"Compactness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spots, which still retain the compactness imparted by the steam-roller, are the favourite veins; and the work of making the pellet is slow and painful. It is scraped up atom by atom; and, by means of saliva, turned into mortar then and there. When it is all well kneaded and there is enough to make a load, the ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... ultra of political management. After this the old cries of peace, retrenchment, and reform sound beggarly indeed. Never was there such a succinct and complete compendium of political belief. Nobody can outbid the man who offers "all you want." For compactness and simplicity and general satisfactoriness this phase of Home Rule diplomacy takes the cake. Failure to fulfil the promise is of course to be charged to the brutal Saxon. Meanwhile the promise costs nothing, and like sheep's-head broth is ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... initials, which, with their flourishes, often spanned the full height of the page, or broad bands of floriated tracery that occupied its entire width, were the only indications of changes of chapter or subject. In printer's phrase the composition was "close-up and solid" to the extreme degree of compactness. The uncommonly free use of red ink for the smaller initials was not altogether a matter of taste; if the page had been written entirely in black ink it would have been unreadable through its blackness. This nicety in writing consumed much time, but the mediaeval copyist was seldom governed ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... through the surface of the pipe that is to be tested. If the pipe is steel, under a magnifying glass the texture of the filed surface will appear to be smooth and have small irregular-shaped grains, and there will also be an appearance of compactness. If the pipe is iron, the texture will have the appearance of being ragged and will show streaks of slag or black. When screw pipe is cut there is always left a large burr on the inside of the pipe. This burr greatly reduces the bore of the ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... trait in Browning—to make an end of a dangerously categorical attempt to characterize him—follows logically from this second; its extreme compactness and concentration. Browning sometimes dwells long—even dallies—over an idea, as does Shakespeare; turns it, shows its every facet; and even then it is noticeable, as with the greater master, that every individual phrase with which he does so is practically exhaustive of the suggestiveness of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... books." The essays contain the quintessence of Bacon's practical wisdom, his wide knowledge of the world of {92} men. The truth and depth of his sayings, and the extent of ground which they cover, as well as the weighty compactness of his style, have given many of them the currency of proverbs. "Revenge is a kind of wild justice." "He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune." "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." Bacon's reason was illuminated by a powerful ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... edition is "a marvel of beauty, cheapness, and compactness.... For the busy man, above all for the working student, this is the best of ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... where they had been felled, with the bark still clinging to them, and without having undergone other transformation than being cut to a certain length, and notched at either end, so as to sink into each other, when crossed at right angles, until their bodies met, thereby forming a structure of compactness, strength and solidity. Some ten or twelve feet from the ground, the two upper end logs of the cabin projected a foot or eighteen inches beyond the lower, and supported what were called butting poles—poles which crossed ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... microscope of criticism. Yet these two sonnets of Wordsworth may be fitly read in this place, not because they are quite without faults, or because they are the very best examples of their kind of style; but because they are luminous examples; the compactness of the sonnet and the gravity of the sentiment, hedging in the thoughts, restraining the fancy, and helping to maintain a ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... and followed out in detail in the opening of 'Homer and the Homeridae;' but this is evidently the note from which that grew, and is here given alike on account of its compactness ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... could account for and describe the genesis of the social union, as Plato and Aristotle had in different ways been able to do many centuries before; and they could prescribe some of the conditions of its being maintained in vigour and compactness. Some of them could even see in a vague way the interdependence of peoples and the community of the real interests of different nations, each nation, as De la Riviere expressed it, being only a province of the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... do without the least qualms of conscience, in virtue of her firm belief in the amorality of political conduct. Her members at home and abroad, whose number is not fewer than a hundred and twenty millions, form a political community of whose compactness, social sense and single-mindedness the annals of the human race offer no other example. All are fired by the same zeal, all obey the same lead, all work for the same object. She sent and is still sending ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... acknowledging the authority of the Pope. This Roman influence was, in the nature of things, superior to the local; it expressed the sovereign will of one man over all the nations of the continent conjointly, and gathered overwhelming power from its compactness and unity. The local influence was necessarily of a feeble nature, since it was commonly weakened by the rivalries of conterminous states and the dissensions dexterously provoked by its competitor. On not a single occasion could the various European states form a coalition against their common ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... were of heavy physique, but as they sat facing each other an observer would have remarked that Elton's visage possessed a clean-cut compactness of expression despite its rotund contour. His closely trimmed whiskers, his small, clear, penetrating eyes, and the effect of neatness conveyed by his personal appearance were so many external indications of his mental lucidity ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... involved personal presence at the point where intercourse occurs. The possibility, therefore, of going and coming and doing that day's work has hitherto fixed the extreme limits to which a city could grow, and has exacted a compactness which has always been very undesirable and which is now for the first time in the world's history ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... useful information in a compact and intelligent form. They are evidently the productions of competent writers, well acquainted with the present state of geographical science. The Maps are beautifully distinct. Fulness, compactness, and clearness—the great requisites of a Cyclopaedia—are here combined in a high degree."—The ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... forth in the air to assist the entrance into the conquered city. The classical poets are turned to great and frequent account throughout the poem; and yet the work has a strong air of originality, partly owing to the subject, partly to the abundance of love-scenes, and to a certain compactness in the treatment of the main story, notwithstanding the luxuriance of the episodes. The Jerusalem Delivered is stately, well-ordered, full of action and character, sometimes sublime, always elegant, and very interesting-more so, I think, as a whole, and in a popular ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... supporting Government at any rate. All the Irish members do the same, and this great body, that everyone expected would display hostility to the Bill, have formed themselves into a phalanx, and will carry it through any difficulties by their compactness and the regularity ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... a design, describes the valuable property that it can all be apprehended at once in one's head. This generally means the thing created from the design can be used with greater facility and fewer errors than an equivalent tool that is not compact. Compactness does not imply triviality or lack of power; for example, C is compact and FORTRAN is not, but C is more powerful than FORTRAN. Designs become non-compact through accreting {feature}s and {cruft} that don't merge cleanly into the overall design scheme (thus, some fans ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... the remains of two rodents (Ctenomys Bonariensis and Kerodon antiquus) and the jaw of a Canis: when on the river I could clearly distinguish in this fine line of cliffs, "horizontal lines of variation both in tint and compactness." (I quote these words from my note-book, as written down on the spot, on account of the general absence of stratification in the Pampean formation having been insisted on by M. d'Orbigny as a proof of the diluvial origin of this great deposit.) ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... the laws of art are only echoes of the laws of nature, it is possible in this direction also to arrive at real knowledge, or, if not so far as that, at some kind of classification that may help us toward that excellent property—compactness ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... unfit for pasture, growing to a uniform height of about a foot. The patches of wood look like copses in the middle of green meadows; they are called by the natives "ilhas de mato," or islands of jungle; the name being, no doubt, suggested by their compactness of outline, neatly demarcated in insular form from the smooth carpet of grass, around them. They are composed of a great variety of trees loaded with succulent parasites, and lashed together by woody climbers like the forest in other parts. A narrow belt ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... little moisture, air, and fire, lasts for an unlimited period when buried in underground structures. It follows that when exposed to moisture, as its texture is not loose and porous, it cannot take in liquid on account of its compactness, but, withdrawing from the moisture, it resists it and warps, thus making cracks in the structures in which ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... them we can judge how great a change had come over the drama. Nowhere is there any incident approaching the nature of 'The Sacrifice of Isaac', nowhere is there any character worthy to stand beside the Mary of the Miracle Play. Those are the losses. On the other hand, we perceive a new compactness—still loose, but much in advance of what existed before—whereby the central figure is always before us, urged along from one act and one set of surroundings to another, towards a goal which is never lost sight of. Also there is the invention which provides for these two plays ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... up your Bible knowledge in this manner, bit by bit, is what you would not anticipate. The whole acquires a solidity and compactness not to be attained by any other method. You will find at the end of many days, not only that the structure has attained to symmetry and beauty,—but that the disposition of its several parts, in some respects, has become intelligible also: while, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... be on hand for the burning and sacking. She had arrived in Belgium wearing a London tailor's idea of what constituted a suitable costume for a war correspondent—perhaps I should say war correspondentess. Her luggage was a model of compactness: it consisted of a sleeping-bag, a notebook, half a dozen pencils—and a powder-puff. She explained that she brought the sleeping-bag because she understood that war correspondents always slept in the field. As most of the fields in that part of Flanders were just then under ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... years, reader, since you and I were last here. Then, the farm buildings and fences were brand-new. Now, although of course not old, they bear decided traces of exposure to the weather. But these marks only give compactness of look and unity of tone to everything, improving the ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... day, almost every hour, had they been doing something to improve her,—either by giving the craft greater strength and compactness, or in some other way rendering her more worthy both of the ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... skirmishers ran back, but as we forced our way in a crowded mass (all line lost) through the thickets, we came suddenly upon the infantry regiment to which these skirmishers belonged. Fortunately for us, this regiment, in scrambling through the brush, had lost the compactness of its formation. We came close upon them before the Federals fired—they delivered one stunning volley, the blaze almost reaching our faces, and the roar rang in our ears like thunder. The next moment we rode right through them—some of the men ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins,[300-12] squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... and honour than old sedate Bannerman; for his lads were lighter in the heel, glegger in the eye, and brisker in the manoeuvres of war: moreover, they were all far more similar in their garb and appearance, which gave them a seeming compactness that the countrymen had nothing like. But when the sham contest began, it was not long till Bannerman's disciples showed the proofs of their master's better skill to such a mark, that Hepburn grew hot, and so ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... offices face the north, so the front of the house—the portion used for domestic purposes—has a southern aspect, which experience has proved to be healthy. But at the same time, despite its compactness and general convenience, there are many defects in the building—defects chiefly of a sanitary character. It is very doubtful if there are any drains at all. Even though the soil be naturally dry, the ground floor is almost always cold and damp. The stone ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... however, as before intimated, that the practical operation did not always correspond with the theory of their respective functions in these rude times; and that the powers of the executive, being susceptible of greater compactness and energy in their movements, than could possibly belong to those of more complex bodies, were sufficiently strong in the hands of a resolute prince, to break down the comparatively feeble barriers of the law. Neither were the relative privileges, assigned ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... twenty-two, and twenty feet high, for $20. The building can be done at any season, and can be finished with great speed, and there are said to be numerous other advantages connected with the use of the paper. It differs from ordinary paper in consistency, compactness and solidity. In the manufacture it is subjected to a pressure of hundreds of tuns, which squeezes out the liquid matter, leaving a substance of the right thickness. It is said to be proof against damp and gnawing of vermin, and it being an excellent non-conductor of heat, must make a warm ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... precipice; and there are natural clefts about that part where the rock closes, by which the external light is admitted, and in the daytime the spot is fully illuminated. The air within is free from all moisture caused by dropping, and is quite pure, owing to the compactness of the rock, which diverts all the wet and ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... ancients men of few words were admired. So the Amphictyones did not write extracts from the Iliad or Odyssey, or the Paeans of Pindar, in the temple of Pythian Apollo at Delphi, but "Know thyself," "Not too much of anything,"[595] and "Be a surety, trouble is near;"[596] so much did they admire compactness and simplicity of speech, combining brevity with shrewdness of mind. And is not the god himself short and concise in his oracles? Is he not called Loxias,[597] because he prefers ambiguity to longwindedness? ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... the only remnants of the use of this highly developed Arabian speech. It represents the southern branch of the Semitic language, and is closely related to the Hebrew and the Aramaic. The unity and compactness of the language are very much in evidence. Coming little in contact with other languages, it remained somewhat exclusive, and retained ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... to the adventure, was caught by the redness and whiteness, the brandnewness and compactness of the little houses; she was seduced beyond prudence ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... there such a difference in value? Simply arrangement and compactness. Can we so enormously enhance the value of a bushel of charcoal by arrangement and compression? Not very satisfactorily as yet. We can apply almost limitless pressure, but that does not make diamonds. Every particle must go to its place by some ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... if you had to choose your team whom would you put in? You have not really a large choice. What are the points by which you judge them? You want strength, novelty, compactness, intensity of interest, a single vivid impression left upon the mind. Poe is the master of all. I may remark by the way that it is the sight of his green cover, the next in order upon my favourite ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of that. If everybody is to have independent thought, would there not be a fearful instability and want of compactness? Another thing, too—conformity often saves so much time ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... induration, compactness, impenetrability, solidity, firmness, adamant. Associated ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... gentleman I believe Madame would have found favour in my eyes, she was so handy, neat, thorough in all she did: some people's movements provoke the soul by their loose awkwardness, hers—satisfied by their trim compactness. I stood, in short, fascinated; but it was necessary to make an effort to break this spell a retreat must be beaten. The searcher might have turned and caught me; there would have been nothing for it then but a scene, and she and I would ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Roman army fought steadily and stubbornly, frequently repelling the masses of assailants, but gradually losing the compactness of their array and becoming weaker and weaker beneath the incessant shower of darts and the reiterated assaults of the vigorous and unencumbered Germans. At last, in a series of desperate attacks, the column was pierced through and through, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... it, whereas in the other case it is related only to Thackeray, and Thackeray is in the void. When Esmond ruminates and reflects, his manner is the expression of a human being there present, to whom it can be referred; when Thackeray does the same, there is no such compactness, and the manner trails away where we cannot follow it. Dramatically it seems clear that the method of Esmond has the advantage over the ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... and compactness. The whole works— poems, and sonnets—are contained in one small volume: yet the page is perfectly clear and readable... For the busy man, above all for the working Student, the Globe Edition is the best of ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... of the writers who have attempted this kind of common-life novel writing) of a string of unconnected events which have little or no bearing on one main plot, and are introduced evidently for the sole purpose of bringing in characters and conversations; but have all that compactness of plan and unity of action which is generally produced by a sacrifice of probability: yet they have little or nothing that is not probable; the story proceeds without the aid of extraordinary accidents; the events which take place are the necessary or natural consequences of what has preceded; ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... that elegant finished appearance, nor is it so beautifully studded with lichens, as in a more rural district: and the wren is obliged to construct its house with straws and dry grasses, which do not give it that rotundity and compactness so remarkable in the edifices of the little architect. Again, the regular nest of the house-martin is hemispheric; but where a rafter, or a joist, or a cornice may happen to stand in the way, the nest is so contrived as to conform ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... compactness of the modern Parsi creed accounts for the tenacity with which the exiles of Western India cling to it. A Parsi is not troubled with many theological problems or difficulties. Though he professes a general belief in the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... the compactness and delicacy of its texture, and for the regularity and smoothness of its surface, but still more for its colour. Whether merely warm grey, as when dry, or bright purple, as when wet, the colour of ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... the lateral movement of the piston is communicated by connecting-rods to the rotatory movement of the crank-shaft. Mr. Nasmyth says of it, that "on account of its great simplicity and GET-AT-ABILITY of parts, its compactness and self-contained steadiness, this engine has been the parent of a vast progeny, all more or less marked by the distinguishing features of the original design, which is still in as high favour as ever." Mr. Maudslay also directed his attention in like manner ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... for more than one musician, it has been suggested to negotiate with the talented artist who plays the drum with his knee, the cymbals with his elbow, the triangle with his shoulder, the bells with this head, and the Pan's pipes with his mouth—thus uniting the powers of a full orchestra with the compactness of an individual. An immense number of Margate slippers and donkeys have been imported within the last few days, and there is every probability of this pretty little peninsula becoming a formidable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... devoted to explaining what the writer means by civilization, does not raise so vivid a conception of it as the single expression, that Civilization is a different thing from Cultivation; the compactness of that brief designation for the contrasted quality being an equivalent for a long discussion. So, if we would impress forcibly upon the understanding and memory the distinction between the two different conceptions of a representative government, we can not more effectually do so than by ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... use; yet, not only would the ordinary quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope's durability or strength, however much it may give it compactness and gloss. Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though not so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic; and I will add (since there is an aesthetics in all things), ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... habit, seemed to have combined to form Nicuesa as a complete rival of Ojeda. Like him he was small of stature, but remarkable for symmetry and compactness of form, and for bodily strength and activity; like him he was master at all kinds of weapons, and skilled, not merely in feats of agility, but in those graceful and chivalrous exercises, which the Spanish cavaliers of those days had inherited from the Moors; ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the brink of the cataract, and then desperately breaking and perishing to fall, the white disembodied ghosts of rapids, down to the bottom of the vast and deep ravine through which the river rushed away. Now the waters seemed to mass themselves a hundred feet high in a wall of snowy compactness, now to disperse into their multitudinous particles and hang like some vaporous cloud from the cliff. Every moment renewed the vision of beauty in some rare and fantastic shape; and its loveliness isolated ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... certain kinds of translation; and those the kinds in which the labourers are few, though the harvest is so large. In about seventy pages, close pages it is true, Mr. Symonds presents us with a sketch of Florentine history, the like of which, for compactness and minuteness of information, one knows not where to seek. Mr. Symonds is a striking example of the modern school of "culture"—using that word in its more special sense. Unwearied in the pursuit of detail, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... examination shows them to contain minute cells, sufficiently large to admit water, which, by the action of frost, subjects the rock to rapid disintegration. Portions of the rock may, nevertheless, be selected partially free from this difficulty, and which are possessed of sufficient compactness to render them of value as a coarse building stone; horn-stone, striped jasper (imperfect); hog-toothed spar, calcareous spar, and fluor spar, are imbedded in the rock, although the latter is of ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... seen that one of the chief characteristics of French classicism was compactness. The tragedies of Racine are as closely knit as some lithe naked runner without an ounce of redundant flesh; the Fables of La Fontaine are airy miracles of compression. In prose the same tendency is manifest, but to an even more marked degree. La Rochefoucauld ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... area of the British Islands, and half as much again as that of Prussia, or of peninsular Italy. It equals three fourths of France, or three fifths of Germany. It has, moreover, the great advantage of compactness, forming a single solid mass, with no straggling or outlying portions; and it is strongly defended on almost every side by natural barriers offering great difficulties to ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... Chapel is entirely by the hand of the master, a Madonna suckling the child Jesus, a strong boy straddling across her knee and turning right round to reach the breast. Although unfinished, it is one of Michael Angelo's noblest works; it is a notable example of compactness of design, and of how he left the shape of the block of marble evident in his ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... ambition, energy, industry, perseverance, decision, vigilance, self-control, arrogance, love of power, firmness, and hardihood. These faculties express concentration of purpose and their functional equivalents are power of elaboration, constructiveness, condensation, firmness of fiber, compactness of frame, and endurance of organization. The pulse is full, firm, and regular, the muscles are strong and well marked, the hair and skin dark, the temporal region is not broadly developed, the face is angular, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... massive solidity of the place takes hold of one first; but, strangely enough, the strongest impression is that of an all-pervading air of youthfulness. Doubtless the oldest homestead on the river, and one of the oldest in the country, it utterly refuses to look its age. Perhaps the solid, square compactness of the buildings has much to do with this. They appear as though built to defy time. Even the shadow of the venerable trees and the ancient ivy's telltale embrace seem powerless to break the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... in the now half-finished picture will be blended and melted into one harmonious whole,—when all the now disjointed stones in the temple will be seen to fit into their appointed place, giving unity, and compactness, and symmetry, to all ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... He says that to be naked is better than any purple robe, and to sleep on the bare ground is the softest bed; and he gives as a proof of each thing that he affirms his own courage, his tranquillity, his freedom, and the healthy appearance and compactness of his body. There is no enemy near, he says; all is peace. How so, Diogenes? "See," he replies, "if I am struck, if I have been wounded, if I have fled from any man." This is what a scout ought to be. But you come to us and tell us one thing ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... were uniform in size, shape and construction, there was nothing to prevent the occupant from subsequently enlarging and improving his house. For the present, however, the interests of all were best served by speed and compactness. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... compactness for shedding water. The oil spread over them during the preening is useful as ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... their highly inflected forms, lend themselves to an elaborately periodic structure that would be boring in English. English allows, even demands, a looseness that would be insipid in Chinese. And Chinese, with its unmodified words and rigid sequences, has a compactness of phrase, a terse parallelism, and a silent suggestiveness that would be too tart, too mathematical, for the English genius. While we cannot assimilate the luxurious periods of Latin nor the pointilliste style of the Chinese classics, we can enter sympathetically into the ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... this pueblo is quite different from that of the present villages, and approaches the older types in symmetry and compactness. There is a notable absence of the arrangement of rooms into long parallel rows. This typical Tusayan feature is only slightly approximated in some subordinate rows within the court. The plan suggests ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... that it fills the interior of the building like a floor and serves to furnish the family with a dry sitting or lying down place when, as often happens, the whole region is under water. The thatching of the roof is quite a work of art: inside, the regularity and compactness of the laying of the leaves display much skill and taste on the part of the builder; outside—with the outer layers there seems to have been less care taken than with those within—the mass of leaves of ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... the consecration by the non-juring Bishops of the Church of Scotland of the Rev. SAMUEL SEABURY as the first Bishop of Connecticut and of the Episcopal Church in the United States. We owe to this consecration some of the best features of our Book of Common Prayer. We owe to it the compactness and unity of our great American Communion, and surely it was well to have what we used on Sunday last—a form of thanksgiving for this our hundredth anniversary of the election of Bishop Seabury that God did "so replenish him with the truth of His doctrine and endue him with innocency of life that ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... can represent all that is evident and all that is conjectural—the works of Omnipotence, and the fabrications of man—we need to seek no further for the necessary materials of thought. The difficulty that has perplexed many persons respecting the compactness and unity of intelligence that a sentence contains, principally arises from their ignorance of the precise meaning of individual words. Etymologists would employ them in their original sense, and consider themselves justified by referring to their primitive import: ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... clearly distinguished from the outward universe (ta polla) on the one hand, and from the "non-ens" on the other. It was his disciple, Parmenides, who imagined the logical necessity of identifying plurality with the "non-ens" and thus denying all immediate cognition of the phenomenal world. The compactness and logical coherence of the system of Parmenides seems to have had a peculiar charm for the Grecian mind, and to have diverted the eyes of antiquity from the views of the more earnest and devout Xenophanes, whose opinions were too often confounded with those of his successors ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... selfish host, into the laborious slaves and mechanic implements of the self-interested. Thus, without public spirit, nay, by the predominance of the opposite quality, the latter are the public benefactors: and, giving steadfastness and compactness to the whole, lay in the ground of the canvass, on which minds of finer texture may impress beauty ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... upon several conditions. The essential idea is to divide the opposing force by penetrating through an interval found, or made, in it, and then to concentrate upon that one of the fractions which can be least easily helped by the other. In a column of ships this will usually be the rear. The compactness of the order attacked, the number of the ships cut off, the length of time during which they can be isolated and outnumbered, will all affect the results. A very great factor in the issue will be the moral effect, the confusion introduced into a line thus broken. Ships ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... pulverized and open soil, than by a compact and close one. Water is held in the soil between the minute particles of earth. If these particles be pressed together compactly, there is no space left between them for water. The same is true of soil naturally compact. This compactness exists more or less in most subsoils, certainly in all through which water does not readily pass. Hence, all these subsoils are rendered more permeable to water by being broken up and divided; and more retentive by having the particles of which they are composed ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... velocity, high pressure, good valve motion, large fire-box, numerous and short flues, and steam blast. The characteristic features are: great strength of boiler, fully adequate to bear with safety 200. lbs. pressure per sq. in., great compactness and simplicity, large and adjustable wearing surfaces, and the entire absence of all finish, ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... rolled on to the Capital, passing many fine villas, the product of French architecture. Everywhere one is impressed with the national peculiarities—the houses, the streets, modes of conveyance and transportation. Compactness, neatness, order and precision pervades their every undertaking; but for celerity and despatch of business they were painful to encounter or behold, for it ill accords with the American mode. A ride of four hours and ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Ewart, who is now a monumental artist at Woking, after many vicissitudes. Dear chap, how he did stick out of his clothes to be sure! He was a longlimbed lout, ridiculously tall beside my more youth full compactness, and, except that there was no black moustache under his nose blob, he had the same round knobby face as he has to-day, the same bright and active hazel brown eyes, the stare, the meditative moment, the insinuating reply. Surely no boy ever ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... rapid precisely controlled movements implied an improved nervous system, for the brain was a movement-controlling organ for ages before it did much in the way of thinking. The transition to terra firma also involved a greater compactness of body, so that there should not be too great friction on the surface. An animal like the jellyfish is unthinkable on land, and the elongated bodies of some land animals like centipedes and snakes are specially adapted so that they do not "sprawl." They are exceptions that ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... difficult to realize the difficulties which then beset British commanders warring in the Mediterranean against an enemy who could send news to Paris in three days. Now the telegraph has annihilated space; but then, as in the campaigns of Francis I against Charles V, the compactness of France and her central position told enormously in her favour. The defence of Toulon was practicable, provided that adequate reinforcements arrived in time. As will soon appear, Pitt urged the despatch of strong reinforcements from Ireland; and, but for delays due to the want of transports, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... were opaque, but there were some which were transparent and colored. The crystals are a kind of carbon containing some impurities; they are extremely hard, and withstand for a long time even an oxygen blast. When the blast is directed against them they at first form a cake of some compactness, probably in consequence of the fusion of impurities they contain. The mass withstands for a very long time the blast without further fusion; but a slow carrying off, or burning, occurs, and, finally, a small quantity of a glass-like residue is left, ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... Another notable sermon is on "The Sovereignty of Law," an admirable disquisition on the supremacy of law in the intellectual life, the physical existence, the domain of morals and in every department of human activity. Dr. Peabody's style is forcible and virile, and his compactness of statement, enables him to put "infinite riches in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... soils, packing the soil tightly in one tube and leaving it loose in another. The water will be found to penetrate the loose soil more rapidly than the packed soil. We see then that the power of the soil to take in rainfall depends on its texture or the size and compactness of the particles. ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... considerations seemed vague, far-fetched, little better than affectations. The clear thing to be done was to get that bird. This done, I could consider the rest. To admit any other thought militated in some way against the singleness and compactness of my being. Wise or unwise, what had I to do with far-off matters of that sort? My business was to succeed in a certain task, not to be sage and so forth. I actually felt a kind of shame to be debating any other than the all-important ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... house being designed and built with a shiplike compactness, there was but one room on the ground floor besides the kitchen and its offices. It was a plain, comfortable place, wainscoted about, with shelves and lockers in the whimsical copy of a vessel's cabin. And it contained ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... thus with men's wits; Or at least with their knowledge. A man's capability Of imparting to others a truth with facility Is proportion'd forever with painful exactness To the portable nature, the vulgar compactness, The minuteness in size, or the lightness in weight, Of the truth he imparts. So small coins circulate More freely than large ones. A beggar asks alms, And we fling him a sixpence, nor feel any qualms; But if ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... was called in 1593 he sat as member for the county of Middlesex, and soon attained eminence as a debater. It is easy to perceive from the scanty remains of his oratory that the same compactness of expression and richness of fancy which appear in his writings characterised his speeches; and that his extensive acquaintance with literature and history enabled him to entertain his audience with ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... molten lava of both lakes had disappeared by some subterranean passage from the bottom of Halemaumau. There was no material change in the sunken portion of the crater except a continual falling in of rocks and debris from its banks as the contraction from its former intense heat loosened their compactness and sent them hurling some 200 or 300 feet below, giving forth at times a boom as of distant thunder, followed by clouds of cinders and ashes shooting up into the air 100 to 300 feet, proportionate, doubtless, to the size of the ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... of compactness. This is the result of scriptura continua, which knows no separation of words and no punctuation. See the facsimiles ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... contrary, those who met him when maddened with liquor and surrounded by a gang of armed roughs, would pronounce him a fiend incarnate." And this: "From Fort Kearney, west, he was feared a great deal more than the almighty." For compactness, simplicity and vigor of expression, I will "back" that sentence against anything in literature. Mr. Dimsdale's narrative is as follows. In all places where ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... nations. From the Gauls it goes on to the reign of the Franks, Charlemagne, the Carlovingian race, the history of Normandy, and the history of France from the first crusade through its lines of monarchies and its revolutions, to 1848. The style is clear and forcible, and from the compactness of the work, forming, as it does, a complete chain of events in a most important part of the history of Europe, it will be found interesting and valuable for general readers, or as a text-book in our schools. It is comprised in 444 pages, 12mo., and contains a chronological index ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... the material world presents in its history an illustration of the great principle and theory of progress. It is quite certain that our planet was once a very different thing from what it is now; it differed in form, in substance, in compactness, in everything from its present condition. We do not know that it was once wholly aeriform, mere gasses in combination, too crude to admit of solidarity; but reasoning back from established facts, the conclusion is almost irresistible, ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond |
