"Diffuse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... commonest facts of the Bible history; and as his power increases and his functions multiply, we come to the miscellaneous matters spoken of above. The style, at first poetic and exalted, becomes afterwards prosaic and diffuse; it is not the inspired seer who speaks, but the statesman or the judge; and the placing of these later utterances in the mouth of God could not deceive the original hearers. The Koran, like the Vedas ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... again guard against being understood to speak of a deficiency in the warmth and vehemence merely of religious affections. Are the service and worship of God pleasant to these persons? it is not asked whether they are delightful. Do they diffuse over the soul any thing of that calm complacency, that mild and grateful composure, which bespeaks a mind in good humour with itself and all around it, and engaged in a service suited to its taste, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... but of a quite different character to any we had seen before. They darted about like a comet, coming from the side by the harmonium, or near the fireplace. They were evanescent, and apparently of diffuse luminosity, within which was a nucleus of light, not, however, visible to me. We had some ten or twelve of these, some more brilliant than others, some visible both in the looking-glass and in the glass of the book-case, and they were showing a trail of reflected light on the table, when ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... exactly opposite to the work with The Abbot—that he was dynamic within and required only the developed instrument for his utterances, and that she had been mentalised with obscuring educational matters and required a re-awakening of a naturally splendid and significant power; that I must seek to diffuse her real self through her expression. The time came that when she was absent, we all deeply missed her presence ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... was a tragedy, and the first attempt of a Saxon poet of whom my brother had been taught to entertain the highest expectations. The exploits of Zisca, the Bohemian hero, were woven into a dramatic series and connection. According to German custom, it was minute and diffuse, and dictated by an adventurous and lawless fancy. It was a chain of audacious acts and unheard-of disasters. The moated fortress and the thicket, the ambush and the battle, and the conflict of headlong passions, were portrayed in wild numbers and with terrific energy. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... emotion should realize itself in an idea or image that gives it body and systematizes it, without which it remains diffuse; and all affective states can take on this permanent form which makes a unified principle of them. The simple emotions (fear, love, joy, sorrow, etc.), the complex or derived emotions (religious, esthetic, intellectual ideas) ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... Bain, large, smiling, diffuse, reached out parenthetically from the incoming throng on her threshold to waylay Bernald with the question as he was about to move past her in the ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... publication in Holland and Zealand of the Perpetual Edict. They insisted on the immediate discontinuance of all hostile attempts to reduce Amsterdam to the jurisdiction of Orange; required the Prince to abandon his pretensions to Utrecht, and denounced the efforts making by him and his partisans to diffuse their heretical doctrines through the other provinces. They observed, in conclusion, that the general question of religion was not to be handled, because reserved for the consideration of the states-general, according to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... appear to be deserving of wider circulation. The grapes were grown in a building seldom heated artificially, and were much attacked by mildew during the last two seasons, on which prompt measures were taken to diffuse perfectly dry 'sulphur vivum' throughout the house by means of a sulphurator, until fruit and foliage were completely but lightly coated. 'Fires were lighted, and the temperature kept up to from 80 to 90 degrees, ventilation being considerably diminished, and water in any form discontinued. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... recent years it has been discovered that the relations of the different parts to one another are greatly influenced by substances known as internal secretions or 'hormones'. These substances are produced by ductless glands (the thyroid, suprarenals, &c.), from which they diffuse into the blood-stream and exercise a remarkable influence either on particular organs or systems, or on the body as a whole. Some of these secretions act specifically on the involuntary muscles of the body, others control growth, others the development ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... succession of the ages nothing has contrived to equal. The columns which border it are so gigantic[*] that their tops, formed of mysterious full-blown petals, high up above the ground on which we crawl, are completely bathed in the diffuse clearness of the sky. And enclosing this kind of nave on either side, like a terrible forest, is another mass of columns—monster columns, of an earlier style, of which the capitals close instead of opening, imitating the buds of some flower which will never blossom. ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... he has to give away is not given to those who have the first claim to it. And though I have said that the money circulates back, it is a long time before that happens. Then, Sir, a man of family and estate ought to consider himself as having the charge of a district, over which he is to diffuse civility and happiness[708].' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... taste.[196] Something must certainly be attributed to change of taste. If Tillotson were thoroughly in accord with our own age in thought and feeling, the mere difference of his style from that which pleases the modern ear would prevent his having many readers. He is reckoned diffuse and languid, greatly deficient in vigour and vivacity. How different was the tone of criticism in the last age! Dryden considered that he was indebted for his good style to the study of Tillotson's sermons.[197] Robert Nelson spoke of them as the best ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... And all a mother's cares distract my breast, Alas! what more could Fate itself impose, But thee, the last, and greatest of my woes? 80 No more my robes in waving purple flow, Nor on my hand the sparkling diamonds glow; No more my locks in ringlets curl'd diffuse The costly sweetness of Arabian dews, Nor braids of gold the varied tresses bind, That fly disorder'd with the wanton wind: For whom should Sappho use such arts as these? He's gone, whom only she desired to please! Cupid's ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... he was quite happy. I am very glad of it; for it would rejoice me to be an humble means of making all mankind so: And oh! what returns ought I not to make to the divine goodness! and how ought I to strive to diffuse the blessings I experience, to all in my knowledge!—For else, what is it for such a worm as I to be exalted! What is my single happiness, if I suffer it, niggard-like, to extend no farther than to myself?—But then, indeed, do God Almighty's creatures ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... Leighton, and Burne-Jones. He read poetry widely, and strongly advocated the teaching of poetry in English schools. As to poetry, his own preferences are interesting. Wordsworth he considered too discursive; Shelley was too diffuse; Keats, he liked for pure beauty, Browning for strength, and Tennyson for his understanding of modern science; but most frequently of all he read ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Horatia was diffuse in the narration; but, after the first, Lucy did not speak. She began by arming herself against her brother's derision, but presently felt perplexed by detecting on his countenance something unwontedly grave and preoccupied. She was sure that his attention was far away from Rashe's long ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spectacles. His early tendency to obesity having increased, Lord Byron is now enormously fat,—so fat as to give the impression of a person quite overladen with his own flesh, and without sufficient vigor to diffuse his personal life through the great mass of corporeal substance which weighs upon him so cruelly. You gaze at the mortal heap; and, while it fills your eye with what purports to be Byron, you murmur within yourself, "For Heaven's ...
— P.'s Correspondence (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... parties, that Montmorenci threw up his viceroyalty in disgust, that is to say, he sold out to the Duke de Ventadour. Ventadour was in a world of difficulties. France was then half Protestant and half Catholic. Ventadour's chief object in purchasing Canada was to diffuse the Catholic Religion throughout the new world. With much energy of character, he was singularly pious. He attended mass regularly at an early hour every morning. His bedroom was religiously fitted up; the symbol of redemption hung constantly over the head of ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... knowledge is power—not that it ought to be. Now, even granting your corollary, that the power of a class is therefore proportioned to its knowledge—pray, do you suppose that while your order, the operatives, are instructing themselves, all the rest of the community are to be at a stand-still? Diffuse knowledge as you may, you will never produce equality of knowledge. Those who have most leisure, application, and aptitude for learning, will still know the most. Nay, by a very natural law, the more general the appetite for knowledge, the more the increased competition ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... speaking and writing the English language with propriety. All the grammatical research that preceded the establishment of his mother-tongue was but the collection of fuel to feed the flame of its glory; all that follows will be to diffuse the light of that flame to the ends of the earth. Greek, Latin, Sanscrit, were but stepping-stones to the English language. Philology per se is a myth. The English language in its completeness is the completion of grammatical science. To that all knowledge tends; from that all honor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... concentrated, that's all. You diffuse yourself, dear; and though all Simla knows your skill ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... staff and managers of the hospitals, this want of system has naturally resulted in a multiplication of inefficient institutions and a number of makeshift arrangements. Huxley repeatedly urged the concentration of all this diffuse effort into a few centres, but this inevitable reform has ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... seems at first a startling suggestion; but, after all, why should their not be dark nebul as well as visible ones? In truth, it has troubled some astronomers to explain the luminosity of the bright nebul, since it is not to be supposed that matter in so diffuse a state can be incandescent through heat, and phosphorescent light is in itself a mystery. The supposition is also in accord with what we know of the existence of dark solid bodies in space. Many bright stars are accompanied by obscure companions, sometimes as ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... by the English our authorities are scant and imperfect. The only extant British account is the "Epistola" of Gildas, a work written probably about A.D. 560. The style of Gildas is diffuse and inflated, but his book is of great value in the light it throws on the state of the island at that time, and above all as the one record of the conquest which we have from the side of the conquered. The English conquerors, on the other hand, have left jottings of their ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... eighties, and has been dramatised in France and in America. While it is assuredly a great work, and one that nobody except a genius could have written, I do not think it is Dostoevski's most characteristic novel, nor his best. It is characteristic in its faults; it is abominably diffuse, filled with extraneous and superfluous matter, and totally lacking in the principles of good construction. There are scenes of positively breathless excitement, preceded and followed by dreary drivel; but the success of the book does not depend ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... don't diffuse himse'f 'round none, an' confines his endeavors to his own bailiwick, is reestricted an' oneffectooal, an' couldn't keep down crime in a village of prairie- dogs.' An' then he'd cinch on his saddle, an' mebby go curvin' off as far north as the ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... trial, except in these few impertinent particulars, admirably. Mr. Dyce and Mr. Singer are only dry commonplace-books of illustrative quotations; Mr. Collier has not wholly recovered from his "Corr. fo."-madness; Mr. Knight (with many eminent advantages as an editor) is too diffuse; and we repeat our honest persuasion, that Mr. White has thus far given us the best extant text, while the fulness of his notes gives his edition almost the value of a variorum. We shall look with great interest for ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... for all we are so poor, we can yet have ceremonial. When the child was born were we not in direst danger? Such danger that all his royal father could do in honor of the glad event was to break a musk-bag before his faithful followers as sign that the birth of an heir to empire would diffuse itself like perfume through the whole world? Even so now, and if I cannot devise some ceremony, ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... of subjects to descant upon; but voluble, and indeed absurd as he was, Howard could not help liking him; he was a good fellow, he could see, and managed to diffuse a geniality over the scene. "I am interested in most things," he said, at the end of a breathless harangue, "and there is something in the presence of a real live student, from the forefront of the intellectual battle, which rouses all my old activities—stimulates them, in fact. This ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... be any who, reading this my narrative, shall think me too diffuse and particular in the chapters to follow, I do hereby humbly crave their pardon, but (maugre my reader's weariness) shall not abate one word or sentence, since herein I (that by my own folly have known so little of happiness) do record some of the happiest hours that ever man knew, so that ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... a foot in height. The flowers are small, a yellow, white and green mixture, the yellow predominating; they are produced in loose spare racemes, on well-foliaged diffuse stems, which are also angular; the calyx is composed of two leaves; the petals are four, forming a snapdragon-like flower. The leaves are bipinnate, leaflets wedge-shape, trifoliate, and glaucous; ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... this argument any further than to establish an obvious inference, that as sound politics diffuse liberty, mankind, including woman, will become ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... with all the horrors which such an error might occasion. But he was mistaken. The old woman followed the directions of her son to the letter. When her preparations were finished, a pleasant odour began to diffuse itself over the house; she drew near to the sick stranger; and rubbed his breast with a handful of the liquor. Almost immediately he felt the genial effects: the muscles of his face relaxed; he breathed more freely; his lips opened; and she poured a few spoonfuls of the cordial down his throat. ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... of five philosophical disputes between himself and friends, digested into as many books. He argues throughout after the manner of an Academic, even with an affectation of inconsistency; sometimes making use of the Socratic dialogue, sometimes launching out into the diffuse expositions which characterise his other treatises.[221] He first disputes against the fear of death; and in so doing he adopts the opinion of the Platonic school, as regards the nature of God and the soul. The succeeding discussions on ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... perhaps she had overheard Lynch's report to the Old Man, for her words showed she knew me as one of the men who had shipped in the vessel of my own will. "Why—you are only a boy!" she said, in a surprised voice. Then her face seemed to diffuse a sweet sympathy and understanding. I can't explain it, but I knew that the lady knew just why I had shipped. She looked inside of me, and read my heart—and understood! "Oh, Boy, why did you do it?" she exclaimed softly. "It is not worth it—why did you come! Listen!—do ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... whose pleading appeared too diffuse for the cause he was defending, had received an order from the first president to abridge it; but the former, without omitting a word of his intended address, replied in a firm tone, that all he uttered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... (for pleas'd thy vig'rous youth I view, And just proportion) be thou also bold, That thine like his may be a deathless name. Then, prudent, him answer'd Telemachus. Oh Nestor, Neleus' son, glory of Greece! And righteous was that vengeance; his renown Achaia's sons shall far and wide diffuse, To future times transmitting it in song. Ah! would that such ability the Gods 260 Would grant to me, that I, as well, the deeds Might punish of our suitors, whose excess Enormous, and whose bitter taunts ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... of the revolving day seemed each, with cunning magic, to diffuse a different charm over the scene. Now would the jovial sun break gloriously from the east, blazing from the summits of the hills, and sparkling the landscape with a thousand dewy gems; while along the borders of the river were seen heavy masses of mist, which, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Mardana, a lute-player, who accompanied the hymns which he never failed to compose when a thought or adventure occurred to him. These compositions are similar to those of Kabir, but seem to me of inferior merit. They are diffuse and inordinately long; the Japji for instance, which every Sikh ought to recite as his daily prayer, fills not less than twenty octavo pages. Yet beautiful and incisive passages are not wanting. When at the temple of Jagannath, he was asked to take part in the evening worship ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... men of business who knew how to make a man talk were given diffuse and loud-voiced explanations of his methods and long-acknowledged merits and characteristics. His life, his morals, and his training, or rather lack ot it, were laid before them as examples of what a man might work ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... as one can judge, had no knowledge of Kant. He is, nevertheless, dealing with Kant's own problem, of the theory of knowledge, in his rather diffuse 'Dissertation on Language,' which is prefixed to the volume which bears the title God in Christ, 1849. He was following his living principle, the reference of doctrine to conscience. God must be a 'right God.' Dogma must make no assertion concerning God which will not ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... paintings of Murillo bear to those of Rembrandt. The peculiarity of Wilhelm Meister as a novel is more difficult of apprehension, if one does not seek the novel where in truth it lies—in the story of Mignon and the Harper, and only sees in the remainder the certainly somewhat diffuse but deeply-thought and classically-delineated picture of the earnest striving after culture of a German in the end of the eighteenth century. It would argue, however, as it appears to me, much prejudice, and an utterly unreasonable temper, not to recognize a perfect novel in the Wahlverwandschaften, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... hoard? Will he be quite satisfied with the codicil to his Will,[1] which she surreptitiously obtained from him in his frenzy in the first agony of her grief? How will he digest that discovery of his treasure, which will not diffuse great compassion when he shall next ask a payment of his pretended debts? Before his madness he was indisposed towards Pitt; will he be better pleased with him ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... helpful man,—to enlist the sympathies of birth, and secure for themselves the eloquence of natural affection,—to overleap the barriers of race and elude the sensitiveness of national pride by putting the doctrines they sought to diffuse into mouths which, untainted by repulsive accents, could enforce new truths by well-known images and familiar illustrations,—was like laying anew the foundations of the Capitol, and consecrating that spirit ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... picturesque if diffuse history of the first Afghan war, lays it down that, in seating Shah Soojah on the Cabul throne, 'the British Government had done all that it had undertaken to do,' and Durand argues that, having accomplished this, 'the British army could have ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... human being, no not of Anna St. Ives herself, with a more glowing and hoping heart. But why describe sensations to thee, Oliver, with which thou art so intimately acquainted? To bid thee rejoice, to invite thee to participate in felicity, which may and must so widely diffuse itself, were equally to wrong thy understanding ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... upon the contributions of psychiatry to the understanding of the problems of life. Psychiatry, like each of the other branches of medicine, has come to be recognized as one of the subdivisions of the great science of biology, free to make use of the scientific method, in duty bound to diffuse the knowledge that it gains, and privileged to contribute abundantly to the lessening of human suffering and the enhancement of human joys. General practitioners of medicine and medical specialists—at least the more enlightened of them—welcome the developing science of psychiatry, ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... there are differences, Payne's translation is invariably the clearer, finer and more stately of the two. Payne is concise, Burton diffuse. [466] ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... the party very modest in their fear of being too diffuse, there were some tokens of separation; when Sergeant Dornton, the soldierly-looking man, said, looking round him ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... practical duty. He had always a strong sympathy with the feudal system which annexed indissolubly the idea of public function with the possession of property. The great landlord who is wisely governing large districts and using all his influence to diffuse order, comfort, education, and civilisation among his tenantry; the captain of industry who is faithfully and honestly organising the labour of thousands, and regarding his task as a moral duty; the rich man who, with all the means of enjoyment ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... vibration would his complacent voice have been intensified. He never suffered his feelings to escape his control. Occasionally, to be sure, he might curl his lip, or lift his eyebrows, or depress the corners of his mouth. When deeply moved he might go so far as to diffuse a nipping frost around him, but no angry words ever ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... of the sensuous world dwells in us, is an emanation from ourselves; it is we who diffuse it, each person for himself according to his power, and we have it back again in the measure of our out-giving. But I did not comprehend early enough the deep meaning of this well-known truth. . . . During my childhood and youth the charm seemed to reside in the thing ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... acts of parliament; the respective remedies of civil injuries; the several species of temporal offences, with the manner and degree of punishment; and an infinite number of minuter particulars, which diffuse themselves as extensively as the ordinary distribution of common justice requires. Thus, for example, that there shall be four superior courts of record, the chancery, the king's bench, the common pleas, and the exchequer;—that the ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... irritated even by the ideas, the thoughts of his subjects; whose displeasure might be incurred without even their own knowledge; the name of such a sovereign would assuredly be sufficient to carry trouble, to spread terror, to diffuse consternation into the very souls of those who should hear it pronounced; his idea would haunt them every where—would unceasingly afflict them—would plunge them into despair. What tortures would not their mind endure to discover ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... size, surpassed by few in the forest, may well take the lead, on that account, in a description of those which bear flowers. These are of a greenish yellow, scarcely distinguishable from the leaves, among which the bunches hang down in a peculiar manner. About sunset, if the evening be calm, they diffuse a fragrance around that affects the sense at the distance ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... even the most gifted worker must be crude in his methods, and we ought to keep this fact always in mind when we turn, say, from the purblind worshippers of Scott to Scott himself, and recognize that he often wrote a style cumbrous and diffuse; that he was tediously analytical where the modern novelist is dramatic, and evolved his characters by means of long-winded explanation and commentary; that, except in the case of his lower-class personages, he made them talk as seldom man and never woman talked; ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... trivial discourse with a manner which was no doubt meant to be gracious, but with no great show of interest. Once he went so far as to remark that the Castle gardens were looking very fine for so advanced a season, and attended politely to my lady's rather diffuse account of her ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... comprehend and respond to each other more quickly than the intelligences of men. An enemy had just arrived; all felt it—all rallied together. One drop of wine is sufficient to tinge a glass of water red; to diffuse a certain degree of ill temper throughout a whole assembly of pretty women, the arrival of a prettier woman suffices, especially when there is but ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... deeper-lying root. For a sound stimulus awakens not only a sensory process in the ear, the correlative of which is a sensation, but also incipient motor reactions, which, if carried out, would be an emotion, but which, being too slight and diffuse, produce only what we call a mood. Every sensation has a meaning for the organism in an environment where it has constantly to be on its guard for danger or assistance; every sensation is therefore connected with the mechanism ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... stirring it well together. The super-curious insist that the knife with which sallet herb is cut must be of silver. Some who are husbands of their oyl, pour at first the oyl alone, as more apt to communicate and diffuse its slipperiness, than when it is mingled and beaten with the acids, which they pour on last of all; and it is incredible how small a quantity of oyl thus applied is sufficient to imbue a very plentiful assembly of ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... President and Directors of the Alexandria Library Company desirous of promoting the influence which they conceive eminently calculated to diffuse useful knowledge, establish the morals of the rising generation, and afford rational entertainment for a vacent hour, earnestly recommend it to the attention and support of their fellow citizens. The utility of a public circulating library is too obvious to need arguments to demonstrate ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... of the Adi Samaj, aiming to diffuse the truths of Theism among their own nation, the Hindus, have naturally adopted a Hindu mode of propagation, just as an Arab Theist would adopt an Arabian mode of propagation, and a Chinese Theist a Chinese one. Such differences in the aspect of Theism in different countries must naturally ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... he was not greatly excited by it. She had upon his mind that peaceful influence that Mrs. Bolton had when, occasionally, she sat by his bedside with her work. Some people have this influence, which is like an emanation. They bring peace to a house, they diffuse serene content in a room full of mixed company, though they may say very little, and are apparently, unconscious of their ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... thou cursed by Heaven's decree, 385 How ill exchanged are things like these for thee! How do thy potions, with insidious joy, Diffuse their pleasure only to destroy! Kingdoms by thee, to sickly greatness grown, Boast of a florid vigor not their own. 390 At every draught more large and large they grow, A bloated mass of rank unwieldy woe; Till sapped their strength, and ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... when Philip attacked Athens and Demosthenes defended its liberties. Dante's poems were born of the collision between the despots who sought to enslave Florence, and the patriots who dreamed of democracy. Milton's songs were written during the English Revolution, when the Puritan, seeking to diffuse the good things of life, and the Cavalier, who wished to monopolize the earth's treasure, came into ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... at the historical period of time. The atmosphere enveloped the disc with a fluid mantle; vapor deposited itself in the shape of clouds; this natural screen tempered the ardor of the solar rays, and retained the nocturnal radiation. Light, like heat, can diffuse itself in the air; hence an equality between the influences which no longer exists, now that atmosphere has almost entirely disappeared. And now I ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... to be more diffuse than I should have been without it; but it gives you a bit of ancient geography which will do you no harm. There are two great rivers which extend through this territory, the Euphrates and the Tigris, though both ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... localized, not to say directed. If by man, he must have in some way acquired unprecedented powers over the phenomena of electricity and sound. These he can evidently, at will, either focus, as on the Atlas Building, or diffuse, as over the city. For the moment we ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... the fundamental conditions did not seem to be greatly altered. Legislation could not go deep enough. It could not change human nature. That could only be effected by the diffusion of a spirit of justice and consideration throughout the community. The effort to diffuse such a spirit is the proper work of the Church; and as this truth became clearly seen, the Church felt less and less inclined to throw herself on the ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... pleasure in the talk of the late Professor Fleeming Jenkin, which was both various and copious. But in these noctes coenaeque deum I was never a partaker. In many topics, such as angling, golf, cricket, whereon I am willingly diffuse, Mr. Stevenson took no interest. He was very fond of boating and sailing in every kind; he hazarded his health by long expeditions among the fairy isles of ocean, but he "was not a British sportsman," though for his measure of strength a good pedestrian, a friend ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... contemporaries than by posterity, and Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton wrote complimentary verses, as a sort of introduction to volumes of his poems when they were published. Browne's work is very uneven, many of his poems are charming, some diffuse and rather poor; but he had a sincere feeling for Nature, and his nymphs and swains revelled in posies and garlands in the shade of groves full ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... the light, conspicuous; the salt, working concealed; and the dew, visible like the former, but yet unobtrusive and operating silently like the latter. Some of us had rather be light than salt; prefer to be conspicuous rather than to diffuse a wholesome silent influence around us. But these three types must all be blended, both in regard to the manner of working, and in regard to the effects produced. We shall refresh and beautify the world only in proportion as we save it from its rottenness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... roam the plain, Yellow sheaves of ripened grain, Clouds that drop their fatt'ning dews, Suns that temp'rate warmth diffuse; ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... than half the length of the other, nor is it's upper disk of so deep a green nor so glossey. it affords no balsam and but little rosin. the wood also white soft and reather porus tho tough.- No 5. is a species of fir which arrives to the size of Nos. 2 and 4, the stem simple branching, diffuse and proliferous. the bark thin, dark brown, much divided with small longitudinal interstices and sometimes scaleing off in thin rolling flakes. it affords but little rosin and the wood is redish white 2/3ds ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... vous vient de tous les cotes a la fois, des lieux decrits, des sujets, de la maniere de raconter, de l'esprit qui anime, de l'intelligence qui ordonne, mais, d'une facon encore plus immediate et plus diffuse, de la difference des deux langues. On reconnait sans doute generalement a nos vieux ecrivains ce merite d'etre clairs, mais on est trop habitue a ne voir dans ce don que ce qui decoule des tendances analytiques et des aptitudes logiques de leurs esprit. Aussi plusieurs critiques, ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... that, from the long and weird catalogue of human miseries, I might have selected many individual instances more replete with essential suffering than any of these vast generalities of disaster. The true wretchedness, indeed—the ultimate woe——is particular, not diffuse. That the ghastly extremes of agony are endured by man the unit, and never by man the mass——for this let ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... have more than one true molar above and another below, which, however, vary much in development, and the flesh tooth is most marked in those in which the tuberculate is least developed, and vice versa. The great and small intestines differ little in calibre, and many of them (i.e. the family) can diffuse at will a disgusting stench." This last peculiarity is a specialty of the American members of the family, notably the skunk, of the power of which almost incredible stories are told. I remember reading not long ago an account of a train passing over ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... of a community does the highest interest consist in Liberty, but in soundness of morals; without which Liberty only means licence to be vicious; licence to ruin oneself, and diffuse misery to others. To a man not proof against the omnipresent drinkshop, high wages are a curse; days called holy and short hours of work do but more quickly engulf him in ruin. But he pulls others too down in his fall. That nearly every Vice tends to waste, and preeminently intoxication ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... hunting, and is killed by a wild boar. Venus mourns over his dead body, and causes a flower (the anemone or wind flower) to spring from his blood. Shakespeare's handling of the story shows both the virtues and the defects of a young writer. It is more diffuse, more wordy, than his later work, and written for the taste of another time than ours; but, on the other hand, it is full of vivid, picturesque language of melodious rhythm, and of charming little touches ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... have seen, with legitimists and neo-Catholics, and allowed himself to be reckoned as one of them. Through the columns of the Globe, which had now become the organ of the Saint-Simonians, he invited the Romanticists to "step forth from the circle of pure art, and diffuse the doctrines of a progressive humanity." On the advent of Louis Philippe, he was inclined to accept the constitutional regime as the triumph of good sense, as affording a practical solution and a promise of stability. But he appears ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... actions. The mystery of the life which quivers within and around them eludes him. This is why his books are such dry reading. He is like a bright garden full of rare plants; but it is a monotonous garden, without life or art, without distant vistas or wide perspectives. His works are somewhat diffuse and full of repetitions; entire monographs, almost whole volumes, are devoted to describing the emerging of a butterfly; but they form part of the library of the curious lover of nature; they are consulted with interest, and will always be referred ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... politics, and praises Paris as a heaven on earth. The genial moralising of the latter appears childish by the side of Alfieri's terse philosophy and pregnant remarks on the development of character. What suits the page of Plautus would look poor in 'Oedipus' or 'Agamemnon.' Goldoni's memoirs are diffuse and flippant in their light French dress. They seem written to please. Alfieri's Italian style marches with dignity and Latin terseness. He rarely condescends to smile. He writes to instruct the world ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... readily melted away under less than half the influence which have been at work upon them*; the other, and opposite paradox,—that a religion, propagated by ignorant, obscure, and penniless vagabonds, should diffuse itself amongst the most diverse nations in spite of all opposition,—it being the rarest of phenomena to find any religion which is capable of transcending the limits of race, clime, and the scene of its historic origin; a ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... abode of pastoral virtue, and might properly diffuse its shades over Nymphs and Swains. Hawkestone can have no fitter inhabitants than giants of mighty bone and bold emprise[1185]; men of lawless courage and heroic violence. Hawkestone should be described by Milton, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... purchased it. By another chance I fell sick; my illness was inflammatory, short and violent, but my convalescence was tedious, for I was unable to go abroad for a whole month. During this time I eagerly ran over my Treatise on Harmony, but it was so long, so diffuse, and so badly disposed, that I found it would require a considerable time to unravel it: accordingly I suspended my inclination, and recreated ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... and change their wandering life for fixed abodes. He had to do, therefore, more prominently not with the administrators of law, but with the people; and accordingly his precepts assume a hortatory character, and his style becomes more diffuse and flowing. ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... way in which he could do nothing and yet diffuse an air of importance, was impressive to her admiring soul. The clerical whiskers and the ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... an historian, an historian so diffuse, and so little selective, it would obviously be difficult to give any suitably brief specimen that should seem to present a considerable historic action in full. We go to Froissart's account of the celebrated battle of Poitiers (France). This was fought in 1356, between ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... or two to find out what are the passages in a great writer which are to become commonplaces in literature and conversation. It is to be remembered that Emerson is one of those authors whose popularity must diffuse itself from above downwards. And after all, few will dare assert that "The Vanity of Human Wishes" is greater as a poem than Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," or Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale," because no line in either of these poems is half so ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... he wanders on from glade to glade To where more precious shrubs diffuse their balms, And gliding thro' the thick inwoven shade Where the young Hebrew ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... battle was followed by a long feud, attended with all the circumstances of horror, proper to a barbarous age. Johnstone, in his diffuse manner, describes it thus: "Ab eo die ultro citroque in Annandia et Nithia magnis utriusque regionis jacturis certatum. Caedes, incendia, rapinae, et nefanda facinora; liberi in maternis gremiis trucidati; mariti in conspectu conjugum suarum, incensae villae ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... into this hall, where the same questions were put to us, though in a different form, that they might entrap us. They compared the answers we now gave, with those formerly given, and on the slightest difference appearing, made the most diffuse inquiries about it. Finally, on the twenty-seventh of September, they took us from Khakodale to Matsmai, the capital of the island, which is situated on the southern coast, where we were immediately immured ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... of Chapter X was arranged so that the light at the entrance to each electric-box had a value of 20 candle meters, less the diminution caused by a piece of ground glass which was placed over the end of the electric-boxes to diffuse the light. The windows through which the light entered the electric-boxes were covered with pieces of black cardboard; in one of these cardboards I had cut a circular opening 4 cm. in diameter, and in the other an opening of the ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... an infant soul; her vow is to be faithful to it; her promise is to train it up for God; and her's will be the lasting glory or the lasting shame! These very engagements and trusts elevate the pious parents; diffuse a tenderness and sympathy over all the domestic relations, and make better husbands, better wives, better parents, and better children, by the deep insight which is given to their faith in those mysterious relations and mutual ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... out the ungodly from his sight And the habitations of the just; to Him Glory and praise, whose wisdom had ordained Good out of evil to create; instead Of Spirits malign, a better race to bring Into their vacant room, and thence diffuse His good to worlds and ages infinite. So sang the Hierarchies: Mean while the Son On his great expedition now appeared, Girt with Omnipotence, with radiance crowned Of Majesty Divine; sapience and love Immense, and all his Father in him shone. About his chariot ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... without passions, is confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets. Supplication to man may diffuse itself through many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... nor dim; its undecomposing surface preserves a soft, fruit-like polish forever, slowly flushed by the maturing suns of centuries. Hence, while in the Northern Gothic the effort of the architect was always so to diffuse his ornament as to prevent the eye from permanently resting on the blank material, the Italian fearlessly left fallow large fields of uncarved surface, and concentrated the labor of the chisel on detached portions, in which the eye, being rather directed to them by their isolation than ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the common. These murmuring cogitations have brought us up the hill, and half-way across the light and airy common, with its bright expanse of snow and its clusters of cottages, whose turf fires send such wreaths of smoke sailing up the air, and diffuse such aromatic fragrance around. And now comes the delightful sound of childish voices, ringing with glee and merriment almost from beneath our feet. Ah, Lizzy, your mother was right! They are shouting from that deep irregular pool, all glass ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... everybody as it is to those who are accustomed to correct thinking and accurate expression on the subject, it would not be worth while to expose; but which, being taken for sound sense (as it is very likely to be by many of the people among whom you have undertaken to diffuse political knowledge), becomes very pernicious nonsense, that ought not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... incomparable. His sketches of men, critiques, and digressions upon statistical details are far less copious than Varchi's. But in idiomatic purity of language he is superior. Varchi had been spoiled by academic habits of composition. His language is diffuse and lumbering. He lacks the vivacity of epigram, selection, and pointed phrase. But his Storia Fiorentina remains the most valuable repertory of information we possess about the later vicissitudes of the republic, and the charm of detail compensates for ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... connected with Alaska and the adjoining region is that in May the sun rises at 3 o'clock and sets at 9, while in June it rises at 1.30 and sets at 10.30. Thus the summer day is twenty hours long, and it has a diffuse twilight. The change from winter to summer is rapid, winter setting in in September, and in the Klondike region zero weather lasts from November to May, though at times the weather moderates early in March, but does not become settled until May. The Yukon ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... perhaps, again insist here on the rarity with which acute diffuse septic infection occurred in cases of these degrees of severity, also on the fact that interference with the wounds in the way of secondary exploration, even when they were manifestly the seat of local infection, was followed almost without exception by good immediate results; and, lastly, ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... gifted actor, in Sir Christopher Curry—in Old Dornton—diffuse a glow of sentiment which has made the pulse of a crowded theatre beat like that of one man; when he has come in aid of the pulpit, doing good to the moral heart of a people. I have seen some faint approaches ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... pale light began to diffuse among the trees. It grew stronger. Mr. Roscoe was quieter now, and came from under the cot. Frank persuaded him to lie down, and in a little while his ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... What is accumulated, must be principally from commerce and manufactures. The system of abandoning the country and congregating in cities, tends directly to concentrate wealth into the hands of a few, and to diffuse poverty and crime among the masses of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... surface to every 50 cubic feet of air contained in the building. Set the steam pipe in compact shape and enclose it with a casing of galvanized sheet iron open at the top; supply cold air from outside of the building by a boxed conduit to the bottom of this stack. The air when heated will rise and diffuse itself into the room, and as it cools will fall to the floor; provide registers in the floor, through which it may escape into other boxed tubes under the floor leading to an upright chimney discharging above the roof. Let a smoke pipe from the boiler enter the chimney and extend up ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... suffering from these legislative attacks on their property. The men who manage the great corporations, whatever their faults, are men of enterprise and courage. They are the true progressives; the prosperity that they diffuse among the whole people is ordinarily more than can be destroyed by our progressive politicians. They are now beginning to feel that their rulers are discriminating against them as a class, and are uneasy and disheartened, and reluctant to embark in new enterprises; and the progress of the ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... her subject, carry us safely over many an absurdity. It is only in the duller stretches of the narrative, when her heart is not in her work, that her language becomes vague, indeterminate and blurred, and that she muffles her thoughts in words like "ascertain," "commencement," "peruse," "diffuse," instead of using their simpler Saxon equivalents. Stirred by the excitement of the events she describes, she can write forcibly in simple, direct language. She often frames short, hurried sentences such as a man would naturally ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... robes, nor yet array'd in green. Hard blows the breeze, but with a warmer force. The melting ground, the brimming watercourse, The wak'ning air, the birds' returning flight, The longer sunshine, and the shorter night, Arcturus' beams, and Corvus' glitt'ring rays, Diffuse a promise of the genial days. Yon muddy remnant of the winter snow Shrinks humbly in the equinoctial glow, Whilst in the fields precocious grass-blades peep Above the earth so lately wrapt in sleep. What sweet, elusive odor fills the soil, To rouse the farmer to ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... owned that such a little book as this has long been wanted; for of all writing, that relating to the stage is the most diffuse. It is scattered about in biography, criticism and anecdote, not unfrequently of great interest, but occupying so much "valuable" time, that to condense it, or to pick the wheat from the chaff, is no trifling task. So much for the amusement ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... bids my throbbing pulses beat; Soon shall that vital heat be o'er, Those throbbing pulses beat no more! No—I will breathe the spicy gale; Plunge the clear stream, new health exhale; O'er my pale cheek diffuse the rose, And drink oblivion to ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... Vehicles; and a second to receive the crude Herbs in, upon which they are to be pour'd; and then with a Fork and a Spoon kept continually stirr'd, 'till all the Furniture be equally moisten'd: Some, who are husbands of their Oyl, pour at first the Oyl alone, as more apt to communicate and diffuse its Slipperiness, than when it is mingled and beaten with the Acids; which they pour on last of all; and 'tis incredible how small a quantity of Oyl (in this quality, like the gilding of Wyer) is sufficient, to imbue a very plentiful assembly ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... "I see you are in a tangle. Yes, it's a difficult position. How you are to end it ..." He became diffuse and inconclusive. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... cloth, as any undissolved specks will be sure to fix themselves on the cloth and lead to dark spots and stains, as, owing to the weak solubility of the dye, and this being also fixed as insoluble tannate by the tannic acid on the fibre, there is no tendency for the dye to diffuse itself over the cloth, as occasionally happens in other methods of dyeing. No advantage is gained by adding to the dye-bath such substances as ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... epigrammatic writers La Rochefoucauld is at once the most widely known, and the most distinguished. Voltaire, whose opinion on the century of Louis XIV. is entitled to the greatest weight, says, "One of the works that most largely contributed to form the taste of the nation, and to diffuse a spirit of justice and precision, is the collection of maxims, by Francois Duc de ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... except a Jew. For nearly a century no one believed in the good tidings except Jews. They nursed the sacred flame of which they were the consecrated and hereditary depositaries. And when the time was ripe to diffuse the truth among the ethnics, it was not a senator of Rome or a philosopher of Athens who was personally appointed by our Lord for that office, but a Jew of Tarsus, who founded the seven churches of Asia. And that greater church, great ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... life is the mysterious refinement of the material out of which we are constructed, and it has nothing to correspond with it in the source from which we sprang. Nevertheless, the new naturalism exalts this spiritual life within us, calls it our crown and glory, bids us cultivate and diffuse it, says about it nearly everything a Christian says except that it is a revelation of eternal reality. Moreover, it is difficult to differentiate from this outspoken group of professed naturalists another group of humanists who do retain the ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... pleasures," and work till 4-5 a.m. As he had prodigious facility and spontaneity he finished his part of the task in two winters. Some of the tales in the suite, especially that of "Maugraby," are attributed wholly to his invention; and, as a rule, his aim and object were to diffuse his spiritual ideas and to write treatises on moral perfection under the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... am fond of study. There is no one, after all, like the Germans. That is, for facts. For opinions I by no means always go with them. I form my opinions myself. I am sorry to say, however," Mrs. Church continued, "that I can hardly pretend to diffuse my acquisitions. I am afraid I am sadly selfish; I do little to irrigate the soil. I belong—I frankly confess it—to ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... spirits, to whom man is dear, From these foul demons shield the midnight gloom: Angels of fancy and love, be near. And o'er the blank of sleep diffuse a bloom: Evoke the sacred shades of Greece and Rome, And let them virtue with a look impart; But chief, awhile, O! lend us from the tomb Those long-lost friends for whom in love we smart, and fill with pious awe and ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... 'science was his forte and omniscience his foible,' has left no enduring monument behind him; and so it must always be with mortals who have only fifty years of thought allotted to them at the very most, and who diffuse it. Everyone admits the value of application, but very few are aware how its force is wasted by diffusion: it is like a volatile essence in a bottle without a cork. When, on the other hand, it is concentrated—you may call it 'narrowed' if you please—there ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... be taken for granted, however, that hardly any serious illness can long continue without cardiac muscle disturbance. If endocarditis is present, soft systolic murmurs soon appear. With the acute myocarditis developing, the apex beat is less positive, less accentuated, and later it becomes diffuse and even feeble. The closure of the aortic valve is less typically sharp, showing that the blood vessels are not so thoroughly filled. The peripheral circulation is not so active, the blood pressure falls, and the heart becomes more rapid, especially ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... true—"The gold of that land is good." But they must first understand, that education, in its deepest sense, is not the equaliser, but the discerner, of men;[1] and that, so far from being instruments for the collection of riches, the first lesson of wisdom is to disdain them, and of gentleness, to diffuse. ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... mission at Toulon during the siege, as viceroy of Corsica, at Naples, and as minister at Vienna, 1799-1801, are worthy of attention. Sir N. W. WRAXALL, Historical and Posthumous Memoirs, 1772-84, 5 vols., 1884, carefully edited by Mr. H. B. Wheatley, diffuse and amusing. Wraxall's inaccuracies, or worse, have been exaggerated, and his work, which goes to 1789, together with some later "reminiscences," is of value, specially as regards its portraiture of public men of a secondary ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... receipts were printed in red and gold and had a big seal and ribbon attached. The size of the receipt and seal was proportioned according to the amount paid—if you had a son or a daughter in Purgatory, it was wise to pay a large amount. The certificates were in Latin and certified in diffuse and mystical language many things, and they gave great joy to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... his physiognomical studies, published in four volumes between 1775-78 under the title "Physiognomical Fragments for the Advancement of Human Knowledge and Human Life" ("Physiognomische Fragmente zur Befoerderung des Menschenkenntniss und Menschenliebe"). The book is diffuse and inconsequent, but it contains many shrewd observations with respect to physiognomy and has had no little influence on popular opinion in this matter. Lavater died on January ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... society, nature so seldom produces. Seeing his enthusiastic reception by the tribe of Gudala, and the influence he was sure of maintaining over it, he formed the design of founding a sovereignty in the heart of these vast regions. Under the pretext that to diffuse a holy religion and useful knowledge was among the most imperative of duties, he prevailed on his obedient disciples to make war on the kindred tribe of Lamtuna. That tribe submitted, acknowledging his spiritual authority, and zealously assisted him in his great purpose of gaining proselytes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... sense for a denomination, they have also intended that it shall answer in some measure the demands of a liberal and progressive Christianity—a Christianity, under whatever name or pretension found, that would diffuse Christ's spirit and do his works of truth and ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... in the street had subsided, but the two ruffians showed no signs of settling down. They were now engaged in barricading the door so that it could be forced open only a few inches, thus exposing the attackers to a deadly fire. I was much obliged to them. Their movements would help to diffuse the gas and prevent it from settling too densely on the floor. Also, their exertions would make them breathe more deeply and so come more rapidly under ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... by such means that the young general, as profound a politician as he was a great captain, contrived to ingratiate himself with the people. While he flattered their prejudices for the moment, he laboured to diffuse among them the light of science by the creation of the celebrated Institute of Egypt. He collected the men of science and the artists whom he had brought with him, and, associating with them some of the best educated ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... The scum was absolutely insoluble, and it is a strange thing, seeing the instant effect of the gas, that one could drink without hurt the water from which it had been strained. The vapour did not diffuse as a true gas would do. It hung together in banks, flowing sluggishly down the slope of the land and driving reluctantly before the wind, and very slowly it combined with the mist and moisture of the air, and sank ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... faint taste of oil upon my lips, and there was a greasy scum upon the woodwork of the machine. Some infinitely fine organic matter appeared to be suspended in the atmosphere. There was no life there. It was inchoate and diffuse, extending for many square acres and then fringing off into the void. No, it was not life. But might it not be the remains of life? Above all, might it not be the food of life, of monstrous life, even as the humble grease of the ocean is the food for ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we must paggle Monday up to here." Miss Arkwright indicates the exact high-water mark sanctioned, candidly. "Wiv no sooze, and no stottins!" She then becomes diffuse. "And my bid sister Totey's doll came out in my bed, and Dane dusted her out wiv a duster. And I can do thums. And they make free...." At this point Miss Arkwright's copy runs short, and she seizes the opportunity for a sort of seated dance of satisfaction at her own eloquence—a ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... lavishly are placed, Soon they repent, and will not make them last. For sure it was too bountiful a dole, The mother's features, and the father's soul. Then thus he cried; the morn bespoke the news: 30 The morning did her cheerful light diffuse: But see how suddenly she changed her face, And brought on clouds and rain, the day's disgrace! Just such, Amyntas, was thy promised race: What charms adorn'd thy youth, where nature smiled, And more than man was given us in a child! His infancy was ripe: a soul sublime In years so ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... by nature, or by principle, averse from idleness, he employed his unwelcome leisure in writing books on physick, and teaching others to cure those whom he could himself cure no longer. I know not whether I can enumerate all the treatises by which he has endeavoured to diffuse the art of healing; for there is scarcely any distemper, of dreadful name, which he has not taught his reader how to oppose. He has written on the smallpox, with a vehement invective against inoculation; on consumptions, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... of the island. It is beyond our power, as individuals, to convert the entire agricultural population of our islands into a reading body, but we can avail ourselves of the tendency wherever it exists; and by writing, or diffusing, or aiding to diffuse, good books, we can supply ready instruction to such as now wish for it, and can put it in the way of those in whom other men, by other means, are labouring to awaken the dormant desire for knowledge. Reader, do you wish to improve agriculture? —then buy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... you as representing Americans at large, I feel that the occasion is one on which arrears of thanks are due. I ought to begin with the time, some two and twenty years ago, when my highly valued friend, Professor Youmans, making efforts to diffuse my books here, interested on their behalf Messrs. Appleton, who have ever treated me so honorably and so handsomely; and I ought to detail from that time onward the various marks and acts of sympathy by which I have been encouraged in a ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... attain with all our efforts! We could not hope to convey to those who have never heard him, any just conception of that fascination so ineffably poetic, that charm subtle and penetrating as the delicate perfume of the vervain or the Ethiopian calla, which, shrinking and exclusive, refuses to diffuse its exquisite aroma in the noisome breath of crowds, whose heavy air can only retain the stronger odor of the tuberose, the incense of ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... that in making this migration to Dalton Hall, Dudleigh was regardful of many things besides the patient. He had made every arrangement for the comfort of the occupants. He had sought out all the domestics that were necessary to diffuse an air of home over such a large establishment, and had been careful to submit them to Edith for her approval. He had also procured horses and grooms and carriages, and every thing that might conduce to the comfort of life. The old solitude and loneliness ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... upon our fevered hearts a consoling hope. And when I combine its intrinsic reasonableness with the spirit and spiritualism of Christianity, and that intuitive suggestion which springs up in so many souls, I can urge but faint objection to those who entertain it, and would, if possible, share and diffuse the comfort which it gives. Nearer, than, than we imagine—close as in mortal contact, and more intimately—may be those whom we, with earthly vision behold no more; visiting us in hours of loneliness, and affording unseen companionship; watching us in ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... they are effectually roused; nothing, therefore, can kindle the flame but such oppressions of some classes or order in society as give able men the opportunity of seconding the general mass; discontent will diffuse itself around; and if the Government take not warning in time, it is alone answerable for all the burnings and all the plunderings and all the devastation and all the blood ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... teach the people to practise the strictest economy, and especially to obtain and diffuse such information among farmers as shall lead to the improvement and diversification of crops, in order to create in farmers a desire for homes and better home conditions, and to stimulate a love for labor in both old and young. Each local organization may offer small prizes for ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... his early character; that his patriotic views will extend with his power to carry wishes into action; that his attachment to his warm-hearted countrymen will still increase upon further acquaintance; and that he will long diffuse happiness through the wide circle, which is peculiarly subject to the influence and example of a great resident ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... make themselves out the victims of compulsion? But even supposing she had genuinely regarded me as a magician, would the mere fact of Pudentilla's writing to that effect be a reason for actually regarding me as a magician? You, with all your arguments and your witnesses and your diffuse eloquence, have failed to prove me a magician. Could she prove it with one word? A formal indictment, written and signed before a judge, is a far more weighty document than what is written in a private ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... suggestions, sure of being heard with grateful consideration; let skilful writers, avoiding captionsness on the one hand and compliment on the other, uphold or refute or amend the tenets here announced; let the guardians of the press diffuse widely a knowledge of the benefits which are here provided; let men of means largely increase the usefulness of this work ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... is not exhausted by these observations. That portion of it which is most reducible to points of argument has been stated, and, I trust, truly. There are, however, some topics of a more diffuse nature, which yet deserve to be proposed to the ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... admiration as to his general accuracy. Many of his seeming errors are almost inevitable from the close condensation of his matter. From the immense range of his history, it was sometimes necessary to compress into a single sentence, a whole vague and diffuse page of a Byzantine chronicler. Perhaps something of importance may have thus escaped, and his expressions may not quite contain the whole substance of the passage from which they are taken. His limits, at times, compel him to sketch; where that is the case, it is not fair to expect the full ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... will my statements be by you denied? If not they stand for truth both far and wide, And your example may be found of use In leading others quickly to decide That they for ignorance have no excuse In this enlightened age, when Knowledge is diffuse. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... the question of revenue, was none of Grenville's making but was a legacy of the war and of that Peace of Paris which had added an immense territory to the Empire. When the diplomats of England and France at last discovered, in some mysterious manner, that it had "pleased the Most High to diffuse the spirit of union and concord among the Princes," the world was informed that, as the price of "a Christian, universal; and perpetual peace," France would cede to England what had remained to her of Nova Scotia, Canada, and all the possessions of France on the left bank of the Mississippi except ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... certayne worke began, And not concluded, as oft doth many a man: Yet thought I after to make the same perfite, But long I missed that which I first did write. But here a wonder, I fortie yere saue twayne, Proceeded in age, founde my first youth agayne. To finde youth in age is a probleme diffuse, But nowe heare the truth, and then no longer muse. As I late turned olde bookes to and fro, One litle treatise I founde among the mo Because that in youth I did compile the same, Egloges of youth I ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... certain perfection, as they soon will be under the fostering care of the government, we shall no longer experience these evils. The farmer will find a ready market for his surplus products, and, what is almost of equal consequence, a certain and cheap supply for all his wants. His prosperity will diffuse itself through every class in the community." Not satisfied with this unqualified support of the protective system, Mr. Calhoun supplemented it by declaring that "to give perfection to this state of things, it will be ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the fires, 336-338; the effect which the bonfires are supposed to have in fertilizing cattle and women may also be attributed to an increase of solar heat produced by the fires, 338 sq.; the carrying of lighted torches about the country at the festivals may be explained as an attempt to diffuse ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... the way. The influence of the existing Italian geographies on the spirit and tendencies of the travellers and discoverers was also inestimable. Even the simple 'dilettante' of a science— if in the present case we should assign to Aeneas Sylvius so low a rank—can diffuse just that sort of general interest in the subject which prepares for new pioneers the indispensable favourable predisposition in the public mind. True discoverers in any science know well what they ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... realize the true character of saints as "strangers and pilgrims on earth." Religion, that flower of paradise, was never intended to "waste its sweetness on the desert air;" but to flourish in society, and to diffuse its sacred perfumes in ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... Civilization, according to your notions, consists in shorter laps of a coat, foreign furniture, bronzes, and champagne—in a word, in outward trifles and silly customs. Trust me, not such is civilization.... Unite yourselves! Be it your vocation to lay open all the hidden riches of our great country; to diffuse life and vigor into all its veins; to take the whole management of its material interests into your hands. Unite your endeavors in this beautiful deed, and you may be certain of success! Why should Russia be worse than England? Comprehend only your calling; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... cuttings. In the south division tanks are also used, but as the plants are potted off when placed there, bottom heat is not so necessary; the sand is dispensed with and the pots rest on a shelf or table built about two inches above the tanks, allowing the heat radiated from the slate to diffuse itself through the house. Slides in each tank afford means of shutting off the water allowing each house to be worked independently. The centre of house is occupied by an earth bed in which the plants ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... nerves restored themselves, the upper and lower parts of him were all one again, and the diffuse yet darting pain returned. Anger came too. It seemed that the dead man mocked him, went ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... subject has lately appeared in Paris, and, as it is to form a volume of the valuable International Scientific series, published in English, French, German, and Italian, it can hardly fail to diffuse a correct popular understanding of the results thus far attained. The book is called "Le Magnetism Animal" (Animal Magnetism), and its authors are Messrs. Alfred Binet and Charles Fere of the medical staff of the Salpetriere Hospital for Nervous Disorders in Paris. It gives a history ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... for himself, best for the empire, and best for the contending parties, Christian and pagan, to promote their union or amalgamation as much as possible. Even sincere Christians do not seem to have been averse to this; perhaps they believed that the new doctrines would diffuse most thoroughly by incorporating in themselves ideas borrowed from the old, that Truth would assert her self in the end, and the impurity be cast off. In accomplishing this amalgamation, Helena, the empress-mother, aided by the court ladies, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... More words, less thought,—is the general rule. The man who endeavors to say something worth remembering in every sentence, becomes fastidious, and condenses like Tacitus. The vulgar love a more diffuse stream. The ornamentation that does not cover strength ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike |
