs—like seeds floated from unknown shores—of his imaginings; the objective mystery, which yields to him, through obvious, yet unexplained ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... and I grand inquisitor—that time must come—we shall have the power to extend the sway of the sect of Loyola to the ends of the Christian world. The Inquisition itself our tool, posterity shall regard us as the apostles of intellectual faith. And thinkest thou, that, for the attainment of these great ends, we can have the tender scruples of common men? Perish a thousand Fonsecas—ten thousand novices, ere thou lose, by the strength of a hair, thy hold over the senses and soul of the licentious Philip! At ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the natures of other men. To become self-centred, and yet to be able to pass entirely out of one's self into the thoughts, emotions, impulses, and sufferings of others, involves a harmonising of opposing tendencies which is difficult of attainment. ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... wealth in one form or another was a factor in the settlement of Virginia, a prerequisite to attainment, also taken into account by the promoters of expeditions, was the establishment of homes in a new land. Homes would serve as stabilizers for permanent bases, from which could be carried on the trade essential to England's rising ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester

... brought up in her father's court, and famed far and wide for her beauty and accomplishments. The accomplishments in which ladies of high rank sought to distinguish themselves in those days were two, music and embroidery. The embroidery of tapestry was the great attainment, and in this art the young Matilda acquired great skill. The tapestry which was made in the Middle Ages was used to hang against the walls of some of the more ornamented rooms in royal palaces and castles, ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... great end of restoration in view, it was not in his power to employ great means for its attainment. He was obliged to be content with the day of small things. When he came to Yorkshire, he—whose ancestors had owned warehouses in this seaport, and factories in that inland town, had possessed their town-house ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... of pleasure-seekers all around him. The sorrow with which such recollections filled his heart was caused by the contrast which after years presented. He could recall his first falling-away from grace, when the successful attainment of a coveted appointment had brought with it the necessity of concealing his Catholic upbringing and convictions. How rapidly had he descended after that turning point had been passed! Conscience had been stifled until its voice no longer troubled ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... it only to the sesame of a sad voice those portals spring magically back? But for his sake she must needs pause on the threshold of attainment, and stifle that ambition which of itself precluded consideration of a calm, uneventful existence. She was young and full of courage, but the pathos of his years smote her heart; something inexplicable had awakened her fears for ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... his net of words the fleeting beauty of the world, was far nearer the Spirit than was Bacon when with tremendous intellectual energy he devised his philosophy: there was a much longer evolution behind the ease and effortless attainment of the one, than behind the other's titanic brain-effort. Yet, so far as the putting forth of brain energies is concerned, there is no question: Bacon was ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... me unmingled satisfaction thus to announce the peaceful condition of things in Kansas, especially considering the means to which it was necessary to have recourse for the attainment of the end, namely, the employment of a part of the military force of the United States. The withdrawal of that force from its proper duty of defending the country against foreign foes or the savages of the frontier to employ ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce

... mysteries of God himself are revealed to our progressive souls, then how contemptibly insignificant will appear the learning of the wisest of earth's sages! how infinitesimal the wisdom of Solomon himself! For to such knowledge we must and shall attain; knowledge wisely barred from our attainment in this earthly existence, lest in our presumption we should rebel against God, and, like Lucifer of old, endeavor to make ourselves equal to Him who is the Author of our spiritual being. Yet in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... candidly,—you are to attempt the correction of what is erroneous, by putting forth your own views in as simple a way as possible: not so as to induce the child to give up its own opinions and adopt yours, but in such a way as to direct it to the attainment of truth; to induce a comparison between its thoughts and yours, and thus to ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted thereto, the very things whose attainment was the object of ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... unconnected with that of any other. Hence has arisen our present rigid division of phenomena, into the worlds of the inorganic, vegetal, and sentient. But this attitude of mind is philosophical, may be denied. We must remember that all enquiries have as their goal the attainment of knowledge in its entirety. The partition walls between the cells in the great laboratory are only erected for a time to aid this search. Only at that point where all lines of investigation meet, can the ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... in the least knowing what it is all about. The one fixed habit which the boy carries away with him from the school to the factory is the feeling that his work is merely provisional. In school the next grade was continually held before him as an object of attainment, and it resulted in the conviction that the sole object of present effort is to get ready for something else. This tentative attitude takes the last bit of social stimulus out of his factory work; he pursues it merely as a necessity, ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... gradual; for it is not to be hoped, that the whole bulk of the people will at once be divested of their habits; and, therefore, it will be rational to endeavour, not wholly to debar them from any thing in which, however absurdly, they place their happiness, but to make the attainment of it more and more difficult, that they may insensibly remit their ardour, and cease from ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson

... he is a king who has the knowledge of a king. But how the king, one or more, is to obtain the required power, is hardly at all considered by him. He presents the idea of a perfect government, but except the regulation for mixing different tempers in marriage, he never makes any provision for the attainment of it. Aristotle, casting aside ideals, would place the government in a middle class of citizens, sufficiently numerous for stability, without admitting the populace; and such appears to have been the constitution which actually prevailed for a short time at Athens—the rule ...
— Statesman • Plato

... there are so many others which promise more, and will never fulfil their promise; I know it. We painters know it when we dare to think clearly. It is better not to think too clearly—better to go on and pretend to expect attainment.... Stephanie, sometimes I wish I were in an honest business—selling, buying—and could close up shop and ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... opinions of people generally, had told against him always. For once, Mrs Page had been too charitable. He was not in a hopeful state, at least, in her sense of the term, and it might be doubted, whether frequent intercourse with the minister, would be likely to encourage the young man to the attainment of Mrs Page's standard of excellence. But to the study he often came, and he was never ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... there could be composed music which would compare with the simplest modern hymn-tune or part-song. And this was long after each of the other arts—architecture, sculpture, painting and literature—had reached points of attainment which, in many respects, have never since ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding



Words linked to "Attainment" :   arrival, workmanship, mastership, reaching, horsemanship, ability, rise to power, seamanship, acquirement, attain, salesmanship, literacy, record, numeracy, marksmanship, soldiership, skill, credit, success, oarsmanship, craftsmanship



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