"Mechanical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the old, red-blooded emotions of battle have all been eliminated by the mechanical conditions of modern warfare in which men and women are just so many units, automata. Don't you see? To fight war with its own weapons—that has become ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... it not be said that irresistible evidence would confound all characters and all dispositions? would subvert rather than promote the true purpose of the Divine counsels; which is, not to produce obedience by a force little short of mechanical constraint, (which obedience would be regularity, not virtue, and would hardly perhaps differ from that which inanimate bodies pay to the laws impressed upon their nature), but to treat moral agents agreeably to what they are; which is done, when light ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... matter lies deeper; for it can be explained more clearly than appears at first sight. The power of inertia applied to bodies which may be moved by mechanical means only, becomes force of habit when applied to bodies which are moved by motives. The actions which we do out of sheer force of habit occur, as a matter of fact, without any individual separate motive ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... job to Betsy Kindred. One hundred dollars did I allow her for the rehabilitation of that dreary apartment. She accepted the trust, picked out five likely orphans to assist in the mechanical details, and ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... written a cook-book; really written one, not made merely a compilation of receipts,—that sort of mechanical work any one can do who has patience enough to search for the rules, and system enough to arrange them. Mrs. Lincoln's book is written out of the experience of life, both as a housekeeper and a teacher. Her long experience as principal of the Boston ...
— Carving and Serving • Mrs. D. A. Lincoln
... wrong, so peculiar to the Indian race. To restlessness he adds distrust of those around him; and when displeased, is not easily reconciled. He is, however, tractable, and early evinced an aptitude for mechanical pursuits that would have done credit to maturer years. Both have been at service, and during the period have created no small degree of admiration-Annette for her promising personal appearance, Nicholas for his precocious display of talent. Both have earned their living; and now Nicholas is ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... the Indian saint I told you of who gave me four dollars. His miracles were all gratis, which was the most miraculous thing of all in a saint. I am promised that the Ginneeyeh shall come through the wall. If she should do so I shall be compelled to believe in her, as there are no mechanical contrivances in Luxor. All the Hareem here believe it, and the man's human wife swears she waits on her like a slave, and backs her husband's lie or delusion fully. I have not seen the man, but I should not wonder if it were a delusion—real bona fide visions and revelations ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... natural law? Have I forgotten that "faith without works is dead"? No, I think not. I have but remembered that works without faith are dead also. The one extreme is as dangerous as the other. The legal, mechanical observance of the rules of a right life, apart from a living faith in Christ, can no more renew the heart in holiness and righteousness, than can a mere intellectual belief of certain facts about Christ, apart from working out His will, save the soul, or make it meet for the inheritance ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... having been so much discussed in books, yet entirely simple when approached, as here, as a necessary part of workmanship. It is fortunate that we have not as yet learned to bother our cooks as to which part of their work is designing and which is merely mechanical. Of course the highest things of design, as well as of workmanship, come only after long practice and to the specially gifted, but none the less every human creature must in some sort be a designer, and it has caused immense harm to raise a cloud of what ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... many. They are to the mind, what the senses are to the body; or better, they may be compared to instruments such as the telescope or microscope by which the discriminating power of the senses, or to other mechanical inventions, by which the strength and skill of the human body ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... of active hostilities William was no more. But the Grand Alliance of the European Princes against the Bourbons was already constructed. "The master workman died," says Mr. Burke; "but the work was formed on true mechanical principles, and it was as truly wrought." On the fifteenth of May, 1702, war was proclaimed by concert at Vienna, at London, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... commend the artistic character of their presentation. For these books indicate that out of the many attempts which have been made in this country—some of them most creditable, too, and nearly approaching thorough excellence—to produce illustrative and mechanical effects equal to those of England and continental Europe, there has at last come an absolute accomplishment, from which we hope and are ready to believe there will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... a project the author was said to get well by, and we have found to be very useful. But about the year 1680 began the art and mystery of projecting to creep into the world. Prince Rupert, uncle to King Charles II., gave great encouragement to that part of it that respects engines and mechanical motions; and Bishop Wilkins added as much of the theory to it as writing a book could do. The prince has left us a metal called by his name; and the first project upon that was, as I remember, casting of guns of that metal and boring them—done both by a peculiar method ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... that brought tears of pride to Hannah's eyes, while Demi learned his letters with his grandfather, who invented a new mode of teaching the alphabet by forming letters with his arms and legs, thus uniting gymnastics for head and heels. The boy early developed a mechanical genius which delighted his father and distracted his mother, for he tried to imitate every machine he saw, and kept the nursery in a chaotic condition, with his 'sewinsheen', a mysterious structure of string, chairs, clothespins, and spools, for wheels to go 'wound and ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... over in this country was one in Boston, having an immense stock of agricultural implements, and tools for every mechanical purpose. I should know something of such matters, having whistled at the plough myself, and used most of the implements; and being therefore curious on the point, I looked in for the sake of old associations. I am positive that every ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... seldom taken off till it is worn off. They are accompanied by a few women and children. They take their religion with them in their praying-wheels, which they keep going. They are an intensely religious people, as Mr. Gilmour tells us, but it is in the most mechanical fashion which can be conceived. If they were mere machines, wound up like their praying-wheels, they could not to all appearance be more devoid of thought, feeling, and conscience in the exercise of their religion. I marked their countenances, and could only wonder at their stolid look. Much ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... of the unit, paced back and forth between the bunks like a huge, hulking bear, muttering to himself as he tried to memorize the table of reaction times for rocket motors. Though the huge Venusian cadet was a genius at all mechanical tasks, and able to work with tools the way a surgeon worked with instruments, he had great difficulty in learning the theories and scientific reasons for all the things he did instinctively. Suddenly Astro stopped, looked at his ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... versant in both; "Microcosmus" is his principal work, published in 1864; he founded the system of "teleological idealism," based on ethical considerations; he repudiated agnosticism, and had as little patience with a mere mechanical view of the universe ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... good results in amenorrhoea, adding a handful of the bruised seeds to a hot sitz-bath. Two or 3 dessert-spoonfuls of the seeds eaten fasting and washed down with a glass of water, are very efficient in chronic constipation, both by their mechanical effect and the oil they contain; being non-irritant they are especially indicated in cases of constipation ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... 1980s"). Hackers find Ada's exception-handling and inter-process communication features particularly hilarious. Ada Lovelace (the daughter of Lord Byron who became the world's first programmer while cooperating with Charles Babbage on the design of his mechanical computing engines in the mid-1800s) would almost certainly blanch at the use to which her name has latterly been put; the kindest thing that has been said about it is that there is probably a good small language screaming to get out from ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... turned slowly and faced him; then bowed in a mechanical way and proceeded to the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... his animation, and at the firmness he appeared to possess, and after having well discussed with him all the inconveniences of my plan, and their remedy, we came at last to a very important matter, the mechanical means, so to speak, by which that plan was to be put in force. There was one thing to be provided for, which may appear an exceedingly insignificant matter, but which in truth was of no light importance. When a Bed of justice is held, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... or the uncommon simplicity and ingenuity of its fabric and contrivance, or the extraordinary velocity with which it moves, we shall find it worthy of our admiration, and meriting a place amongst the mechanical productions of the most civilized nations, where arts and sciences ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... entrances of open-air restaurants, and did not seem at all to have been studied from grape- arbors in the country. He perceived the archaic striving for exact truth, and he successfully praised the mechanical skill and love of reality with which it was done; but he was silenced by a collection of paintings in Don Ippolito's parlor, where he had been made to sit down a moment. Hard they were in line, fixed in expression, and opaque in color, ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... the future it exists only for the sake of others. But I cannot say, from my own experience, that the same process takes place in transferring our ideas to canvas; they gain more than they lose in the mechanical transformation. One is never tired of painting, because you have to set down not what you knew already, but what you have just discovered. In the former case you translate feelings into words; in the latter, names ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... iron nails. Also, in order to make sure that the beasts should not prove a source of terror to the horses he constructed images of elephants that were smeared with some kind of ointment to give them a fearful odor and were frightful both to see and to hear (for a mechanical device enabled them to emit a roar resembling thunder); and he kept continually leading the horses up to these representations until they took courage. Perseus, then, as a result of all this had acquired great confidence and entertained hope that he might surpass ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... anatomy, physiology and psychology of the human organism, the more we wonder at its marvelous complexity and ingenuity of structure and function. Every moment there are enacted in our bodies innumerable mechanical, chemical and psychological miracles. Who, or what, performs these miracles? We do not know. Yet every moment of our lives depends upon the infinite care and wisdom of this unknown ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... potero?" And the fact was, that if, from the death of Sylla, Rome recovered some transient show of constitutional integrity, that happened not by any lingering virtue that remained in her republican forms, but entirely through the equilibrium and mechanical counterpoise of rival factions. ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... to appreciate the endless vigilance and activity of the brain. Like the other organisms which possess a proper nervous system, man carries on the common organic processes of life with a regularity and unfailing accuracy which seem to verge on the mechanical forces, or to be, at least, automatic. All habitual voluntary acts by repetition become almost automatic, or require no perceptibly distinct impulse of the will. When we emerge from this necessary field of labor, we come to those functions peculiar ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... face broke out into a smile and without thinking he stopped writing what the little mechanical eavesdropper was conveying him from below. He listened intently as he heard a ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... vain to get rid of the fixed idea which filled his mind,—a mechanical instinct, so to say, which was stronger than his will, and drove him incessantly to the wharf where "The Saint Louis" was lying. Sitting on some bags of rice, he spent hour after hour in watching the cargo as it was put on board. Never ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... portrait by Vandyck or Titian. When the subject is favorable, his achievements in this regard are memorable, and fill the eye and mind with ideas of beauty and meaning undreamed of by those who consider marble portraits as wholly imitative and mechanical. Was there ever a human face which so completely reflected inward experience and individual genius as the bust which haunts us throughout Italy, broods over the monument in Santa Croce, gazes pensively from library niche, seems to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... visible. Perona, making a solo flight upon Nareda business to Great London, came upon it. Perona, Spawn and De Boer were then in the midst of their smuggling activities. They salvaged the vessel secretly. De Boer, with an incongruous flair for mechanical science, was enabled in his bandit camp, to recondition the flyer—building a workshop for the purpose, with money which Perona ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... laparotomy for gunshot wounds in the abdomen without protrusion of the viscera. Dr. George Troup Maxwell (1827-1879), was inventor of the laryngoscope. James Ridley Taylor (1821-1895), who entered the medical profession after middle life, at the end of a long career passed as a mechanical engineer, and achieved success and fame in his profession, was born in Ayr, Scotland. He probably inherited his mechanical skill from his uncle, John Taylor of Dalswinton, who constructed the steam engine along with Symington. James Henry McLean (1829-86), ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... and Clarke are held in great esteem by all who are familiar with the history of mechanical and metaphysical philosophy. As a man of science, there is no individual, ancient or, modern, who would not suffer by comparison with Sir Isaac Newton; while common consent has assigned to Dr. Samuel Clarke the first place among religious metaphysicians. ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... work in secret, and this for a reason which to us will seem the strangest; for its being, as we should say, a Benthamite work! Many are the bitter aphorisms we find, among his Fragments, directed against /Meister/ for its prosaic, mechanical, economical, coldhearted, altogether Utilitarian character. We English again call Goethe a mystic; so difficult is it to please all parties! But the good, deep, noble Novalis made the fairest amends; for notwithstanding ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... there was a clear demarcation where the red walls gave place to yellow; the brook showed no outlet from its subterranean channel. Sheer exhaustion made Hare almost forget his mission; the strength of his resolve had gone into mechanical toil; he kept on, conscious only of the smart of bruised hands and feet and the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... that saves us from insanity during great grief is that there is usually something to do, and the mind composes itself to the mechanical task of adjusting the details. Hope dared not look forward an inch into the future; that way madness lay. Fortunately, it was plain what must come first,—to keep the whole thing within their own walls, and therefore to make some explanation to Mrs. Meredith, whose servants ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... "Droll fellows, these discarded robots. Really nothing but mechanical dolls, you know, but I think the old scientists made a mistake, giving them such human appearance, and ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns
... in Elkton, August 25, 1829, and received his education at the common school and Academy in that town. His youth and early manhood was spent in mechanical pursuits and in the improvement of his mind by a desultory course of reading, and in perfecting himself in the knowledge ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... so made have borne the slightest testimony to Giotto's power. Vasari says distinctly, "and turning his hand" (or, as I should rather read it, "with a sweep of his hand") not "turning the vellum;" neither would a circle produced in so mechanical a manner have borne distinct witness to any thing except the draughtsman's mechanical ingenuity; and Giotto had too much common sense, and too much courtesy, to send the pope a drawing which did not really contain the evidence he required. Lord Lindsay has ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... were flying across the open, and before the mechanical Boche gunner could jerk the new belt into position, both had found sanctuary within the open doorway of the ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... twines round a smooth cylindrical stick, it does not become twisted. {6} Accordingly I allowed kidney-beans to run up stretched string, and up smooth rods of iron and glass, one-third of an inch in diameter, and they became twisted only in that degree which follows as a mechanical necessity from the spiral winding. The stems, on the other hand, which had ascended ordinary rough sticks were all more or less and generally much twisted. The influence of the roughness of the support in causing axial twisting was well seen in the stems which had twined ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... worthy seaman could scarcely understand a word she said. He sat staring at the whites of her eyes, which, with her teeth, were the only visible parts of her countenance at that moment, and swayed his body to and fro, as if endeavouring by a mechanical effort to arrive at a philosophical conception of something exceedingly abstruse. But at the end of each period he turned to Corrie ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... small green screen of tangled wilderness that interposes between this point and the Atlantic, I think how near our West Indian islands and freedom are to these unfortunate people, many of whom are expert and hardy boatmen, as far as the mere mechanical management of a boat goes; but unless Providence were compass and steersman too it avails nothing that they should know how near their freedom might be found, nor have I any right to tell them if they could find it, for the slaves are not mine, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... guests, remarking, with a particularity which seems to show that she expects her words to be reported to the empress, that the gentlemen, though amiable and well bred, were not young. But she also complains that the king's tastes do not resemble hers, that he cares for nothing but hunting and mechanical employments; and, indulging in an unwonted bit of sarcasm, she proceeds: "You will allow that I should not look well beside a forge. I could never become a Vulcan; and the part of Venus would displease him more than my real tastes, which he ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... went from the Leesville Opera-house and turned West in Main Street, you passed Heinz's Cafe, which was a "swell" eating-place, and not for Jimmie; and then the "Bijou Nickelodeon", with a mechanical piano in the entrance; and the "Bon Marche Shoe Store", which was always having a fire-sale or a removal sale or a bankruptcy clearing-out; and then Lipsky's "Picture Palace", with a brown and yellow cowboy galloping away with a red and yellow maiden in his arms; then Harrod's "Fancy Grocery" ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... to all mechanical contrivances of motion has not been forgotten while providing for the perfect working of the interesting piece of living machinery which performs the function of locomotion, as we are contemplating ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... of utility nor unworthy the attention of the public: I mean the animating my countrymen, both in their public and private stations, to the encouragement of all kinds of geographical and nautical observations, and of every species of mechanical and commercial information. It is by a settled attachment to these seemingly minute particulars, that our ambitious neighbours have established some part of that power with which we are now struggling: and as we have the means in our hands of pursuing these subjects ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Science contends that Nature is a "closed circle." Mechanical causation holds supreme sway. Everything happens according to law and order. If Free Will were allowed a place in the scheme of things, chance and caprice would immediately be introduced into our world—which could never be tolerated for ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... hostler will not be required to put in fuel while the engine is in his charge; should know that throttle valve is securely closed, reverse lever in center of quadrant, cylinder cocks open, and if equipped with independent brake, it to be applied; in fact, it is an excellent opportunity for a mechanical officer to judge the ability of ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... within itself every necessary of life, as well as the buildings more intimately connected with the religious and social life of its inmates. It should comprise a mill, a bakehouse, stables and cow-houses, together with accommodation for carrying on all necessary mechanical arts within the walls, so as to obviate the necessity of the monks ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... manufacture of butter there is much that is dependent upon the mechanical processes of churning, washing, salting and working the product. These processes do not involve any bacteriological principles other than those that are incident to cleanliness. The cream, if ripened properly, will contain ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... Agricultural Hall. A large Steam-Circus is revolving with its organ in full blast; near it is a "Razzle-Dazzle" Machine, provided with a powerful mechanical piano. To the combined strains of these instruments, the merrier hearts of Islington are performing a desultory dance, which seems to consist chiefly in the various couples charging each other with desperate gallantry. At the further end of the Hall is a Stage, on which a Variety Performance is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... of the average six to seven words contained in the Virgilian hexameter for its usage elsewhere in Virgil's works or other Latin authors, would DALY have had to maintain the laborious mechanical process of flipping through these concordances, lexica, and editions each time. Nor would he have had to frequent as often the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at the Johns Hopkins University to consult the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... and had a little cup of superb black coffee without charge to finish his meal. Brilliant piano music swept the rooms whenever any guest cared to send the waiter with a five-cent piece to the old mechanical piano, and sprightly conversation, carried on from table to table, gave the place that tone that Monsieur Montiverte considered to be its most valuable asset. Monsieur himself was a dried-up little rat of a man, grizzled, and as brown as a walnut. Madame was large and superb and young, smooth faced, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Hogarth, when he attempted to engrave his own works, his originality of style made them differ from the tamer and more mechanical labours of the professional engraver. They have consequently less beauty, but ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... in Italy, the regular musical drama was preceded by mysteries, masks, and religious plays, which introduced short musical parts, as also action, mechanical effects, and dancing. The ballet, however, where dancing was the prominent feature, remained for a long time the favorite amusement of the French court until the advent of Jean Baptiste Lulli. The young Florentine, after having served in the king's band, was promoted to be its chief, and the ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... much good, but he maintains that it also does much harm, by causing pretenders to start up in all directions. Of this class he describes Mr. Dodge to be. This person, instead of working at the mechanical part of a press, to which he was educated, has the ambition to control its intellectual, and thus edits the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... according to his determination, and as he had for some time been urgent that I should try some newly-invented mechanical appliances, he took me with him, this being the last expedition of the ancient yellow chariot. One of his objects was that I should see St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, which was then the most distinguished church of our school of thought, and where there ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... purpose in speaking of the "profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians" (p. 126) to arouse righteous anger against a certain class, to flatter his audience, or did he have ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... expect a new rhyme in every couplet; but is on a sudden surprised with three rhymes together, to which the reader could not accommodate his voice, did he not obtain notice of the change from the braces of the margins. Surely there is something unskilful in the necessity of such mechanical direction. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... aloud in the sick room, my experience is, that when the sick are too ill to read to themselves, they can seldom bear to be read to. Children, eye-patients, and uneducated persons are exceptions, or where there is any mechanical difficulty in reading. People who like to be read to, have generally not much the matter with them; while in fevers, or where there is much irritability of brain, the effort of listening to reading aloud has ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... thrown up entirely across it, and it had been further protected by a thick, impenetrable mass of abattis, the materials for which were so plentifully furnished by the Virginia woods and in the construction of which the quasi-mechanical army was rapidly efficient. The left was protected by the James River and the terror-inspiring gun-boats. In front the hill sloped gently down to the Charles City and Richmond road, and other points by which the enemy must ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... stood him in good stead then. He simply did what he was told, did it in perfectly mechanical fashion, without asking any questions. With the girl leaning heavily upon his arm, he stepped into the street and almost immediately into a passing taxicab which he had hailed from the threshold of the shop. As he closed the door, he glanced behind him. The woman was standing there, half ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... four years agriculture has not had much chance with us, and perhaps agriculture is not all. It was the mechanical genius of the North that kept us from taking ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... co-ordinated functions." Then what correllated the force? If it was not vitality what was it? But this is just equivalent to saying that life does not proceed from life. So, in the realm of inertia or death, without a God and without life, some kind of a mechanical operation among dead atoms took place which produced "a certain chemico-physical constitution of amorphous matter—on that albuminous substance called sarcode or protoplasm," which evolved more than was involved, or brought ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... know nothing so humiliating: to see a rational being in such mechanical motion! with no knowledge upon what principles he proceeds, but plodding on, one foot before another, without even any consciousness which ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... marked A, a bunker along the line B, another bunker at C, and the hole at D, and so forth, I protest that they are doing poor justice either to themselves or to the game. But on many links made during the past few years—made in a hurry—the results of such mechanical methods are only too apparent. I hope that the few hints that I offer in this chapter may be of service to old clubs with improvable courses and new ones with none as yet, and to those fortunate individuals who contemplate laying out a course in their private ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... from his pocket-book with an unshaken hand. No change of countenance, no tremulous hand, no broken voice, betrayed his apprehension. The one distinguishing mark of his manner was an absent, half-mechanical tone, as of a man whose mind is employed otherwise than in the conversation of the moment. Prompt at calculation always, he was at this crisis engaged in a kind of mental arithmetic. "The chances of defeat, so much; the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... test it by certain dietary indications. Their penitential discipline was directly opposed to the genuine spirit of the gospel; and it was the fountain from whence proceeded many of the superstitions which, like a river of death, soon overspread Christendom. Whilst repentance was reduced to a mechanical round of bodily exercises, the doctrine of a free salvation was ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... has implanted in me a certain expectation of uniformity or likeness in nature, there is implied in that very expectations resistance to an unlike event, which resistance does not cease even when upon evidence I believe the event, but goes on as a mechanical impression, though the reason counterbalances it. Resistance, therefore, is not disbelief, unless by an act of my own reason I give it an absolute veto, which I do not do. My reason is clear upon ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... feet of me has come back; but, little girl, I have never been away. I have never let you go out of my life. It was only the mechanical action that went away. Phil Baronet stayed here! Oh, I know it now—I was acting out there; I was really living here with ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... saw the beginning of the great development of machinery, and in these Georgian house fronts, the productions of a mechanical age, we see the deterioration of popular architecture. Every line is rigid and without human feeling: the style, where any exists, is exotic, not national or local; classical, not vernacular. It is a learned importation, not a popular growth. ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... literati, or perhaps the poets, particularly when they do fit homage to our "grand old woods," and to Niagara. Others regard with most respect a plain literal account of our branches of industry—our railroads, factories, and canals. They would have the country judged purely from a mechanical or practical point of view—contenting themselves as to other matters with the reflection. "Oh, sensible people care very little about any thing else. If they know what we produce, and what our resources are, they'll ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... from his blankets, his body moving with mechanical reaction. The slippers into which he put his feet were larger than he had expected them to be. He walked about the small apartment. The place was familiar, but only as it would have been if he had studied it from blueprints, not as though he ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet
... life. In boyhood he aspired to the career of an artist, but his father, himself the wreck of a would-be painter, rudely discouraged this ambition; by way of compromise between the money-earning craft and the beggarly art, he became a mechanical-draughtsman. Of late years he had developed a strong taste for the study of architecture; much of his leisure was given to this subject, and what money he could spare went in the purchase of books ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... obliged to guard with infinite precaution against defiling the divine elements, for instance water or fire, or their own persons, and to wipe out all pollution by {157} repeated lustrations. But, as in the Syrian cults of the imperial period, these Mithraic rites did remain simply formal, mechanical and of the flesh, inspired by the old idea of tabu. Mithraic baptism wiped out moral faults; the purity aimed ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... wild expectations, and indigested schemes, hurry through one's thoughts in seasons of doubt and of danger. But by arresting them as they flit across the mind, by throwing them on paper, and even by that mechanical act compelling ourselves to consider them with scrupulous and minute attention, we may perhaps escape becoming the dupes of our own excited imagination; just as a young horse is cured of the vice of starting by being made ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... fittest which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life."—HERBERT SPENCER: Principles of ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... to the mouth is at length so much impeded that he is obliged to consent to be fed by others. The bowels, which had been all along torpid, now, in most cases, demand stimulating medicines of very considerable power: the expulsion of the faeces from the rectum sometimes requiring mechanical aid. As the disease proceeds towards its last stage, the trunk is almost permanently bowed, the muscular power is more decidedly diminished, and the tremulous agitation becomes violent. The patient walks now with great ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... my admiration of her mechanical ingenuity and immediately unhitched my knapsack and laid it beside my weapons. Then a thought occurred to me. I opened the knapsack and moving my hand slowly and very openly so she'd have no reason to suspect a ruse, I drew ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... the citadel were planted on the ruins of the smoking houses. The contest was continued by an incessant and mutual discharge of missile weapons; and the superiority which the Romans might derive from the mechanical powers of their balistae and catapultae was counterbalanced by the advantage of the ground on the side of the besieged. But as soon as an Helepolis had been constructed, which could engage on equal terms with the loftiest ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... preserving a grand simplicity, and therein bearing the unambiguous stamp of their Divine Original. Thus, to specify one out of the numberless instances which might be adduced; the principle of gravitation, while it is subservient to all the mechanical purposes of common life, keeps at the same time the stars in their courses, and ...
— 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
... small mechanical effects unaided must have some part in the sense of enterprise wherewith you gird your shoulders with the tackle, and set out, alone but necessary, on the even path of the lopped and grassy side of the Thames—the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... of that olden rite, wherein our ancestors showed forth the death of Christ day by day, as if it had been a mere mechanical service. It was a dead form only to those who brought dead hearts to it. To our Martin it was instinct with life, and it satisfied the deep craving of his soul for communion with the most High, while he pleaded the One Oblation ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... ways, has deprived her of an excellent mother. How far servants are capable of giving right ideas of female decorum, you are yourself to judge. When I fixed Margaret with you, it was not to education alone that I looked; my views and hopes extended to principles, temper, and conduct. The mere mechanical parts of education may at all times be purchased for money; automatons may be made to perform wonders. But we all know that something more is wanting to give solidity and consequence to character. If you refuse my daughter, she ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... fine pure blood,—gauged herself coolly, her lease of life, her power of endurance,—measured it out against the work waiting for her. The work would be long, she knew. She would be old before it was finished, quite an old woman, hard, mechanical, worn out. But the day would be so bright, when it came, it would atone for all: the day would be bright, the home warm again; it would hold all that life had promised ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... process of copying the great pictures. The coloured bits are numbered, and though there are not above six or seven colours, the sub-divisions of various shades amount to 18,000. This art is in a great degree mechanical, but requires ingenuity, attention, and some knowledge of painting. On the large pictures, such as those which are in St. Peter's, several men are employed at the same time, but on the lesser only ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Lingard that was, she had since her marriage altered considerably in the right direction. She used to be a little dry, a little stiff, and a little stately. To the last I should be far from objecting, were it not that her stateliness was of the mechanical sort, belonging to the spine, and not to a soul uplift. Now it had left her spine and settled in a soul that scorned the low and loved the lowly. Her step was lighter, her voice more flexible, her laugh much merrier and more frequent, for now her heart was gay. Her ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... used to walk in deep thought, with his breviary in his hand and his brow loaded with care, through the corridors of the school and the alleys of the garden. His care was not limited to inculcating in his pupils abstruse doctrines and mechanical precepts and to endowing them afterwards with legitimate and rich wives. He entertained political designs and pursued the realisation of a gigantic plan. His thought of thoughts and labour of labours was to overthrow the Republic. He was not moved to this by any personal interest. He believed that ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... favourably situated for humidity, was clothed with a redundant vegetation when discovered, and trees and tree-ferns (types of humidity) still spread over its loftiest summits. Here the humidity, vegetation, and mineral and mechanical composition ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... enchanted with me, I was equally enchanted with the baroness. We two made the most tender, the most intimate, and the most united of families. We comprehended, understood, and completed each other so well. I had not to do with one of those mechanical dolls—stupidly and brutally laced into a padded corset. Between the little baroness and myself there was absolutely nothing but lace and fine linen. We could confidentially and surely depend on one another. The beauty ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... speaking, not a swallow at all, though chimney swallow is its more popular name. Rowing towards the roof of your house, as if it used first one wing, then the other, its flight, while swift and powerful, is stiff and mechanical, unlike the swallow's, and its entire aspect suggests a bat. The nighthawk and whippoorwill are its relatives, and it resembles them not a little, especially in its ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... what explanations are brought from every part of earth and heaven of the most trivial circumstances, and what sacredness is found in the very blades of grass around the altar. Now the effect of such a treatment of ritual is inevitably that the rite itself, the outward mechanical performance, comes to be regarded as important, and that the ethical and religious end which was originally aimed at, is lost sight of. The priest and those he acts for are so intent on the minutiae of their ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... reading of battles has ever unfitted men for war; too much talk of the sea is a poison in these great town populations of ours which know nothing of the sea. Who that knows anything of the sea will claim certitude in connexion with it? And yet there is a school which has by this time turned its mechanical system almost into a commonplace upon our lips, and talks of that most perilous thing, the fortunes of a fleet, as though it were a merely numerical and calculable thing! The greatest of Armadas may set ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... are indissolubly joined. Things are ultimates, and they never look beyond their sphere. The presence of Reason mars this faith. . . . Nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us. Certain mechanical changes, a small alteration in our local position, apprises us of a dualism. We are strangely affected by seeing the shore from a moving ship, from a balloon, or through the tints of an unusual sky. The least change in our point of view gives the whole world a pictorial air. A man who ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... prominence is given to the thot phase in reading, the technical drill and active effort in mastering the mechanical phase is of equal importance as necessary preparation ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... tailpiece instead of that almost universally now known as the secret tie (diagrams 11 and 12). This latter necessitates the use of a higher and more substantial nut, otherwise the tailpiece would be close down to, if not touching, the table, causing a rattling. Further, in accordance with mechanical law, the strain or pull forward increases with the height of the nut. It is therefore obvious, that unless well fitted and held strongly, the nut will be liable to be wrenched forward out of position. ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... Chatterton of the Engineering College at Madras, that he had many Brahmins under him in the workshops, and that, though more intelligent than other castes, they are less efficient, owing to their ancestors never having been practised in any mechanical work. The influence of caste was here most perceptible, and he could always pick out the work done by boys whose caste had been employed in that particular work, and he further informed me that boys showed poor proficiency in work out of the ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... was the result of his matured taste and judgment, and properly speaking, may be termed his own; in which he introduced more cool tints into the shadows and flesh, approaching nearer to nature than the universal glow of Giorgione." After stating what little is known of the mechanical means employed by Titian in the colouring of his pictures, Sir Abraham observes: "Titian's grand secret of all, appears to have consisted in the unremitting exercise of application, patience, and perseverance, joined to an enthusiastic ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... faculties of the Schoolmen: he will admit a chylific, a chymific and a sanguific, and he will assign one of these ad hoc to each operation; he will think he has worked wonders, and will laugh at what he will call the chimeras of the moderns, who claim to explain through mechanical structure what passes in ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... boys. He liked to sit in the shade with his back against a building and whittle, and he liked to be near people and have his talent as a whittler appreciated. He made fans out of pieces of pine, long chains of wooden beads, and he once achieved a singular mechanical triumph that won him wide renown. He made a ship that would float in a beer bottle half filled with water and laid on its side. The ship had sails and three tiny wooden sailors who stood at attention with their hands to their caps in salute. After it was constructed and put into the bottle it ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... an American, Miss Falconer? You were born in the States? You are going to Italy—and then home again?" The questions came in a reassuringly mechanical fashion; the man was doing his duty, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti |
