"Infinitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wanting, warped, no doubt, by her early Quaker training. That her travels gave her more pain than pleasure was, perhaps, not so much that she had no appreciation of aesthetic beauty, but that she quickly grasped the infinitude of human misery; not because her soul did not feel the heights to which art had risen, but that it vibrated in every fiber to the depths to which mankind had fallen. Wandering through a gorgeous palace one day, she exclaimed, "What do you find to admire ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... all the summer morning, recurring to a few of the infinitude of subjects we used to compare notes upon; though we were neither of us given to wordiness, and never talked but when we had something to say. Often—as on this day—we sat for hours in a pleasant dreaminess, ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... greatness of the future makes the present little, but the little present is great, because its littleness is the parent of the great future. 'The child is father of the man'; and earth's narrow range widens out into the infinitude of eternity and of heaven. The only thing that gives real greatness and sublimity to our mortal life is its being the vestibule to another. Historically you will find that, wherever faith in a future life has become dim, as it has become dim in large sections of the educated classes to-day, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... than stimulates. [Footnote: The lost Utopia of Hippodamus provided rewards for inventors, but unless Aristotle misunderstood him, and it is certainly the fate of all Utopias to be more or less misread, the inventions contemplated were political devices.] An infinitude of nonsense about the Greek mind would never have been written if the distinctive intellectual and artistic quality of Plato's time, its extraordinarily clear definition of certain material conditions as absolutely permanent, coupled with its politico-social instability, had been borne ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... render the verdict. We might more safely and properly say that they will render a number of verdicts, all in their way and sphere just and true, since in no one of the arts so much as in this of all times and all nations is it so difficult to subject the infinitude of styles and fancies to one rigid canon. That the Greek vase is an absolute exemplar in grace and elegance of form every one hastens to concede. But who would hesitate to give up a part of what the Greeks have bequeathed us rather than lose the marvellous filigree in clay of "Henri Deux," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... find'—that is a wonderful and a merciful word. It indicates the infinitude of Christ's patient forgiveness and perseverance. We tire of searching. 'Can a mother forget' or abandon her seeking after a lost child? Yes! if it has gone on for so long as to show that further search is hopeless, she will go home ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... military trappings of the handsome cavaliers, (there was war at that time between the glorious empire of Fairydom and the weak and infatuated republic of Elfland on its southern borders, and the epaulette and spurs were the only pass to the hearts of the fair,) imbuing them with an infinitude of prismatic hues, all softened into a kind of timed starlight, exquisite as the dying voice of music. In this gorgeous saloon, at the head of which sat, well pleased, the benevolent old King Paterflor and his ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... foreboding—they are the dust from the aurora's glittering cloak. But now it is growing again; new lightnings shoot up, and the endless game begins afresh. And all the time this utter stillness, impressive as the symphony of infinitude. I have never been able to grasp the fact that this earth will some day be spent and desolate and empty. To what end, in that case, all this beauty, with not a creature to rejoice in it? Now I begin to divine it. This is the coming earth—here ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... hand and to the left towered mighty constellations, that by self-repetitions and answers from afar, that by counter-positions, built up triumphal gates, whose architraves, whose archways—horizontal, upright—rested, rose—at altitudes, by spans— that seemed ghostly from infinitude. Without measure were the architraves, past number were the archways, beyond memory the gates. Within were stairs that scaled the eternities above, that descended to the eternities below: above was below, below was above, to the man stripped of gravitating body: depth was swallowed ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of lovely effects, the infinitude of change, is something not to be believed by any who has not seen it. No view that I am acquainted with in the world is at all comparable to this for delicacy, charm, exquisiteness, dainty coloring, and bewildering rapidity of change. It keeps a person drunk with pleasure all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... knew not God to be a Spirit, not one who hath parts extended in length and breadth, or whose being was bulk; for every bulk is less in a part than in the whole: and if it be infinite, it must be less in such part as is defined by a certain space, than in its infinitude; and so is not wholly every where, as Spirit, as God. And what that should be in us, by which we were like to God, and might be rightly said to be after the image of God, I was ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... intellectual strength weakened her heart? Has she no charm? Can she descend to those tender nothings by which a woman occupies, and soothes and interests the man she loves? Will she not cast aside a sentiment when it no longer responds to some vision of infinitude which she grasps and contemplates in her soul? Who can scale the heights to which her eyes have risen? Yes, a man fears to find in such a woman something unattainable, unpossessable, unconquerable. The woman of strong mind should remain a symbol; ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... six weeks by the sea in Wales, the expenses of this tour being paid for by a professional engagement, so that my seventh birthday was spent in an ecstasy of happiness, on golden sands, under a brilliant sky, and in sight of the glorious azure ocean beating in from an infinitude of melting horizons. Here, too, my Mother, perched in a nook of the high rocks, surveyed the west, and forgot for a little while her weakness and ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... was obviously to the general interest that they should become acquainted, and if possible establish friendly relations, with any human inhabitant who might be sharing their own strange destiny in being rolled away upon a new planet into the infinitude of space. All difference of race, all distinction of nationality, must be merged into the one thought that, few as they were, they were the sole surviving representatives of a world which it seemed exceedingly improbable that they would ever see again; and common sense dictated that they ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... her mighty hand, And lo! it is a toy for babes to toss, And all its shining imagery but dross, To those that in her awful presence stand; As sun-confronting eagles o'er the land That lies below, they send their gaze across The common intervals of gain and loss, And hope's infinitude without a strand. ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... virtue. What title-deeds could I show for such a right? Straightway it seemed as if the centre of a whole system of dissatisfaction were removed, and as if the system collapsed. God, creating from His infinite resources a whole infinitude of beings, had created me with a definite position on the scale, and that position only could I claim. Cease the trick of contrast. If I can by any means get myself to consider myself alone without reference ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... to be only for our good, giving strength, righteousness, and peace. But the same double possibility which I have been pointing out as inherent in all externals belongs here too, and a man can determine to which aspect of the many-sided infinitude of the divine nature he shall stand in relation. The glass in stained windows is so coloured as that parts of it cut off, and prevent from passing through, different rays of the pure white light. And ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... view of philosophy expressed by Pater, we may place that of another poet, an adherent, indeed, of one of the most purely sensuous schools of poetry. Arthur Symons states as his belief, "The poet who is not also philosopher is like a flower without a root. Both seek the same infinitude; the one apprehending the idea, the other the image." [Footnote: The Romantic Movement, p. 129.] That is, to the poet, ideality is the hidden life ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... against the pale sky! And besides all this, the great sea; sometimes tumultuous and terrible, and sometimes so calm as scarcely to rock one; and then the flight of the sea-gulls, which are lost in infinitude, and then return, to fan you with their wings. Oh, it is beautiful! Yes, far more beautiful ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... Among the infinitude of white substances, the artist finds that there are but three white pigments—those of lead, zinc, and baryta. The first possesses the greatest opacity, while the second and third are most durable. ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... was great need of mathematical growth, since mathematics was no longer to be used merely as mental Indian clubs or dumb-bells, where a limited assortment would answer all practical needs, but as an implement of mental penetration into the infinitude of barriers which have checked progress along various lines and seem to require an infinite variety ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... of view. For in whatsoever things there is an essential order of one to another, if the first be removed, those that are ordained to the first, must of necessity be removed also. Wherefore the Philosopher proves (Phys. viii, 5) that we cannot proceed to infinitude in causes of movement, because then there would be no first mover, without which neither can the others move, since they move only through being moved by the first mover. Now there is to be observed a twofold order ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... regarded as a breach of a treaty, or as a violation of respect and honor, must remain indefinite, since many and various injuries can easily accrue from the wide range of the interests of the States and from the complex relations of their citizens. The State may identify its infinitude and honor with every one of its single aspects. And if a State, as a strong individuality, has experienced an unduly protracted internal rest, it will naturally be more inclined to irritability, in order to find an occasion and field for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... recent times. The author of the "System of Nature," which appeared before the first French Revolution, was an avowed and most reckless Atheist;[129] yet he ascribes to Nature most of the attributes which are usually supposed to belong to God, such as self-existence, eternity, immutability, infinitude, and unity; and if the intellectual and moral attributes may seem to be omitted, as they must be, to some extent, in any system of Atheism, yet thought, design, and will, are expressly ascribed to Nature.[130] And the only difference between the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... Milbank.[72] Again he drifted away from the right path, but, this time, with the resolution of keeping his heart independent, his soul free and unfettered by any indissoluble tie.[73] But in coming to this determination at the age of twenty-eight, he had not consulted his heart, ever athirst for infinitude. Vainly he sought to lull it, to keep it earthward, to laugh at his own aspirations—useless labor! One day it broke loose. Nature is like water; sooner or later it must find its equilibrium. From that day forth Psyche's lamp had no ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... last, that sunset sky Shall not be touched with deeper hues than this; But we shall ride the lightning ere we die And seize our brief infinitude of bliss, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... proud as horses ever were. Automobiles proudly rolling, swings swinging, people passing, and the swimming of all the water fowls, the swans, the Japanese ducks and the little mud hens. Infinitude of movement, infinitude of life, ineffable beauty. There must be a God. There must be Something back of ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... no thunder of waves, because it had no shore, no rocks of thought against which to break in speech. He sat down on the topmost point; and slowly, in the silence and the loneliness, from the unknown fountains of the eternal consciousness, the heart of the child filled. Above him towered infinitude, immensity, potent on his mind through shape to his eye in a soaring dome of blue—the one visible symbol informed and insouled of the eternal, to reveal itself thereby. In it, centre and life, lorded the great sun, beginning to cast shadows to the south and east ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... for freedom's sake, of pioneers streaming westward to establish self-government in yet another sovereign state. Only the great dome of St. Peter's itself has ever clutched my heart as did that modest curve which had sequestered from infinitude in a place small enough for my child's mind, the courage and endurance which I could not comprehend so long as it was lost in "the void of unresponsible space" under the vaulting sky itself. But through all my vivid sensations there persisted the image of the eagle in the corridor below and ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... reflection and in the original, all the books of all nations and ages, criticising, as we go along, both originals and criticisms. Every subject, said Burke—we remember his remark, though not the very words—branches out into infinitude. The point of view draws a horizon—the goal determines a track. "The British Critics" themselves ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... and with, of course, a fire-brigade which could prevent the undue spread of the devouring element into neighboring houses, let that reform it! In such odor is the Foreign Office too, if it were not that the Public, oppressed and nearly stifled with a mere infinitude of bad odors, neglects this one,—in fact, being able nearly always to avoid the street where it is, escapes this one, and (except a passing curse, once in the quarter or so) as good as forgets the ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... of some advantage to me. My social disposition, when not checked by some modifications of spirited pride, was like our catechism definition of infinitude, without bounds or limits. I formed several connections with other younkers, who possessed superior advantages; the youngling actors who were busy in the rehearsal of parts, in which they were ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... nature of man; piquancy and charm to that which serves and modifies this. Infinitude and immortality are of the one; the strictest finiteness belongs to the other. In the first you can never be too deep and rich; in the second never too delicate and measured. Yet you will easily find a man in whom the latter so abounds as not only to shut ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... reflected skylight and here lost in a shadow, took up for one acute moment the greasy yellow irradiation of a newly lit gaslamp as they vanished round the bend. Beyond, spread a darkling marsh of homes, an infinitude of little smoking hovels, and emergent, meager churches, public-houses, board schools, and other buildings amidst the prevailing chimneys of Swathinglea. To the right, very clear and relatively high, the Bantock Burden pit-mouth was marked by a gaunt lattice bearing a great black ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... that it is to be maintained with a better spirit. I cannot help feeling that generations as boundless as shall spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific shores wait for the result. The importance of everything that is doing for the improvement of this country is fast swelling to infinitude. These, dear sir, are some of my dreams, I fear I must call them, rather than waking thoughts. It seems to me not a little to know the age and country we live in. I think, and think, and think that something must be done, and often [138] I ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... much more rare than the ether, as this ether is more rare than the metal, and we arrive at once (in spite of all the school dogmas) at a unique mass—an unparticled matter. For although we may admit infinite littleness in the atoms themselves, the infinitude of littleness in the spaces between them is an absurdity. There will be a point—there will be a degree of rarity, at which, if the atoms are sufficiently numerous, the interspaces must vanish, and the mass absolutely coalesce. But ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... who thinks with mortal ken To pierce Infinitude which doth enfold Three persons in one substance. Seek not, then, O Mortal race, for reasons, but believe And be content, for had all been seen No need there was for Mary to conceive. Men have ye known who thus desired ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... resolute care, the foam on a wave, or the outline of the foliage of a large tree; but in these cases, when care is at fault, carelessness will help, and the dash of the brush will in some measure give wildness to the churning of the foam, and infinitude to the shaking of the leaves. But chance will not help us with the mountain. Its fine and faintly organized edge seems to be definitely traced against the sky; yet let us set ourselves honestly to follow it, and we find, on the instant, it has disappeared: and that for ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... skin, merino combinations, unwieldy garments requiring a contortionist's education to put on without entangling your front and hind limbs. The "combies" were specially buttoned with an infinitude of small, scarcely visible buttons, which always wanted sewing on and replacing, and were peevish about remaining in the button hole. Often, too, the "combies" (I really can't keep writing the full name) had to be tied here and there with little white ribbons which ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... light and glory unapproachable, parent of angels and of men! next thee I implore omnipotent king, redeemer of that lost remnant, whose nature thou didst assume, ineffable and everlasting love! and thee the third subsistence of the divine infinitude, illuminating spirit, the joy and solace of created things! one ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... one street in Gunsight, running grandly down to the station; but the rest is mostly vacant lots and scattered adobe houses, creeping out into the infinitude of the desert. At noon, when he had come to town, the street was deserted, but now it was coming to life. Wild-eyed Mexican boys, mounted on bare-backed ponies, came galloping up from the corrals; freight ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... has poisoned the earth, the waters, and the living creatures, flocks and herds, and the babes that know not their right hand from their left—neither Memphis, Gomorrah, nor Cahors are themselves likely to recognize: but, as I pause in front of the infinitude of the evil that I cannot find so much as thought to follow—how much less words to speak!—a letter is brought to me which gives what perhaps may be more impressive in its single and historical example, than all the general evidence gathered already in ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... expression. At any rate, during the hour that I sat gazing along the high vista of Bourges the interior of the great vessel corresponded to my vision of the evening before. There is a tranquil largeness, a kind of infinitude, about such an edifice; it soothes and purifies the spirit, it illuminates the mind. There are two aisles, on either side, in addition to the nave—five in all—and, as I have said, there are no transepts; an omission which lengthens the vista, so that from my place ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... earthquakes, the Revolutions and the Warring Religions, all the glory and shame, the wild loves and bitter hatreds of humanity—even Birth and Death—but minor notes in the Grand Symphony, the Harmony of Infinitude, the little man who has undertaken the management of the microphone, without suspecting its significance, distracts us with the unwished for and utterly useless information that the Voice coming from beyond Time and Space, out of ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... other patterns connect with them, meshes and meshes of harmonies, spread out, outside our narrow field of momentary vision, an endless web, like the constellations which, strung on their threads of mutual dependence, cover and fill up infinitude. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... can only speak An earth-born language, that does not reveal The infinitude of duty which I seek To utter and ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Have you ever sounded the gulf which lies between the lives of a bachelor and a married man? Listen. As a bachelor you can say to yourself: 'I shall never exhibit more than a certain amount of the ridiculous; the public will think of me what I choose it to think.' Married, you'll drop into the infinitude of the ridiculous! Bachelor, you can make your own happiness; you enjoy some to-day, you do without it to-morrow; married, you must take it as it comes; and the day you want it you will have to go without ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... stage, if we may share the ordinary indulgence of language in using that term, with an awe and delicacy suitable to the dignity of the subject, permits the Divinity to speak, but does not presume to employ his person; the majesty of Infinitude utters itself, but no robe-maker undertakes to dress it for the occasion. In the present instance, how exalted, how inspiring, is the appearance of God! how free from offensive diminution and costumal familiarity! "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... rather, to enjoy, to convey enjoyably to others, the full savour of a particular moment in the development of his craft, the moment of the perfecting of restful form, before the mere consciousness of technical mastery in delineation urges forward the art of sculpture to a bewildering infinitude of motion. In opposition to the ease, the freedom, of others, his aim is, by a voluntary restraint in the exercise of such technical mastery, [294] to achieve nothing less than the impeccable, within certain narrow limits. He still hesitates, is self-exacting, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... freedom from war and crime, their relative immunity from pain and zymotic disease, and all their other negative superiorities. This is all too finite, we say; we see too well the vacuum beyond. It lacks the note of infinitude and mystery, and may all be dealt with in the don't-care mood. No need of agonizing ourselves or making others agonize for these good ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... did not answer at once. He pointed across the Ottawa, where the blue shimmering Laurentians seem to recede and melt into a domain of infinitude. "Why should we want Imperial Federation?" he answered. "We have an empire the size of Europe, whose problems we must work out. Why should Canadians go to Westminster to legislate on a deceased wife's sister's bills and Welsh disestablishment and silly socialistic panaceas for the unfit to plunder ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into infinitude itself."—CARLYLE. ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... flashed up at odd moments intimations of a future revolt. She remembered one evening at the opera when the curtain had risen upon a particularly well-done piece of stage scenery—a broad space of deep desolateness, reaching away under an infinitude of night sky, illumined by stars. The suggestion it brought of vast wastes of lonely, rugged earth, of a great, blue-arched vault of starry sky, pervaded her soul with ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... force, with which it acts in union and concert, and which exactly counteracts its pulling power and influence, it would soon draw star to star, and world to world, crashing and heaping them together in ruinous and dire confusion. So that, instead of the infinitude of worlds which now exist, which flash and sparkle in the heavens, and in their intricate, elaborate, and mazy motions move through the vast infinity like stately armies on the march, there would only be one agglomeration of matter, a silent and solitary mass existing ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... respect, a moral man, we may break some links of that network of traditions spun for us by our teachers at so much an hour, and which throws a hood over us as it is thrown over a falcon, to keep it from flying in the infinitude of space. I respect every sincere belief, even hat which I look on as a prejudice, and I insist that my own be respected. As a conclusion of my profession of faith, I am willing to admit that even a republican convinced ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... must ever seem to the wisest and greatest of men when brought into contact with the great things of God—that which they know is as nothing, and less than nothing, to the infinitude ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... with the goal it reaches in the end. She exists independently of us, but yet she exists to suggest to us what we may become, to awaken in us dim longings and desires, to surprise us into confession of our inadequacy, to startle us with perceptions of an infinitude we do not possess as yet but may possess; to make us feel our ignorance, weakness, want of finish; and by partly exhibiting the variety, knowledge, love, power and finish of God, to urge us forward in humble pursuit to the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... the authoress goes, sowing right and left the most transparent absurdities and misstatements with what Carlyle well calls 'a composed stupidity, and a cheerful infinitude of ignorance.' Who should know, if not she, to be sure? Had not Byron told her all about it? and was not his ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... throughout the Homeric poems, and from which even the gods are not exempt, Schlegel well observes, "This power extends also to the world of gods— for the Grecian gods are mere powers of nature—and although immeasurably higher than mortal man, yet, compared with infinitude, they are on an equal footing with himself."—'Lectures on the Drama' ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... human body, without considering it in its niceties of anatomy, lets us see how absolutely necessary labour is for the right preservation of it. There must be frequent motions and agitations, to mix, digest, and separate the juices contained in it, as well as to clear and cleanse that infinitude of pipes and strainers of which it is composed, and to give their solid parts a more firm and lasting tone. Labour or exercise ferments the humours, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... strange habits and so-called instincts. The older I grow the more marvellous seem to me the mere variety of form and habit in plants and animals, and the unerring certitude with which from a minute germ the whole complex organism is built up, true to the type of its kind in all the infinitude of details! It is this which gives such a charm to the watching of plants growing, and of kittens so rapidly developing their ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... to estimate our loss, because it draws upon infinitude; there was so much growth yet possible to this soul; to all that she was not she might yet have enlarged; and while at first her audience had limits, she would in a calm and prosperous future have become that which she herself described in saying that a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... hit on the device of the clockmaker's pendulum, and uses the earth for its bob; that the history of each oscillation, which seems so novel to us the actors, is but the history of the last oscillation repeated; nay more, that in the unthinkable infinitude of time the sun throws off the earth and catches it again a thousand times as a circus rider throws up a ball, and that the total of all our epochs is but the moment between the toss and the catch, has the colossal mechanism ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... sweet River! where maple, elm or oak Have spread their boughs and verdant foliage, And have felt the cool, refreshing breezes Which blew from off thy stream in Summer's heat. There I would indulge, awhile, my fancy; Give her the reins, and let her soar aloft Into the vast infinitude of space, Or try to tie her ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... when at his Word the formless Mass, This Worlds material Mould, came to a Heap: Confusion heard his Voice, and wild Uproar Stood rul'd, stood vast Infinitude confin'd. Till at his second Bidding Darkness fled, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... one of those nights when the stars shine down in sparkling brilliance and envelop the rocks in a bluish shimmer and vapour, so that it seems like a resurrection of glorified souls. One of the disciples looked up at the stars shining in the sky in holy stillness, and said: "Brother, this infinitude of ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... the mountains found an outlet in prolific literary output, and a system of art and ethics destined to leaven the mass of human thought, the infinitude and grandeur of mountain scenery had a dispersive effect on Javelle's mind. I can so well understand him. He wandered over the chain of Valais—my mountains (each worshipper has his special idols)—the Dent ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... revelation. For the divinest thing in God is love, and the true 'glory of God' is neither some symbolical flashing light nor the pomp of mere power and majesty; nor even those inconceivable and incommunicable attributes which we christen with names like Omnipotence and Omnipresence and Infinitude, and the like. These are all at the fringes of the brightness. The true central heart and lustrous light of the glory of God lie In His love, and of that glory Christ is the unique Representative and Revealer, because He is the only ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... back to earth all day to his tinkling little tune. On the summit of the cliff I had everything I wanted and had come to seek—the wildness and freedom of untilled earth; an unobstructed prospect, hills beyond hills of malachite, stretching away along the coast into infinitude, long leagues of red sea-wall and the wide expanse and everlasting freshness of ocean. And the village itself, the little old straggling place that had so grand a setting, I quickly found that the woman in the cottage had not succeeded in giving me a false ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... stronger, healthier, and more capable of high effort. But dispense with the Spirit of the Whole, and every movement, though it SEEM forward, is in truth BACKWARD;—study involves bewilderment,—science becomes a reeling infinitude of atoms, madly whirling together for no purpose save death, or, at the best, incessant Change, in which mortal life is counted as nothing:—and Nature frowns at us, a vast Question, to which there is no Answer,—an incomprehensible Force, against which ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... quits us as heat; and between his entrance and departure the multiform powers of our globe appear. They are all special forms of solar power—the molds into which his strength is temporarily poured in passing from its source through infinitude. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... never imprest the imagination more than when approaching it by night on the top of a coach you saw its numberless lights flaring, as Tennyson says, "like a dreary dawn." The most impressive approach is now by the river through the infinitude of docks, quays, and shipping. London is not a city, but a province of brick and stone. Hardly even from the top of St. Paul's or of the Monument can anything like a view of the city ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... so, in like manner, there are inquisitors of the same class appointed in every country, and chiefly, in Great Britain and the colonies, who are sworn to secrecy, and of course communicate intelligence to this sacred congregation of all that can be conceived capable of comprehension within the infinitude of its affairs. We must, therefore, either believe that the court of Rome is not in earnest, and that this apparatus of universal jurisdiction is but a shadow,—an assumption which is contrary to all experience,—or we must understand that the spies and familiars ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... whole external world as perceived by us is one great illusion: if we gave the reins to fancy we might call it a mirage, a piece of witchery, conjured up by the spells of some unknown magician to bewilder poor ignorant humanity. Outside of ourselves there stretches away on every side an infinitude of space without sound, without light, without colour, a solitude traversed only in every direction by an inconceivably complex web of silent and impersonal forces. That, if I understand it aright, is the general conception of the world which modern ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... nearer her. She felt something as she had felt years ago when she had said to Dowie. "I want to kiss you, Dowie." Her eyes were pools of childish tenderness because she so well understood the infinitude of the friendly tact which drew her within its own circle with the light humour of its "I don't ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his bill to annex Dominica. Somebody had said that we had plenty of Dominicans already in the Southern States. This was net so. He wanted to be Governor-General of Dominica. It was true that silverware was not rife in that island, but there was an infinitude of potential voters, who could be converted into coin. The House refused to see it, however, and proceeded to discuss the case of SYPHER. Mr. BROOKS said SYPHER was nothing. He did not see how SYPHER, who was a nullity, could be figured out to be a member of Congress. Besides, SYPHER ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... observatory himself knew, they began to worry themselves regarding her revolution round the earth, whereupon twenty scientific reviews immediately came to the rescue. They pointed out to them that the firmament, with its infinitude of stars, may be considered as one vast dial-plate, upon which the moon travels, indicating the true time to all the inhabitants of the earth; that it is during this movement that the Queen of Night exhibits her different phases; that the moon is full when she is in opposition ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... self-sufficing individual, furthermore endowed with reason. A fortiori is the All a person, because if the Supreme is not self-sufficing, then nothing or nobody is. Hence we have to point out in reply to the strictures of the opposite philosophic school that so far from infinitude being an obstacle to individuality or personality, the Infinite alone, in the strict sense of the word, can be called a person, because in the Infinite or the All alone is absolute self-sufficiency ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... and soul have been prepared, the next step is concentration, aspiration. Then it is borne in upon the poet that in the infinite and in the eternal alone can we find rest, can we find ourselves; and towards this infinitude we must ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... Winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm the earth; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of winter winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable according to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into infinitude of appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his service; cold juice, or flowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil, preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm; and all these presented in forms ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... up to the first degree, above mentioned, is as follows: That the Supreme Intelligence of the Universe—the Absolute—has manifested the being that we call Man—the highest manifestation on this planet. The Absolute has manifested an infinitude of forms of life in the Universe, including distant worlds, suns, planets, etc., many of these forms being unknown to us on this planet, and being impossible of conception by the mind of the ordinary man. But these lessons have ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... come? Where dwells that Supreme Spirit, and how does He have His sport with all created things? The fire is in the wood; but who awakens it suddenly? Then it turns to ashes, and where goes the force of the fire? The true guru teaches that He has neither limit nor infinitude. Kabr says: "Brahma suits His language to the understanding of ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... as to what I had been doing with myself since our parting; why had I not called before? had I decided upon my future movements? etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I replied by enumerating a few of the infinitude of business matters that a shipmaster usually has to attend to immediately upon his arrival in port—especially if that port be a foreign one—and, in conclusion, told them that, having resolved to remain in Eastern waters until I should have ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... towards the summit he is aware of "Earth's most exquisite disclosures, heaven's own God in evidence"; he stands face to face with Nature—"rather with Infinitude." All through his mountain ascent the vigour of life is aroused within him; and, as he returns—there is ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... thorough and accurate knowledge of the country from the Frozen Ocean to the frontiers of Persia and China, and of all its manners and customs. The prisoner who meditates escape, he says, is absorbed in an infinitude of details and calculations, of which it is only possible to give the final result. Slowly and painfully, little by little, he accumulated the indispensable articles—disguise, money, food, a weapon, passports. The last were the most essential and the most difficult: two were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... striking and interesting, were each in turn speedily examined, realised, and, so to speak, exhausted; and this once done, there was no greater occupation to the mind in the continuance of strange than in that of familiar scenery. The infinitude of surrounding blackness, filled as it were with points of light more or less brilliant, when once its effects had been scrutinised, and when nothing more remained to be noted, afforded certainly a more agreeable, but scarcely a more interesting or absorbing, outlook than the ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... procession of their feminine miseries. They hold Sir Charles Grandison in horror. What can be more contrary to their nature than a tranquil, perfect love? They want emotions; happiness without storms is not happiness to them. Women with souls that are strong enough to bring infinitude into love are angelic exceptions; they are among women what noble geniuses are among men. Their great passions are rare as masterpieces. Below the level of such love come compromises, conventions, passing and contemptible irritations, as in ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... so solemn, as it varied sound, Fill'd his fond heart with reveries profound; He felt the infinitude of thoughts that pass And guide and govern that enormous mass. The cares that agitate, the creeds that blind, The woes that waste the many-master'd kind, The distance great that still remains to trace, Ere sober sense can harmonize the race, Held him suspense, imprest with ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... and crisscrossed by millions of fine lines like those upon a spectroscopic plate, but with this difference—that within each line I sensed the presence of multitudes of finer lines, dwindling into infinitude, ultramicroscopic, traced by some instrument compared to whose delicacy our finest tool would be as a crowbar to the ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... a few moments in silence, his countenance assumed an indefinable expression, and seemed to read in the countenance of the young girl an infinitude of memories and dreams. Finally, completely carried away by a feeling he could not control, he folded Aminta in his arms and clasped her ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky- way. Remembering what it was—what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light—I felt the might and strength of ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... celestial mechanics but his feeling as he watched it now was inexpressible. It occurred to him that perhaps this was indeed why he was here, because he could appreciate such experiences best. He had been told the stars would be bright, unblinking, and an infinitude in extent, but could mere descriptions or ...
— Egocentric Orbit • John Cory
... with delight; But what created mind can comprehend Thir number, or the wisdom infinite That brought them forth, but hid thir causes deep. I saw when at his Word the formless Mass, This worlds material mould, came to a heap: Confusion heard his voice, and wilde uproar 710 Stood rul'd, stood vast infinitude confin'd; Till at his second bidding darkness fled, Light shon, and order from disorder sprung: Swift to thir several Quarters hasted then The cumbrous Elements, Earth, Flood, Aire, Fire, And this Ethereal quintessence of Heav'n Flew upward, spirited with various ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... black rock, here and there covered by scanty herbage, block the course of the river in some places in such profusion, that its entire bed seems to be taken up by them. For a distance of seventeen miles the main body of water is broken up into an infinitude of small channels in its width of two miles; several of the streams thus formed present, apparently, a tempting course to the navigator, so calm and safe do they appear, but they conceal ledges of hidden reefs, and are unexpectedly forced into narrow passages ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... cast, All speak alike of mightier energy, Received and pass'd along. The life that flows Through space and time, bursts in a loftier source. What's spaced and timed is bounded, therefore shows A power beyond, a timeless, spaceless force, Templed in that infinitude, before Whose light-veil'd porch men wonder ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... from the living ray I met, That, if mine eyes had turn'd away, methinks, I had been lost; but, so embolden'd, on I pass'd, as I remember, till my view Hover'd the brink of dread infinitude. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... good of concentrated mental delineation of the ideal. By such exercises of mind, a wholesome environment can be built up, even if at first the process seems almost mechanical. But instead of such self-building, out of an infinitude of divine material, the average man is inclined to vacate the control of his being, put his body into the keeping of his doctor, and his soul [himself] into the care of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... offence. But in the Puritan scheme (and The Scarlet Letter, save for that one treacherous, warm human moment in the woodland where "all was spoken," lies wholly within the set framework of Puritanism) there is no forgiveness for a sin of the flesh. There is only Law, Law stretching on into infinitude until the mind shudders at it. Hawthorne knew his Protestant New England through and through. The Scarlet Letter is the most striking example in our national literature of that idealization of physical purity, but hundreds ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... philosophy has ever explained this inexplicable mystery, for it cannot be understood by the embodied Soul, whose vision and comprehension are dulled by the grossness of its physical envelope. Even the illuminated Soul that quits its prison house, to bathe in the light of infinitude, can only recollect flashes of the Vision Glorious once it returns again ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... under the morning dew. Men's brains whirl once more, and expand into an airy vault, as large as heaven itself, giddy with expectancy. From high up comes the sound of the passage birds in flight; the air is dizzy with its own infinitude. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... self in this most essential point, I conjure you and every Man of Influence by Example and by all Means to stem the Torrent of Vice, which, as a celebrated Author tells us, "prevailing would destroy, not only a Kingdom or an Empire, but the whole moral Dominion of the Almighty throughout the Infinitude of Space." I have Time only to add that I am ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... the master's moment—caught all aback with all our bulk and tonnage and infinitude of gear, and our heaven-aspiring masts two hundred feet above our heads. And our master was there, in sheeting flame, slender, casual, imperturbable, with two men—one of them a murderer—under him to pass on and enforce his will, and with a horde of ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... confidence, innocence, and fervor of affection, distinguish both heroines; but the love of Juliet is more vehement, the love of Thekla is more calm, and reposes more on itself; the love of Juliet gives us the idea of infinitude, and that of Thekla of eternity: the love of Juliet flows on with an increasing tide, like the river pouring to the ocean; and the love of Thekla stands unalterable, and enduring as the rock. In the heart of Thekla love shelters as in ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Burns's" widow, not forgetting McDiarmid the author; thence to Moffat, and up that dismal glen, the pass of Moffat, to the grey mare's tail, a waterfall, so called from its resembling the silvery tail of a grey mare; and truly, if the simile were extended into infinitude, which from its sublimity it would admit of, we might compare its waving, silky stream swinging over the broad face of its lofty grey rock, to the tail of the pale horse of Revelation, over the chaos of time. It was a sombre, solemn sort of a day, and the dense clouds hung curtaining down ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... the habits are in a manner associated, or have a sort of natural affinity. If such be its tendency, what moral responsibility rests upon the man who shall recommend it, either by professional advice, or by his own example! What an infinitude of moral evil must follow in its train, if drunkenness be its legitimate effect! What woes, what sorrows, what wounds without cause, may spring into existence at your bidding, when you prescribe the habitual use of this baneful plant! By such a prescription you incautiously open a fountain ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... universe which he termed The World. Shortly after his arrival he writes to Mersenne that it will probably be finished in 1633, but meanwhile asks him not to disclose the secret to his Parisian friends. Already anxieties appear as to the theological verdict upon two of his fundamental views—the infinitude of the universe, and the earth's rotation round the sun.[16] But towards the end of year 1633 we find him writing as follows:—"I had intended sending you my World as a New Year's gift, and a fortnight ago I was still minded to send you a fragment of the work, if the whole of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... dissolving into a haze—or, rather, each line seemed reproduced an infinite number of times, as the edge of a vibrating saw shows an infinitude of edges. The violet fire was becoming still more diffused. It hovered over the waters, a pale, flickering glow. And simultaneously the walls of water began to break ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... done before to a wild spot on the bay, the traditional site of a little Greek colony, which, having had its eager, stirring life at the time when Etruria was still a power in Italy, had perished in the age of the civil wars. In the absolute transparency of the air on this gracious day, an infinitude of detail from sea and shore reached the eye with sparkling clearness, as the two lads sped rapidly over the waves—Flavian at work suddenly, from time to time, with his tablets. They reached land at last. The coral ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... great thought that the true glory of the divine nature is its tenderness. The lowliness and death of Christ are the glory of God! Not in the awful attributes which separate that inconceivable Nature from us, not in the eternity of His existence, nor in the Infinitude of His Being, not in the Omnipotence of His unwearied arm, nor in fire-eyed Omniscience, but in the pity and graciousness which bend lovingly over us, is the true glory of God. These pompous 'attributes' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... forces, who is he but—Spring?—Hand in hand with Spring, Sabbath descends from heaven unto earth; and are not their feet beautiful on the mountains? Small as is the voice of that tinkling bell from that humble spire, overtopped by its coeval trees, yet is it heard in the heart of infinitude. So is the bleating of these silly sheep on the braes—and so is that voice of psalms, all at once rising so spirit-like, as if the very kirk were animated, and singing a joyous song in the wilderness to the ear of the Most High. For all things are under his care—those that, as we dream, have ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... strengths, directions, qualities. Rain would fall scarcely anywhere at the same times and in the same quantities as at present. In short, the meteorological conditions thousands of miles off, on all sides, would be more or less revolutionized. Thus, without taking into account the infinitude of modifications which these changes would produce upon the flora and fauna, both of land and sea, the reader will perceive the immense heterogeneity of the results wrought out by one force, when that force expends itself upon a previously complicated ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... can happen, whether the thing which we call civilization is to be the great triumph of the ages, or whether the human race is to go back into the melting pot, is a question being determined by an infinitude of contests between enlightenment and ignorance: precisely such a contest as occurs now, when you, the reader, encounter a man who has thought his way out to the light, and comes to urge you to ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... to explain those things which must necessarily follow from the essence of God or the Being eternal and infinite; not indeed to explain all these things, for we have demonstrated that an infinitude of things must follow in an infinite number of ways,—but to consider those things only which may conduct us, as it were, by the hand to a knowledge of the human mind and its ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... to find, in spite of himself, that his cell was small, whereas, when viewed by the eye of faith, he ought to consider it immense, because the infinitude of God began there. ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... serious thought, even in our times of quietness and peace. I understand not the most dangerous, because most attractive form of modern infidelity, which, pretending to exalt the beneficence of the Deity, degrades it into a reckless infinitude of mercy, and blind obliteration of the work of sin; and which does this chiefly by dwelling on the manifold appearances of God's kindness on the face of creation. Such kindness is indeed everywhere and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... into the dark abyss of such blind idolatry I find a disorderly confusion of the vilest and most abominable things [77] worthy of its inventor, although in examining the walls within this infernal cave, I discover an infinitude of loathsome creatures, foul, obscene, truly damnable, it is my task, aided by the light of truth, to reduce them to order—so that we who upon opening our eyes find ourselves within the light of truth ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... its intricacy that only three men understood it— Mr. Gladstone himself, his Attorney-General for Ireland, and Mr. T. M. Healy. So far from shrinking from, he seemed to revel in, the toil of mastering an infinitude of technical details. Yet neither did he want boldness and largeness of conception. The Home-Rule Bill of 1886 was nothing less than a new constitution for Ireland, and in all but one of its most essential features had been practically worked ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... LOUISA. Strange question! Infinitude and my heart together had not space enough for a single thought but of him. To whom else should ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... that, if they moved Ten thousand leagues an hour among themselves, It would not seem one hair's-breadth to our eyes. Utterly inconceivable, I know; And yet we daily kneel to boundless Power And build our hope on that Infinitude. ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... to be found the limit of the palette. Confining ourselves to the external, what, of all the infinitude of phenomena to which the vision is related, so corresponds to the power of the palette that it ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... motto, "Tender and true," may wisely be taken up again by all of us, for our own, in art no less than in other things. Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth. I find this more and more every day: an infinitude of tenderness is the chief gift and inheritance of all the truly great men. It is sure to involve a relative intensity of disdain towards base things, and an appearance of sternness and arrogance in the eyes of all hard, stupid, and vulgar people—quite ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... of a little black steam-tug. Grievous had been the wailing of the passengers at parting with their kinsfolk on the quay; but, somewhat stilled by this time, they leaned in groups on the bulwarks, or were squatted about on deck among their infinitude of red boxes and brilliant tins, watching the villa-whitened shores gliding by rapidly. Only an occasional vernacular ejaculation, such as 'Oh, wirra! wirra!' or, 'Och hone, mavrone!' betokened the smouldering remains of emotion in the frieze coats and gaudy shawls assembled ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... a feather-pillowy pit of infinitude. I even forgot to preach to myself, as I'd been doing for the last month or two. I knew that my time was upon me, as the Good Book says. There are a lot of things in this life, I remembered, which woman is able to squirm out of. But here, Mistress Tabbie, was one you couldn't escape. Here was ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... and poets like Pope,—between philosophers like Spinoza, Kant and Coleridge, and philosophers like Locke, Paley, Mackintosh and Stewart,—between men of the world who are reckoned accomplished talkers, and here and there a fervent mystic, prophesying half insane under the infinitude of his thought,—is that one class speak from within, or from experience, as parties and possessors of the fact; and the other class from without, as spectators merely, or perhaps as acquainted with the fact on the evidence of third persons. It is of ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is remarkable; but, without having any intention of decrying it, I am sure that there is no one, even among those who make its study a profession, who does not confess that all that men know is almost nothing in comparison with what remains to be known; and that we could be free of an infinitude of maladies both of body and mind, and even also possibly of the infirmities of age, if we had sufficient knowledge of their causes, and of all the remedies with which nature has provided us. (Descartes: Discourse on the Method, Philosophical Works. Translated by E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... would have been So far reduced by breakings in old days That from them nothing could, at season fixed, Be born, and arrive its prime and top of life. For, lo, each thing is quicker marred than made; And so whate'er the long infinitude Of days and all fore-passed time would now By this have broken and ruined and dissolved, That same could ne'er in all remaining time Be builded up for plenishing the world. But mark: infallibly a fixed bound Remaineth stablished 'gainst their breaking down; Since we behold each thing soever ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... like a smokeless fire of blazing flames or the Sun of effulgent radiance. Indeed, one then beholds in oneself one's soul like lightning fire in the skies. Everything then appears in it and it appears in everything in consequence of its infinitude. Those high-souled Brahmanas that are possessed of wisdom, that are endued with fortitude, that are possessed of high knowledge, and that are engaged in the good of all creatures, succeed in beholding it. Engaged in the observance ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... degree, there clings to us much that we have brought in with us, and at the end we already begin to feel symptoms of that which is to come. It is also noticeable that each degree contains within it an infinitude of others. ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... lay aside his pen and take hold of plow handles instead. He has since become a successful farmer, perfectly happy, working out all the infinitude of minutiae in connection with the intensive cultivation ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... permission. To say nothing of the fall of the angels, he knows all that which will come to pass, if, having created man, he places him in such and such circumstances; and he places him there notwithstanding. Man is exposed to a temptation to which it is known that he will succumb, thereby causing an infinitude of frightful evils, by which the whole human race will be infected and brought as it were into a necessity of sinning, a state which is named 'original sin'. Thus the world will be brought into a strange confusion, by this means death and diseases being ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... brotherhood or sisterhood of worlds. It alone makes man at home in the universe, and shows us how many friendly powers wait upon him day and night. It alone shows him the glories and the wonders of the voyage we are making upon this ship in the stellar infinitude, and that, whatever the port, we shall still be on familiar ground—we cannot get ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... into the gray universal thicket, than I would find myself as completely alone as if five hundred instead of only five miles separated me from the valley and river. So wild and solitary and remote seemed that gray waste, stretching away into infinitude, a waste untrodden by man, and where the wild animals are so few that they have made no discoverable path in the wilderness ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... some who have denied the infinitude of God's knowledge, notably Dr. Adam Clarke. He held that God, although possessed of omnipotence, yet as He chooses not to do all things, so also although He possesses the power of knowing all things, yet He chooses to be ignorant of some things. ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... hear it seethe in the receding, a policeman finally took to following Mrs. Ross, his measured tread behind hers, his night-stick rapping out every so often. She found out a bench then, and never out of his view, sat looking out across the infinitude of blackness to where the bay so casually meets the sea. Night dampness had sent her shivering, the plumage of her hat, the ferny feathers of the bird-of-paradise, drooping almost grotesquely over ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... infinite That brought them forth, but hid their causes deep? I saw when at his word the formless mass, This world's material mould, came to a heap: Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined; Till at his second bidding Darkness fled, Light shone, and order from disorder sprung: Swift to their several quarters hasted then The cumbrous elements, earth, flood, air, fire; And this ethereal quintessence of Heaven Flew upward, spirited with various forms, That rolled ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... painful trickle out of a narrow rift in the rock, but a great exuberance which will pass into a man's nature in the measure of his capacity, which is the measure of his trust and desire. There are two limits to God's gifts to men: the one is the limitless limit of God's infinitude, the other is the working limit—our capacity—and that capacity is precisely measured, as the capacity of some built-in vessel might be measured by a little gauge on the outside, by our faith. 'The God of hope' fills you in 'believing,' and 'according to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... sublime and beautiful. Noble, elevating, consoling, divine, it gives us wings, and bears us through Infinitude. In these ethereal regions all is pure, luminous, and splendid. Dreams of the Ideal, even of the Inaccessible, weave their subtle spells upon us. The imagination soars aloft, and aspires to the sources of ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... universal. We breathe it; all things are sustained by it. It is Life,—that is, pregnant with vital energy, and capable of infinite transmutations. All things are produced by it; all is again resolved into it; it supports all things; it surrounds the world; it has infinitude; it has eternal motion. Thus did this philosopher reason, comparing the world with our own living existence,—which he took to be air,—an imperishable principle of life. He thus advanced a step beyond Thales, since he regarded the world not after the analogy of an ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... that on a night there came to Euler, As eager-eyed he stared upon a star, And fought the far infinitude, a toiler Like to himself and me, for things that are Buried from the eyes alone Of men whose sight is made of stone, And led him out in ecstasy, Over the dim boundary By the pale ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... its dead silence, was one in which Cameron's mind was thronged with memories of a time long past—of a home back in Peoria, of a woman he had wronged and lost, and loved too late. He was a prospector for gold, a hunter of solitude, a lover of the drear, rock-ribbed infinitude, because he wanted to be ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... passage, that those which survived would have been incapable of opening the campaign with any prospect of success; in which case the defence would have been sufficient and the place preserved; for cities that have been raised from nothing with an infinitude of labor and expense, are not to be thrown away on the bare probability of their being taken. On these grounds the preparations made to maintain New York were as judicious as the retreat afterwards. While you, in the interim, let slip the very opportunity which seemed to put ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... fantastic; it is solid and satisfying, like a mighty Alp, deep-rooted first of all in the steadfast earth, and then towering up with its vineyards, its pastures, its pine-forests, its glaciers, its precipices, and last of all the silence of infinitude brooding over ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... infinitude of propositions it contains, remain potential and unapproachable until their incidence is found in existence. Form cannot of itself decide which of all possible forms shall be real; in their ideality, and without reference to their illustration in things, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... points on a line is taken as the infinitude of the first order, then the infinitude of lines in a pencil of rays and the infinitude of planes in an axial pencil are also of the first order, while the infinitude of lines cutting across two "skew" lines, as well as the infinitude of ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman
... circumstances intervene. But the love of the Madonna is in itself fraught with the tragic impossibility of requital; its foundation is the recognition, or divination, of the fact that mortal women are too insignificant for a passion which yearns for infinitude. A lover filled with the longing to glorify a woman and worship her as a divine being, has frequently experienced a certain disappointment. The beloved may have died young—as did Beatrice—without his ever having come into close contact with her; instinctively his soul turns heavenward—and ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... shadow of death from them to an uncertain, but always narrow, distance, never takes away from them their intuition of its approach; the extending to them of a few hours more or less of light abates not their acknowledgment of the infinitude that must remain to be known beyond their knowledge,—done beyond their deeds: the unprofitableness of their momentary service is wrought in a magnificent despair, and their very honour is bequeathed by them for the joy of others, as they lie down to their rest, ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... degenerate into frozen symbols, but on the contrary keep in close touch with nature, investing her with a vibrant life, in which human consciousness vanishes making way for the dawning consciousness of infinitude. ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... their idea or ideal of the soul. They mean distinct, stable entity, or a state that is independent, and not a mere flux of vibrations or complex of reactions to environment, continuous with environment, merging away with an infinitude of other ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... may be his footstool, and may be his slough of despond, but is never his final end. His aims are transcendental, his realm is art, his interests ideal, his life divine, his destiny immortal. All the old theories of saintship are revived in him. He is in the world, but not of it. Shadows of infinitude are his realities. He sees only the starry universe, and the radiant depths of the soul. Martyrdom may desolate, but cannot terrify him. If he be a genius, if his soul crave only his idea, and his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... tissues of light. A swelling glory within me began to envelop towns, continents, the earth, solar and stellar systems, tenuous nebulae, and floating universes. The entire cosmos, gently luminous, like a city seen afar at night, glimmered within the infinitude of my being. The sharply etched global outlines faded somewhat at the farthest edges; there I could see a mellow radiance, ever-undiminished. It was indescribably subtle; the planetary pictures were ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... come to his interpretation of historical Christianity, we find that in his view the life and works of Jesus fell entirely within the field of human experience. He sees in the deification of Jesus an evidence of lack of faith in the infinitude of the individual human soul. He sees in every gleam of human virtue not only the presence of God, but some atom of His nature. As a preacher he had no tone of authority. A true non-conformist himself, he had no desire to impose his views on anybody. Religious truth, like all other truth, ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... doctrine of the extermination of an infinitude of connecting links between the living and extinct inhabitants of the world, and at each successive period between the extinct and still older species, why is not every geological formation charged with such links? Why does not every collection ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... lies the question of the nature of electricity. And immediately connected therewith arises the momentous and primary question as to the nature of the ether, of the properties of the medium that fills all space, its structure, its rest or motion, its infinitude or finitude. It becomes every day more manifest that this question rises above all others, that a knowledge of what the ether is would reveal to us not only the nature of the old 'imponderables,' but also ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... sea; [18] you know the host of sails and cordage, rigging [19] as they call it, she requires for sailing; the quantity of engines and machinery of all sorts she is armed with in case she should encounter any hostile craft; the infinitude of arms she carries, with her crew of fighting men aboard. Then all the vessels and utensils, such as people use at home on land, required for the different messes, form a portion of the freight; ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... had lived since their childhood upon the frigid seas, in the very midst of their mists, which are vague and troubled as the background of dreams. They were accustomed to see this varying infinitude play about their paltry ark of planks, and their eyes were as used to it as those ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... delicately susceptible to all manner of atmospheric effects. It lay before him in the dim moonlight, indefinite; a succession of undulations running one into the other, not to be counted nor measured. All accurate notions of topography were lost; there was only landscape, dim, undeveloped, suggestive of infinitude. Standing thus in the happiness of loving and being loved, the soft indefiniteness of the landscape and the incessant hum of the field-crickets and katydids, sounds which came out of the everywhere, soothed Charlton like the ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... and longitudes, but such descriptions convey to the mind only an idea which is quite vague and general. When we say that one hundred and fifty states like Connecticut, or twenty states like New York or Illinois, spread over that infinitude of peaks and ranges, would scarcely cover them, we gain a somewhat more adequate idea of their extent. But it is only by actually traversing this wilderness of hills and mountains, east and west, north and south, that we can more ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... partly the infinitude of this contrast that wrought in Shock a feeling of depression as he followed the trail winding down the long slope toward the town. As he became aware of this depression, he took himself ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... is more infinite, noble, and suggestive than thought. We soon come to the end of the ingenious allegory. It tells only one story but where there is a perfect image of life there is infinitude and mystery. We do not tire considering the long ancestry of expression in a face. It may lead us back through the ages; but we do tire of the art which imprisons itself within formulae, and says to the spectator: "In this way and in no other shall you regard what ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... self-spontaneity (autonomy) and of freedom with the fullest plenitude of existence, and instead of abandoning himself to the world so as to get lost in it, he will rather absorb it in himself, with all the infinitude of its phenomena, and subject it to the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... life, and when I was through with the first play, I stood like a man born blind, to whom sight has been given by an instant's miracle. I had a most living perception of the fact that my being had been expanded a whole infinitude. Everything was new and strange; my eyes ached with the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... out here in my new home. My son, bless his precious heart, tried to crawl today but the newly developed feat frightened his baby mind and he cried. Closely almost roughly, I crush him to me a thousand times a day, so fearful am I that he too may go to join infinitude. ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... the stars, How beautiful in their infinitude of light, O'er the blue heavens spread, like gems Upon the brow of youth! Far, far away, beyond the paths of day, More glorious yet, as suns which never set, In darkness never! but shining forever! You are more loved by me— Ye emblems ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... intellect which is fit to be applied to the solution of the problem. It entirely transcends us. The mind of man may be compared to a musical instrument with a certain range of notes, beyond which in both directions we have an infinitude of silence. The phenomena of matter and force lie within our intellectual range, and as far as they reach we will at all hazards push our enquiries. But behind, and above, and around all, the real mystery of this universe lies unsolved, and, as far as we are concerned, is incapable ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... me,' he cried in his heart, 'for I cannot go to thee. If I were to go up and up through that awful space for ages and ages, I should never find thee. Yet there thou art. The tenderness of thy infinitude looks upon me from those heavens. Thou art in them and in me. Because thou thinkest, I think. I am thine—all thine. I abandon myself to thee. Fill me with thyself. When I am full of thee, my griefs themselves will grow ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... universe of nature and directing it to a particular system, as the one which belongs to our sun. Having considered the generation of this system, we shall be able to advance to a similar consideration of the origin of the great world-systems, and thus to embrace the infinitude of the whole ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... on leaving the gloomy streets of the Marais for the first time since the previous autumn, and entering the smiling and picturesque valley of Montmorency; on seeing it in the morning light, its endless horizons receding from view; and then lifting a charmed gaze to eyes which expressed no less infinitude mingled with love? ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac |
