"Infinitive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the lead shall be written depends much on the purpose of the writer. Some of the commonest types of beginnings are with: (1) a simple statement; (2) a series of simple statements; (3) a conditional clause; (4) a substantive clause; (5) an infinitive phrase; (6) a participial phrase; (7) a prepositional phrase; (8) ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... the tide turning against us.' But most examples of the construction without the possessive form are OBVIOUSLY DUE TO MERE SLOVENLINESS.... 'In case of your being absent': here being is an infinitive [verbal, or participial, noun] qualified by the possessive your. 'In case of you being present': here being would have to be construed as a participle. The possessive construction is, in this case, the primitive and regular construction; THE OTHER IS A MERE ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... This is the gerundial infinitive after an adjective: comp. "good to eat," "deadly to ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... from Walter Pater. Charlotte Bronte's Maternal Great Aunt. A New Catholic History of England. The Genius of Shakespeare. Correspondence:—The Mendelian Hypothesis; The Split Infinitive; ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... le que retranche—name given in some French-Latin grammars to the Latin form which expresses by the infinitive verb and the accusative noun what in French is expressed by "que" ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... very fertile source of doubt is the fact that Hebrew verbs in the indicative mood lack the present, the past imperfect, the pluperfect, the future perfect, and other tenses most frequently employed in other languages; in the imperative and infinitive moods they are wanting in all except the present, and a subjunctive mood does not exist. (104) Now, although all these defects in moods and tenses may be supplied by certain fundamental rules of ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... Doctor's pronunciation of the r.) "He has wead Cicewo through every year for nearly fifty years for the sake of settling some important questions. He has discovered that while necesse est may be used indifferently either with the accusative and infinitive, or with ut with the subjunctive, necesse ewat can only be used before ut with the subjunctive. I should think it well worth living for to ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... dite? or Che coma dice? Quanto domandate? or Quanto domanda? Dove andate? or Dove va? Come vi chiamate? or Come si chiama? and so forth and so forth until one's mind seems to be arranged in tabulated columns, with special N.B.'s to use the infinitive ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Los Angeles newspaper devoted a whole page to the coming event. Adjective was piled on adjective, split infinitive on split infinitive. The dinner was to be given in the ballroom of the hotel.... The bank accounts of the assembled guests would total $400,000,000.... The terrapin had been specially imported from Baltimore.... The decorations were to be magnificent beyond the wildest dream.... The duke was to ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... every word the meaning of an entire proposition. When afterwards they began to perceive the difference between the subject and attribute, and between verb and noun, a distinction which required no mean effort of genius, the substantives for a time were only so many proper names, the infinitive was the only tense, and as to adjectives, great difficulties must have attended the development of the idea that represents them, since every adjective is an abstract word, and abstraction is an unnatural and very ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... be also seen in the above-mentioned most able production of Doederlein that the infinitive and the particles ut, ne and quod are joined with many verbs; that there is an interchange of ad and ut (An. II. 62); a joining of the present and the perfect, and a joining of the infinitive with those two tenses. In the midst of this damaging criticism Doederlein quotes ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... old collection of hymns, or the Rig-Veda, no longer sufficed. Three other collections or service-books were therefore added, making the Four Vedas. The word Veda is from the same root as the Latin vid-ere, to see: the early Greek feid-enai, infinitive of oida, I know: and the English wisdom, or I wit. The Brahmans taught that the Veda was divinely inspired, and that it was literally "the wisdom of God." There was, first, the Rig-Veda, or the hymns ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... are ours. He is busied with the same problems of ethics, of aesthetics, of style, even of grammar. I had not been three days in New York when I found myself plunged in a hot discussion of the "split infinitive," in which I was ranged with two Americans against a recreant Briton who defended the collocation. "It is a mistake to regard it is an Americanism," said one of the Americans. "It is as old as the English language, or at least as old as Wickliff. But it is unnecessary, and the best ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... if we substitute Old Fr. dis mal, which is found as early as 1256. Old Fr. di, a day, also survives in the names of the days of the week, lundi, etc. In remainder and remnant we have the infinitive and present participle of an obsolete Old French verb derived from Lat. reman[e]re. Manor and power are also Old French infinitives, the first now only used as a noun (manoir), the second represented by pouvoir. ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... jamais, plus, guere, rien, personne, pas un, que, aucun, nul, ni.-Order of negative particles with infinitive.—Omission of pas after savoir, pouvoir, cesser, oser.—Que introducing oui, non, etc., after verbs of saying, thinking and the like.—Idioms: aller chercher, envoyer chercher, vouloir bien, valoir ...
— French Conversation and Composition • Harry Vincent Wann
... used as auxiliaries at the same time, and different conjunctive particles are used with different tenses. The subjunctive, having but one form, in a sentence where there are two verbs is used as the second verb.[92] So by the use of the auxiliary particles the verb can form the infinitive and potential mood. The Mpongwe verb carries four tenses,—present, past or historical, perfect past, and future. Upon the principle of alliteration the perfect past tense, representing an action as completed, is formed ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... the Scripture, out of which, directly or by consequence can be gathered, that Adam was taught the names of all Figures, Numbers, Measures, Colours, Sounds, Fancies, Relations; much less the names of Words and Speech, as Generall, Speciall, Affirmative, Negative, Interrogative, Optative, Infinitive, all which are usefull; and least of all, of Entity, Intentionality, Quiddity, and other significant words ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... says—from whose work I first contrived to pick up the rudiments of Armenian—"Est verborum transitivorum, quorum infinitivus—" But I forgot, you don't understand Latin. He says there are certain transitive verbs, whose infinitive is in out-saniel; the preterite in outsi; the imperative in oue: for example, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... there was no mention of a dog of that description, or, indeed, of any dog at all. The book was wrapped in an outer cover that bore a recommendation of its contents, starting with a hideous split infinitive and describing it as an exquisite social comedy written from within. On the whole it seemed to the author that his book was flying false and undesirable colours, and since art lies outside the domesticities, he was hardly relieved when ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... must never think of style, and should sedulously abstain from reading Shakespeare, Bacon, Hooker, Walton, Gibbon, and other English and foreign classics. He can hardly be too reckless of grammar, and should always place adverbs and other words between "to" and the infinitive, thus: "Hubert was determined to energetically and on all possible occasions, oppose any attempt to entangle him with such." Here, it will be noticed, "such" is used as a pronoun, a delightful flower of speech not to be disregarded ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... the West, is the original order in which they existed in our language, and that our more polished mode of expressing them is a new and perhaps a corrupt enunciation. Another peculiarity is that of joining the letter y at the end of some verbs in the infinitive mood, as well as to parts of different conjugations, thus, "I can't sewy, nursy, reapy, to sawy, to sewy, to nursy, &c. A further peculiarity is the love of vowel sound, and opening out monosyllables of our polished dialect into ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... species of these I wish to bring before your notice. As old Villotte {343} says—from whose work I first contrived to pick up the rudiments of Armenian—'Est verborum transitivorum, quorum infinitivus . . .' but I forgot, you don't understand Latin. He says there are certain transitive verbs, whose infinitive is in outsaniel; the preterite in outsi; the imperative in oue; for example—parghat-soutsaniem, I irritate ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... had become used to his faults. He had one advantage, and that was a consideration. Although he was a Negro by birth he did not speak like a Negro, and nothing is so irritating as that hateful jargon in which all the pronouns are possessive and all the verbs infinitive. Let it be understood, then, that Frycollin was ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... and myself. In the informal speeches Lincoln frequently committed errors of speech like this. Even during the presidential period he shows a marked tendency to use the cleft infinitive. But in the carefully written addresses the language ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln |
