"Desirableness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consequence of his own services, rather than those of his ancestors; he then again divides that wish, considering it as most desirable that the Roman people should owe him services without his being in want of them, and next in desirableness that the services which he requires should be performed as services due to him. By this latter sentiment he returns to the point from which he set out—namely, his wish to have done good services (beneficia) to the ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... of Glaucon at the 'city of pigs,' the ludicrous description of the ministers of luxury in the more refined State, and the afterthought of the necessity of doctors, the illustration of the nature of the guardian taken from the dog, the desirableness of offering some almost unprocurable victim when impure mysteries are to be celebrated, the behaviour of Zeus to his father and of Hephaestus to his mother, are touches of humour which have also a serious meaning. In speaking of education Plato rather startles us by affirming that a child ...
— The Republic • Plato
... said Eunice, with her bright smile. "Lo' you,—'tis after this fashion. The pudding I have made a man shall eat, and thereby be kept alive. This man shall drop a word to another, which one passing by shall o'erhear,—on the goodness and desirableness of learning, I will say. Well, this last shall turn it o'er in his mind, and shall determine to send his lad to school, and have him well learned. Time being gone, this lad shall write a book, or shall preach a sermon, whereby, through the working of God's Spirit, many men's hearts shall be touched, ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... does not pretend to be a convincing, but merely an illustrative collection of evidence. It may, or may not, suggest to some readers the desirableness of further inquiry; the author certainly does not hope to do ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... "Let patience have her perfect work, &c.," must be still my motto concerning this service. Our position in Wilson Street, where the Orphan-Houses are now, remains as it was; I also see more and more the desirableness of commencing the building soon, both on account of the Orphans, and their teachers and overseers; particularly also, because so very many applications are made for the admission of very destitute Orphans, and I am unable at present, to receive all who are applied for; ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... large and attractive honey and apiarian exhibits at all fairs, to educate the community to the desirableness of ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... interested in the education of girls, much more disagreeable than that formulated by Dr. Clarke. We firmly believe, however, that truth never can be disagreeable when it is really understood in all its bearings and all its consequences, and conversely, that any proposition framed with a view to supposed desirableness rather than veracity, is almost certain to lead in the end to consequences quite undesirable. We will not, therefore, try to decide whether it may be more agreeable to believe that the health of adolescent girls requires general and permanent supervision, or ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... which the school generally entertained for Theodore were brought to their height, when the edict was promulgated that peanuts should be no longer brought within bounds. Being a forbidden fruit, they at once acquired a value and desirableness even beyond that which they had possessed before. By some unexplained process of reasoning, the authorities had arrived at the conclusion that they were the cause of the late disturbance; and so they were tabooed, much to the displeasure of the boys, who, beside the deprivation to ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... whenever anything is done for women in the way of education, it is called "an experiment,"—something that is to be long considered, stoutly opposed, grudgingly yielded, and dubiously watched,— while, if the same thing is done for men, its desirableness is assumed as a matter of course, and the thing is done? Thus, when Harvard College was founded, it was not regarded as an experiment, but as an institution. The "General Court," in 1636, "agreed to give 400 l. towards a schoale or ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... necessity, or at all events the expediency, of conciliating those intermediate beings who executed the will of the Supreme Being, and might haply have much left at their own will and discretion to give or to withhold; and therefore the desirableness of securing their good offices by ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... formality in duties, is a ready mean to usher in this evil. For when the soul turns carnal or formal in the discharge of duties, duties have not that spiritual lustre which they had, and the soul becometh the sooner wearied of them, as seeing no such desirableness in them, nor advantage ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... much of the thought and discussion touching matters of education has, since the year 1858, become apparent, and that to the most casual participant or observer, and in the precise direction in which the thought above referred to points. The essential issue itself—the practicability and desirableness of casting our studies into the form of courses of re-discovery is somewhat distantly and delicately approached, incorporated into speeches by an allusion or in the way of apercu, or thrown out as a suggestion of a partial or auxiliary method with the younger learners, all which is ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... failure of the Bounty expedition, Sir Joseph Banks pressed upon the Government the desirableness of transplanting breadfruit trees to the West Indies. He also proved a staunch friend to Bligh. The result was that the Admiralty resolved to equip a second enterprise for the same purpose, and to entrust the command of it to the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... to suggest the desirableness of revising a system at once so simple, so logical, and apparently so well bottomed on facts. But there can never be any real harm in studying masses of evidence from fresh points of view. At worst, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... was in trouble, out of which she saw no exit; and her small power of helping them was diminishing day by day as Mrs. Hamley sank more and more under the influence of opiates and stupefying illness. Her father had spoken to her only this very day of the desirableness of her returning home for good. Mrs. Gibson wanted her—for no particular reason, but for many small fragments of reasons. Mrs. Hamley had ceased to want her much, only occasionally appearing to remember her ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the other, half sadly (the desirableness of this had occurred to him before now); "but how are we to do that?" asked he, incredulously. "The camp ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... he cried. "You are almost as bad as that detective person. I am not bothering my brains as to Curtis's desirableness or otherwise, or comparing him with a worm like de Courtois. I want this marriage annulled. I want him arrested. I want the aid of the law to extricate my daughter from the consequences of her own folly. Surely, such ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... of sending a party inland, as he had observed signs of a turbulent spirit among the islanders. But de Langle insisted on the desirableness of obtaining fresh water where it was abundant, and "replied to me that my refusal would render me responsible for the progress of the scurvy, which began to appear with some violence." He undertook to go at the head of the party, ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... with us to pay her a visit. So I had to sit inside and make myself agreeable to Mrs. Wrightson, while Clarence had plenty of leisure for meditation outside on the box seat. The good lady said much on the desirableness of marriage for Clarence, and the comfort it would be to my mother ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reasons upon what it sees, and while it sees; which invests it with an idea. It expresses itself, not in a mere enunciation, but by an enthymeme: it is of the nature of science from the first, and in this consists its dignity. The principle of real dignity in Knowledge, its worth, its desirableness, considered irrespectively of its results, is this germ within it of a scientific or a philosophical process. This is how it comes to be an end in itself; this is why it admits of being called Liberal. Not to know the relative disposition of things is the state of slaves or children; ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... objected, that man is only bound to self-preservation so long as life is a blessing; that, when the scale of death far outweighs that of life in desirableness, it is cruelty to himself to preserve his life any longer, and a kindness to himself to destroy it; that in such a plight, accordingly, it is not unnatural for a man to put himself, not so much out of life as out of misery. To this argument it is sometimes answered that, whereas death is ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... to show the manner in which price is expressed in terms of a currency, we must assume these four quantities to be known, and the "estimate of desirableness," commonly called the Demand, to be certain. We will take the number of persons at the lowest. Let A and B be two labourers who "demand," that is to say, have resolved to labour for, two articles, a and b. Their demand for these articles (if the reader ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... much fear that we shall be seized now and then with a Protestant fervour, as long as we have neighbour Naboths whose wallowings in Papistical mire excite our horror in exact proportion to the size and desirableness of their vineyards. Yet I rejoice that some earnest Protestants have been made by this war,—I mean those who protested against it. Fewer they were than I could wish, for one might imagine America to have been colonized by a tribe of those nondescript African animals ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... do not mind saying that it has changed my view of the desirableness and value of human life. It has, in fact, made life a holiday to me. It is made on the principle that man is an upright, sensible, reasonable being, and not a groveling wretch. It does away with the necessity ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... The desirableness of education is manifest, view it in what light we may, and whether as affecting individuals or communities. We have already seen that education, and that alone, will dissipate the evils of ignorance. We now propose to discuss the equally tenable proposition that education ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... feel that the chafing of home, her mother's driving and Will's courting, were becoming intolerable. Heart and brain were strained and sore; if she could be still till she died, Diana felt it to be the utmost limit of desirableness. She knew she was not likely to die soon; brain and nerve might be strained, but they were sound and whole; the full capacity for suffering, the unimpaired energy for doing, were hers yet. And stillness was not ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... the formula, "You'll excuse me," he gave me some excellent advice as we threaded the greasy streets, and jostled the disreputable-looking population of the lower part of the town. General counsels as to my conduct, and the desirableness of turning over a new leaf for "young chaps" who had been wild and got into scrapes at home. And particular counsels which were invaluable to me, as to changing my dress, how to hide my money, what to turn my hand to with the quickest chance of bread-winning in strange places, and how ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... which it stands. 2. The miracles, with and through which the Religion was first revealed and attested, I regard as the steps, the vestibule, and the portal of the temple. 3. The sense, the inward feeling, in the soul of each believer of its exceeding desirableness—the experience, that he needs something, joined with the strong foretokening, that the redemption and the graces propounded to us in Christ are what he needs—this I hold to be the true foundation of the spiritual edifice. With the strong a priori ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... people she expected to see about her. There was a little sad expression that shadowed her face as she recognised me; but immediately afterwards she tried to give me her usual smile. All through tea-time her talk ran upon the days of her childhood and youth. Perhaps this reminded her of the desirableness of looking over all the old family letters, and destroying such as ought not to be allowed to fall into the hands of strangers; for she had often spoken of the necessity of this task, but had always shrunk from it, with a timid dread of something ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Americans compared with those of the English—"Your fluency rather exceeds that of the old world, but conversation here is not cultivated as an art." The idea of its being so considered any where was new to the company; and much discussion followed the departure of the stranger, as to the desirableness of making conversation an art. Some thought the more natural and spontaneous it was, the better; some confounded art with artifice, and hoped their countrymen would never leave their own plain, honest way of talking, to become adepts in hypocrisy and affectation. At last one, ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... habits of life characterized the majority of our rural towns. They still exist among a class respectable in numbers and position, though perhaps not as happy in perfect self-satisfaction and a conviction of the dignity and desirableness of its lot as in former days. Human nature is above all things—lazy. Every one confesses in the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us all; but practically most people do all they can to get rid of it, and ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... before Rolf shouted and rushed in armed with a switch to punish the thief. Poor Bright, by his efforts to reach the tempting mash, was unwittingly playing the game, for this was proof positive of its desirableness. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... same year somewhat alarmed me. The gig was not an important concern, being made, like the four-wheeled carriage, from designs of my husband's, by ordinary wheelwrights and blacksmiths; but though admitting its usefulness, and even desirableness, I thought we might ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... I wasn't inveigled much into the desirableness of having infants around a ranch, except the kind that feed themselves and sell for so much on the hoof when they grow up. But Luke was struck with that sort of parental foolishness that I never could understand. All the way riding from the station back to the ranch, ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... that played me the dishonourable trick; 'verree warm ice-y. Yes. The day is that hot, senor. Yes. Maybeso it is of desirableness to leave him out to ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... to two of the commonest objections urged, one by women themselves, the other by men, against the desirableness of sanitary knowledge for women, plus a caution, comprises the whole argument for the ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... state in Rome, as is at present visible in our own communion. There is among us a growing feeling, that to be a mere Establishment is unworthy of the Catholic Church; and that to be shut out from the rest of Christendom is not a subject of boasting. We seem to have embraced the idea of the desirableness of being on a good understanding with the Greek and Eastern Churches; and we are aiming at sending out bishops to distant places, where they must come in contact with foreign communions and though the extreme vagueness, indecision, and confusion, in which our theological and ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... intimate and friendly terms possible during the continuance of this campaign. They occupied the same tent, and ate at the same table. Harold evinced great military talents and much bravery in the various adventures which they met with in Brittany, and William felt more than ever the desirableness of securing his influence on his, that is, William's side, or, at least, of preventing his becoming an open rival and enemy. On their return from Brittany into Normandy, he judged that the time ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... dance after dance, and yet was secretly and thrillingly aware that she was pursuing the right tactics. She deliberately demonstrated that she was desirable to other men, as he involuntarily demonstrated his own desirableness to the women. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... with him at night—the longing to see her, to speak to her, to stand near her, to breathe the air of her. And possessed by this—full of the overpowering strength of it—was a man likely to go to a woman and say, "Give your life and desirableness to me; and incidentally support me, feed me, clothe me, keep the roof over my head, as if I were an ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of Tennyson: "When our poet descends into the arena of party polemics, in such things as Riflemen, Form! Hands all Round, . . . The Fleet, and other topical pieces dear to the Jingo soul, it is not poetry but journalism." I doubt whether the desirableness of the existence of a volunteer force and of a fleet really is within the arena of PARTY polemics. If any party thinks that we ought to have no volunteers, and that it is our duty to starve the fleet, what is that party's name? Who cries, "Down with the Fleet! Down with ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... reason that I lay some stress on the desirableness of prefacing each one of the following narratives by a brief account of the curious manner in which I became possessed of it. As to my capacity for repeating these stories correctly, I can answer for it that my memory may be trusted. I may claim it as a merit, because it is after all a mechanical ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... sharper at the end of the avenue; yet the sun is so brilliant as to make amends for the disadvantage, if it exists. Then you pay more for houses on account of the concourse of English. And what if I object a little to the English besides? If I do, the desirableness of the pure air and free walking ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... will not come to him. 1. What comeliness hast thou seen in his person? thou comest not, if thou seest no form nor comeliness in him (Isa 53:1-3). 2. Until those mentioned in the Song were convinced that there was more beauty, comeliness, and desirableness in Christ, than in ten thousand, they did not so much as ask where he was, nor incline to turn aside after him ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... believe, on this side of the Atlantic, although the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society took upon themselves the heavy responsibility of convening it. At its close, they invited an expression of the opinion of the delegates, as to the desirableness of again summoning such an assembly. The expression was generally in the affirmative; and, after discussion, a resolution was passed, leaving it to the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, after consulting with the friends of the cause in other parts of the world, to decide ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... heretofore proposed to the consideration of Congress the expediency of establishing a national university and also a military academy. The desirableness of both these institutions has so constantly increased with every new view I have taken of the subject that I can not omit the opportunity of once for all recalling your ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... that to avoid the mischiefs afore written, he thought would deserve Heaven."[137] Whatever doubt their might be, therefore, whether the original marriage with Catherine was legal, it was universally admitted that there was none about the national desirableness of the dissolution of it; and if the pope had been free to judge only by the merits of the case, it is impossible to doubt that he would have cut the knot, either by granting a dispensation to Henry to marry a second wife—his first ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... better uses than slavery, thrives best under the gentle treatment of a kind master. But the grim visage of slavery can assume no smiles which can fascinate the partially enlightened slave, into a forgetfulness of his bondage, nor of the desirableness ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... of the project. Mr Brandram wrote to Borrow:- "With regard to forming a Bible Society in Madrid, and appointing Dr Usoz Secretary, it is so out of our usual course that the Committee, for various reasons, cannot comply with your wishes—of the desirableness of forming such a Society at present, you and your friend must be the best judges. If it is to be an independent society, as I suppose must be the case," Mr Brandram continues, and the Bible Society's aid or that of its agent is sought, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... of a man fearful of some strong temptation to keep his thoughts averted from the point of danger. It was a decree, not merely that the old palace should not be rebuilt, but that no one should propose rebuilding it. The feeling of the desirableness of doing so was, too strong to permit fair discussion, and the Senate knew that to bring forward such a motion ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... existing objects. The method of salvation in Gotama's system is to vanquish and annihilate all desire for existing things. How is this to be done? By acquiring an intense perception of the miseries of existence, on the one hand, and an intense perception, on the other hand, of the contrasted desirableness of the state of emancipation, or Nirwana. Accordingly, the discourses of Gotama, and the sacred books of the Buddhists, are filled with vivid accounts of every thing disgusting and horrible connected with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Moral Duties considered apart from positive; with some Observations on the Desirableness and Necessity of a ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... first Livingstone saw the importance of the Shire Valley and Lake Nyassa as the key to Central Africa. Ever since, it has become more and more evident that his surmise was correct. To make the occupation thoroughly effective, he thought much of the desirableness of a British colony, and was prepared to expend a great part of the remainder of his private means to carry it into effect. On August 4th, he says ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... preliminary to the real business of education—insight, insight through culture, into all that the present moment holds in trust for us, as we stand so briefly in its presence. From that maxim of [143] Life as the end of life, followed, as a practical consequence, the desirableness of refining all the instruments of inward and outward intuition, of developing all their capacities, of testing and exercising one's self in them, till one's whole nature became one complex medium of reception, towards the vision—the "beatific vision," if we really cared to make it such—of our ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... of immeasurable joy, the glorious ideals of true objects of desire, the eternal unities of truth and love and beauty; all of which reveal the varied experiences of life and the riches of deeply-pondered meditation on God and Christianity, as well as knowledge of the world and the desirableness of its valued gifts. How beautiful are his thoughts on death, on adversity, on glory, on anger, on friendship, on fame, on ambition, on envy, on riches, on youth and old age, and divers other subjects of moral import, which show the elevation ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... Labienus, that to them Caesar owed his fortune, and that he alone ought not to reap the harvest. One of these was Trebonius, who had misconducted himself in Spain, and was smarting under the recollection of his own failures. Trebonius had long before sounded Antony on the desirableness of removing their chief. Antony, though he remained himself true, had unfortunately kept his friend's counsel. Trebonius had been named by Caesar for a future consulship, but a distant reward was too little for ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... the mind bucolic and georgic, for that very night it began to be reported upon the nearer farms, that the Mains of Glashruach was haunted by a brownie who did all the work for both men and maids—a circumstance productive of different opinions with regard to the desirableness of a situation there, some asserting they would not fee to it for any amount of wages, and others averring they could desire nothing better than a place where the work was ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... been disabused of their silly delusions on the Irish relations to England, although the Irish peasantry could not. The monstrous impression also upon many English and Scotch parties, that a general unity of sentiment prevailed in Ireland as to the desirableness of an independent Parliament—this, this, we say loudly, would have been dissipated, had every Irish county met by its gentry disavowing and abominating all sentiments tending towards a purpose so guilty as political disunion. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... gentleman was sitting sipping his tea, when there approached him a lady, who addressed him in three languages. His replies not being satisfactory she shot him. This is cited by the Chancery Barrister as showing the advantage of an early acquaintance with foreign languages, and the desirableness ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... as if the exhibition which had been held in France for various limited objects, and that intended to be held in Vienna, in 1851, had suggested to the English projectors the feasibility and desirableness of uniting all nations in one grand attempt to exhibit together their products, natural and industrial, in the great centre of finance, commerce, and power—the metropolis of the world. The Emperor of Austria, however, entered heartily into the views of Prince Albert, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan |
