"Minuteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... treasures of the institution by intelligent officials. A young man who spoke excellent English was given me as a guide by the distinguished Director-in-Chief. Classification of the books is carried to great minuteness, and it is but the work of a moment, to one familiar with its principles, to turn to any book of the million. The apartments are plain and crowded, although some of the rooms of the adjoining palace had recently been turned into the library, which is fast outgrowing ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... palace for a residence, and when it was completed and furnished issued tickets of admission, that the public might see in what splendor he was going to live. Of course the newspapers described everything with a minuteness of detail and a freedom of remark that made some modest and sensitive people fancy that Mr. Birtwell must be exceedingly annoyed. But he experienced no such feeling. Praise of any kind was pleasant to his ears; you could not give him too much, nor ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... writers have attempted to do the same thing that on the large Atlantic liners the bowsprit has been removed, or at any rate a notice put up: "Authors are requested not to lie prostrate on the bowsprit." But even without this advantage, three or four generations of writers have chronicled with great minuteness their sensations during the transit. I need only say that my sensations were just as good as theirs. I will content myself with chronicling the fact that during the voyage we passed two dolphins, one whale and one iceberg (none of them moving very fast at the time), and that on the fourth ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... for a Longicorn, since it almost exactly resembles Cephalodonta spinipes, one of the commonest of the South American Hispidae; and what is still more remarkable, another Longicorn of a distinct group, Streptolabis hispoides, was found by Mr. Bates, which resembles the same insect with equal minuteness,—a case exactly parallel to that among butterflies, where species of two or three distinct groups mimicked the same Heliconia. Many of the soft-winged beetles (Malacoderms) are excessively abundant in individuals, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... violent physical expression; so that M. Maeterlinck can say of them and their creator: "We feel that one must have lived for thirty years under chains of burning kisses to learn what she has learned; to dare so confidently set forth, with such minuteness, such unerring certainty, the delirium of those two lovers of Wuthering Heights; to mark the self-conflicting movements of the tenderness that would make suffer, and the cruelty that would make glad, the felicity that prayed for death, and the despair that clung to life, the ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... was praying; the prayer was extravagantly vehement, and offensively familiar in expression; when this ended a hymn was sung, and then another priest took the centre place and preached. The sermon had considerable eloquence, but of a frightful kind. The preacher described, with ghastly minuteness, the last feeble fainting moments of human life, and then the gradual progress of decay after death, which he followed through every process up to the loathsome stage of decomposition. Suddenly changing his tone, which had been that of sober, accurate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... can judge by the minuteness with which I am telling you all this how great a place this event has held ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... his goodness. To be struck with his power, it is only necessary that we should open our eyes. But whilst we contemplate so vast an object, under the arm, as it were of almighty power, and invested upon every side with omnipresence, we shrink into the minuteness of our own nature, and are, in ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... burial,' &c, it is important to have every particular bearing on this branch of the subject, and much minuteness is desirable. ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... drawn by a pair of horses driven tandem-fashion. They all smoked incessantly, and nearly all of them, on reaching the square, proceeded at once to the shed, and, walking up and down its entire length, examined with the utmost minuteness every individual beneath its roof, frequently stopping to make some inquiry of those who had the poor wretches ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... composed of the tradesmen of the town, and the inhabitants of the neighbouring country; this was a sufficient reason for these refined young gentlemen to speak of them with the most insufferable contempt. Every circumstance of their dress and appearance was criticised with such a minuteness of attention, that Harry, who sat near, and very much against his inclination was witness to all that passed, began to imagine that his companions, instead of being brought up like the sons of gentlemen, had only studied under barbers and tailors; such amazing knowledge did they display in the ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... one might have said that she had a kind of monstrous and cynical affection for a death struggle. She never spoke of anything but of the people she had seen die, of the various kinds of deaths at which she had been present, and she related with the greatest minuteness, details which were always the same, just like ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... with excitement. At last the eyes of the world were upon it. News of the great sensation was flashed to the end of the earth; every detail was gone into with harrowing minuteness. The Hemisphere Company announced by telegraph that it stood ready to hand over the ten thousand dollars; and the sheriff of Bramble County with all the United States deputy marshals within reach raced at once to Tinkletown to stick a finger in ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... Their composition is not that of a great historical picture, but rather that of a frieze, or of some rich festoon entwined among groups of picturesque figures. And precisely as in the figures or tendrils of a frieze we do not look for minuteness of execution in the individual forms, or for distant perspectives and different planes, so we must as little expect anything of ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... or the jaguars and pumas of any portion of South America, into several different species, all with widely different habits. They will, moreover, describe these imaginary habits with such sincerity and minuteness that they deceive most listeners; and the result sometimes is that an otherwise good naturalist will perpetuate these fables, as Hudson did when he wrote of the puma. Hudson was a capital observer and writer when he dealt with the ordinary birds and mammals of the ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... the light. The characters thus formed made a near approach to hieroglyphics; but my secretary became expert in the art of deciphering, and a fair copy—with a liberal allowance for unavoidable blunders—was transcribed for the 'use of the printer. I have described the process with more minuteness, as some curiosity has been repeatedly expressed in reference to my modus operandi under my privations, and the knowledge of it may be of some assistance to others ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... does not depend on other means; which is permanent, pervading, divided according to bodies-that is the Self blessed in itself.' Here 'not dependent on other means' means 'self-luminous'; and 'pervading' means 'being of such a nature as to enter, owing to excessive minuteness, into all non-sentient things.' ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... contributed their proportion of members, whose names are on record in our national history. Cooper when in town was always present, and I remember being struck with the inexhaustible vivacity of his conversation and the minuteness of his knowledge, in everything which depended upon acuteness of observation and exactness of recollection. I remember, too, being somewhat startled, coming as I did from the seclusion of a country life, with ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... improvident, and easily dazzled with the sight of ready money; but they were gentlefolk besides, and that in a way which curiously unfitted them to combat Yankee craft. Suppose they have a paper to sign, they would think it a reflection on the other party to examine the terms with any great minuteness; nay, suppose them to observe some doubtful clause, it is ten to one they would refuse from delicacy to object to it. I know I am speaking within the mark, for I have seen such a case occur, and the Mexican, in spite ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Jersey, in 1804; by Henry James in 1811—but nothing practical was accomplished. Richard Trevethick, the anticipator of many things, also took out a patent in 1815, and in it he describes the screw propeller with considerable minuteness. Millington, Whytock, Perkins, Marestier, and Brown followed, with ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... anxiety was felt by all for the ills of the one; and for days the "I" would be forgotten if any member of the home-circle was "sick." And the concerns of the patient, whether suffering from a cold, sore eyes, a sprained ankle, or "had her tonsils out," were discussed with minuteness of detail worthy an International Conference. How the patient slept, what the doctor said, the effect of the new medicine, how the heart was standing the strain, what the visiting neighbors thought of the case, ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... The instant the glasses disappeared, he commenced a long story about a great public character, whose name he had forgotten, making a particularly happy reply to another eminent and illustrious individual whom he had never been able to identify. He enlarged at some length and with great minuteness upon divers collateral circumstances, distantly connected with the anecdote in hand, but for the life of him he couldn't recollect at that precise moment what the anecdote was, although he had been in the habit of telling the story with great applause ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... fiction-blacksmiths of the day. Mr. Whittier's style is that of a careful and sincere scholar, and we believe that his work will become notable in this and the succeeding amateur journalistic generation. The minuteness of the preceding criticism has been prompted not by a depreciatory estimate of his powers, but rather by an appreciative survey of his possibilities. "Say, Brother", by Mrs. Renshaw, is a poem describing life in the trenches ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... 1844 Mr. Cooper published Ashore and Afloat, and a few months afterward Miles Wallingford, a sequel to that tale. They have the remarkable minuteness yet boldness of description, and dramatic skill of narration, which render the impressions he produces so deep and lasting. They were as widely read as any of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... consciousness of his own rectitude. In that lay his only comfort, his only hope, his one, strong-built fabric of defence. If that was undermined, if that was eaten away, what was there left for him? Carefully, painfully, and with such minuteness as he could command, he went over the whole affair from beginning to end, forcing his unwilling mind—so unaccustomed to such work—to weigh each chance, to gauge each opportunity. If this were so, if that had been done, ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... Communities and villages have geographical names. The name adopted for a community will probably be the name of some adjoining river or ridge. That adopted for a village will probably be the name of the exact crest or spot on which it is placed, the minuteness of the geographical nomenclature here being remarkable. Clan-groups of villages, forming part of a community, have, as such, no geographical names, but a member of one such group will distinguish himself from those of another group by saying that ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... The care with which the many thousand varieties have been classified by zoologists, and the minuteness with which the habits of each variety have been traced, have raised these insects to a conspicuous position in the great Animal Kingdom. Their beauty, as they lie here in vast numbers before the spectator, is dazzling. Every colour and ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... vocation. But it was ordered otherwise; his death was destined to private malice, and to an ignoble hand. And much obscurity still rests upon the motives of the assassins, though its circumstances are reported with unusual minuteness of detail. One thing is evident, that the public and patriotic motives assigned by the perpetrators as the remote causes of their conspiracy, cannot have been the true ones. The grave historian may sum up his character of Commodus ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Apelles did, and as all coloured lines are drawn on Greek vases. A line of absolute correctness, observe. I do not care how slowly you do it, or with how many alterations, junctions, or re-touchings; the one thing I ask of you is, that the line shall be right, and right by measurement, to the same minuteness which you would have to give in a Government chart to the map of ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... men's wits; Or at least with their knowledge. A man's capability Of imparting to others a truth with facility Is proportion'd forever with painful exactness To the portable nature, the vulgar compactness, The minuteness in size, or the lightness in weight, Of the truth he imparts. So small coins circulate More freely than large ones. A beggar asks alms, And we fling him a sixpence, nor feel any qualms; But if every street charity shook an investment, Or each beggar to clothe we must strip off ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... Elstow lads on the village green, with as "great delight" as ever. But in the midst of his game of tip-cat or "sly," just as he had struck the "cat" from its hole, and was going to give it a second blow—the minuteness of the detail shows the unforgetable reality of the crisis—he seemed to hear a voice from heaven asking him whether "he would leave his sins and go to heaven, or keep his sins and go to hell." He thought also that he saw Jesus Christ looking down on him with threatening countenance. ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... is so quiet here one grows to think all the world very far away, and the wild things among which you have lived and worked are almost unimaginable even when the newspapers describe them with the greatest minuteness. ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... of human speech and the lesser varieties of language which arise out of the many degrees and kinds of human intercourse, there is also the unknown or over-ruling law of God or nature which gives order to it in its infinite greatness, and variety in its infinitesimal minuteness—both equally inscrutable to us. We need no longer discuss whether philology is to be classed with the Natural or the Mental sciences, if we frankly recognize that, like all the sciences which are concerned with man, it has a double aspect,—inward and outward; ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... and talking with the people, I became convinced that the aboriginal tracker's performances evince a craft, a penetration, a luminous sagacity, and a minuteness and accuracy of observation in the matter of detective-work not found in nearly so remarkable a degree in any other people, white or colored. In an official account of the blacks of Australia published by the government of Victoria, one reads that the aboriginal not only notices the faint marks ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thither. He searched through the little clump of trees with the utmost minuteness, till at last, on the farther side, in a bit of soft ground, ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... throws a delicious veil over all actual objects. The two worlds of reality and of fiction are poised on the wings of his imagination. His ideas, indeed, seem more distinct than his perceptions. He is the painter of abstractions, and describes them with dazzling minuteness. In the Mask of Cupid he makes the God of Love "clap on high his coloured winges twain;" and it is said of Gluttony in the Procession ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... lay down that the society in which they are united was originally organised on the patriarchal model. The chief lineaments of such a society, as collected from the early chapters in Genesis, I need not attempt to depict with any minuteness, both because they are familiar to most of us from our earliest childhood, and because, from the interest once attaching to the controversy which takes its name from the debate between Locke and Filmer, they fill a whole chapter, though not a very profitable one, in English literature. ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... of the elementary knots have been gone into with what a practical seaman of even short experience may consider almost unnecessary minuteness, but the aim throughout has been to render the work of value to those who approach the subject for the ...
— Knots, Bends, Splices - With tables of strengths of ropes, etc. and wire rigging • J. Netherclift Jutsum
... of a bailiff but the lawyer, who was so chary of his praise, had said that old Master Pucklechurch and his wife were absolutely trustworthy. They had managed the farm in the interregnum, and brought him weekly accounts in their heads, for neither could write, with the most perfect regularity and minuteness. And his face did indeed bespeak confidence in his honesty, as he touched his hat in answer ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that do advance his theme. Boswell has given the world an example of biography that is often wearisome in the extreme, although he wrote about a man who occupied in his time a commanding position. Because Johnson was Johnson the world accepts Boswell, and loves to talk of the minuteness of Boswell's portrayal, yet how many read him, or if they do read him, have the patience to read him to ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... contrast to the vastness of the cathedral one may cross into North Street and enter the portal of the toy church of St. Olave, which dates from the 14th century, and is remarkable, not only for its minuteness, but as being one of the churches of Chichester which, in my experience, is not normally locked ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... they are mere literary legerdemain. Their disputations being usually built on an undefinable chimera, are solved by a paradox. Instead of exercising their power of reason they exert their powers of sophistry, and divide and subdivide every subject with such casuistical minuteness, that those who are not convinced, are almost invariably confounded. This custom, it must be granted, is not quite so prevalent as it once was: a general spirit of reform is rapidly diffusing itself; and though I have heard cold-blooded declaimers ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... impressions passed in and out of my mind in the course of one busy day, that I became their victim rather than their master. But now my language to my wife that unhappy evening returned to my consciousness with incredible vividness and minuteness. It will be seen from the precision with which I have already recorded it, how inexorable ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... difficult to see what these defects are. The venerable Archdeacon, respectable for his industry, his learning, his researches, had not a ray of genius, and genius is the soul of history. He gives every thing with equal minuteness, makes no attempt at digesting or compression, and fills his pages with letters and state-papers at full length; the certain way, if not connected by ability, to send them ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... cooled; and by dint of turning around Saint Sulpice, he succeeded in forming another connection there, upon which he built greater expectations. This society of priests was beginning to distinguish itself, and from a seminary of a Paris parish to extend abroad. Ignorance, the minuteness of their practices, the absence of all patrons and of members at all distinguished in any way, inspired them with a blind obedience to Rome and to all its maxims; with a great aversion for everything that passed for Jansenism, and made them so dependent upon ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Clinker," as entertaining at dinner on Sundays,—that being the only day upon which they could pass through the streets without being seized by bailiffs for debt. Each character is drawn with a distinctive minuteness that leaves us no room to doubt its possessing a living original; yet how disgusting to suppose that such a crew were really to be seen at the board of a brother writer! and in what bad taste does their host describe and ridicule their squalor! That such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... bright. Unless antiquity supplied the author of the Annals only the framework of his picture, and the events of the time when he lived gave the scenes for the painting, his colours would fail, and his outlines become unsteady. In other words, there could not be the scrupulous minuteness and the perfect freedom which make history live and breathe, unless, like Tacitus, he registered facts in which he took the deepest interest, from feeling their influence directly and powerfully exerted over himself, and the living and loved around him. Thus ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... always been haunting me, and I shall never be able to give it up till a better one supplies its place, and that I think hardly possible. You have now fairly beaten Spencer on his own ground, for he really offered no solution of the difficulties of the problem. The incomprehensible minuteness and vast numbers of the physiological germs or atoms (Which themselves must be compounded of numbers of Spencer's physiological units) is the only difficulty, but that is only on a par with the difficulties in all conceptions of matter, space, motion, force, etc. As I understood ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... event which Father Medina mentions with as much minuteness as candor, two important points must not be overlooked by the judicious reader, which were the cause of this unfortunate deed. One was the extreme harshness of the provincial in his government, which must have been very excessive.... The imposition of new commands must have been very heavy ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... to a drawer, from, which he brought splints and bandages, trotted back to the settee, and with ghastly minuteness—the result of having been present at an accident, and studious readings of Dr Chartley's books—he proceeded to set a serious compound fracture, assuring himself that he bore it like a man, and that he need not be under the least apprehension, for in such a healthy subject the joint would knit ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... immediately to those passages of antient history which make the most lasting impression on the imagination of the regular-bred scholar, and described the picturesque circumstances of the transactions with a minuteness of detail that would have been superfluous ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... race had been better in primeval times, when yet fresh from the hands of the gods), there was in them a grain of truth. When Mabuchi and Motowori wrote, the nation had been long subjected to a discipline of almost incredible minuteness in detail, and of extraordinary rigour in application. And this discipline had actually brought into existence a wonderful average of character,—a character of surprising patience, unselfishness, honesty, kindliness, and docility combined with high courage. But only ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... general cognomen of Chantilly. It is from the longest and most successful of the stories called "D'Espignac," in the time of Henri III., and, as our extract shows, the scenes and sketches exhibit considerable talent, and a certain graphic minuteness which has become very popular in modern novels. The tale itself is not to our purpose, but we promise the reader a petit souper of horrors from its perusal, especially to those who woo terror to delight them. The pen is young and feminine, and of high promise. The occasion of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... had obtained the complete abolition of the practice. Bert was greatly elated, and could talk of nothing else when he got home. Father, and mother, and sister, had to listen to the fullest details of the struggle and its surprising issue, and Bert fairly outdid himself in the vigour and minuteness of his description. When the fountain of his eloquence at last ran dry, Mr. Lloyd had a chance to say, with one of his ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... for printing from glass or paper negatives, giving a minuteness of detail unattained by any ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... strange were the thoughts that floated through the mind of this child of twelve years old. And from these precocious yearnings after the infinite, Olive's fancy turned to earthly, childish things. She pictured with curious minuteness how she would feel when she awoke next morning, and found that Elspie was dead;—how there would be a funeral; how strange the house would seem afterward; even what would be done with the black bonnet and shawl which, two days since, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... probability that in these cases, and also in cancer (where as yet no specific infective germ or parasitic microbe has been detected), such an infective microbe is nevertheless present, and has hitherto escaped observation with the microscope on account of its excessive minuteness ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... themselves if this Ayrton's word was to be absolutely believed. There was something suspicious about this unexpected meeting. Certainly the man had mentioned facts and dates which corresponded, and the minuteness of his details was most striking. Still exactness of details was no positive proof. Indeed, it has been noticed that a falsehood has sometimes gained ground by being exceedingly particular in minutiae. McNabbs, therefore, prudently ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... I was not there at that time, for at the sight of tears in the faces of those dear women I would have been driven to sheer madness. I believe I would have taken a club to the hard-hearted or stupid Tescheron and murdered him with mince-meat minuteness in the presence of the gossipers lolling around the fireplace in the living-room. At the time of the tearful scene between mother and daughter, a dramatic passage that has its counterpart in many homes invaded by ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... situated, the accommodation granted by the bank cash-credits, is the greatest commercial boon that ever was devised; but as the committee of the House of Lords, in the report already quoted, has borne ample testimony in their favour, it is unnecessary for us to dwell with further minuteness on their utility. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... this I discovered as soon as he was gone, for in a few days I became as melancholy as before. Fortunately, I was still allowed my walk in the garret, and I began to examine its contents with more minuteness. One of the chests was full of fine paper, pieces of cardboard, uncut pens, and clews of pack thread; the other was fastened down. A piece of polished black marble, an inch thick, six inches long, and three broad, attracted my attention, and I possessed myself of it without knowing what ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... The minuteness with which these accounts appear to have been kept, and the precision with which the date of each particular, sometimes of very small sums, is stated, give them the appearance of authenticity, as ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... here than an approximately true rendering of a healthy youthful face, without the slightest attempt to give an expression of activity, cunning, nobility, or any other attribute of the Mercurial mind. Extreme simplicity, unpretending vigor of work, which claims no admiration either for minuteness or dexterity, and suggests no idea of effort at all; refusal of extraneous ornament, and perfectly arranged disposition of counted masses in a sequent order, whether in the beads, or the ringlets of hair; this is all you have to be pleased with; neither ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... tidal and other currents that these observations comprehend; but, with the use of apparatus suitably arranged, the movements at all depths have been determined, with the exact amount of power exerted by streams coursing along the bed of the sea. The necessity for this minuteness of examination has been fully shown in some of the curious ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... each regiment of the light division were detailed by the officer of the day, Colonel Colborne, for the assault. Colborne (afterwards Lord Seaton), a cool and gallant soldier, called his officers together in a group and explained with great minuteness how they were to attack. He then launched his men against the redoubt with a vehemence so swift that, to those who watched the scene under the light of a wintry moon, the column of redcoats, like the thrust of a crimson sword-blade, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... except the rats and ghosts aforesaid, had not been better employed than in shedding them), to see her rake out a bed of fresh and glowing coals, and proceed to broil the mackerel. Her usually pale cheeks were all ablaze with heat and hurry. She watched the fish with as much tender care and minuteness of attention as if,—we know not how to express it otherwise,—as if her own heart were on the gridiron, and her immortal happiness were involved in its being done precisely ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... followed the doctor into his study, where he found him with the sword in his hand, which he had taken from over the mantel-piece, and was holding it drawn, examining the hilt and blade with great minuteness; the hilt being wrought in openwork, with certain heraldic devices, doubtless belonging to the family ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stood before Darwin's theory was promulgated, is invalidated by the admission of that theory." It seems to me that a sufficient answer to this question has already been made in the last part of my former paper; but, as you request it, I will go over the leading points as there given, with more minuteness ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... find the original of our modern acquaintance, the sea-serpent, described as being "of huge size, so that he kills and devours large stags, and is able to cross the ocean;" and the wonders of the unknown world are enunciated with a circumstantial minuteness which must have easily won the credence of a willing disciple like Columbus. He was also confirmed in his views of the existence of a western passage to the Indies by Paulo Toscanelli, the Florentine ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... kept in the very highest order, the trees and flowers are watched and inspected with the greatest minuteness. An old invalid soldier commands his 500 or 600 men as gardeners and overseers. Every leaf that falls in pond or canal is carefully fished up. They trim and polish the trees and paths in the gardens to the greatest ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... contemporaries in an age of great political characters. This correspondence, extending over a long period of years, is not less remarkable for the constancy with which it was carried on than for the minuteness of its details, and the freedom of its revelations. Written with the ease of familiar intercourse, and in that confidential spirit which was the exponent of one of the most touching attachments that ever bound one man to another, it is no less valuable as a close, ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... perhaps best seen in old Irish. The monk bewails the lawlessness of his wandering thoughts, which run after dreams of beauty and pleasure during the hour of divine service. The hermit in the wood describes, with loving minuteness, the contents of his larder. Never was there a fresher or more spontaneous poetry than the poetry of this early Christian people. But it is not in the direct line of descent, for it was written in the Celtic speech of ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... purpose. Hence virtue may under different forms assume various names, and may thus be broken up into separate virtues. These are many or few, according as we distribute in smaller or larger groups the occasions for virtuous conduct, or analyze with greater or less minuteness the sentiments and dispositions from which ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... These writers, claiming to be the revealers of the will of God, almost always commenced their messages with the words, "Thus saith the Lord." That they were not deceived in their claims is evident from the minuteness and detail as to names, times and places which characterized their messages, and from the literal fulfillment of ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... greatness and the mystery of minuteness are here brought face to face. What wonders of creation exist between these two extremes! The thoughtful mind is awed by the contemplation of this scene, and when the reflection comes that these vast spaces are but grains of sand ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... deal of Robert Brown, "facile Princeps Botanicorum," as he was called by Humboldt. He seemed to me to be chiefly remarkable for the minuteness of his observations, and their perfect accuracy. His knowledge was extraordinarily great, and much died with him, owing to his excessive fear of ever making a mistake. He poured out his knowledge to me in the most unreserved manner, yet was strangely jealous ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... them, that she describes Lartigue; Dufresne; Richard; Phelan; Bonin; Comte; Bourget; McMahon; Kelly; Demers; Roux; Roque; Sauvage; Tabeau; Marcoux; Morin; Durocher; and all the Roman Priests around Montreal, with the utmost minuteness of accuracy; while the Chaplain of the Ursuline Nunnery at Quebec, Father Daule, is as exactly depicted by her, as if her whole life had been passed under his surveillance. Some of the appellatives in the ensuing catalogue may not be correctly ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... consciousness of the awful greatness—the abyss of the infinite—that lies beyond, and which our minds can never measure. The indefinite has a limit somewhere; but it is not the indefinite, it is the measureless, the infinite, that vast extension forces upon our minds. In like manner, the immeasurable in minuteness is an inevitable mental sequence from the facts and phenomena revealed to us by a study of the minute in nature. The practical divisibility of matter disclosed by modern physics may well arrest and astonish us. But biology, the science which investigates the phenomena of all ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... has described with singular minuteness the struggle between the people of these regions and the power of Rome, overwhelming, although tottering to its fall; and has moreover, devoted several chapters of his work upon Germany to a description of the most remarkable Teutonic tribes of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... or may not know, to produce the effect of a drawing in Indian ink.[C] Still there is much in these pictures to delight the Cruikshankian connoisseur,—infinite variety in physiognomy, wonderful minuteness and accuracy in detail, and here and there sparkles ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... that they felt entire confidence in his zeal and ability, and that, at whatever distance he might be, he would always be in a peculiar manner an object of their care. The precedent set on this interesting occasion was followed with the utmost minuteness, a hundred and twenty-five years later, on an occasion more interesting still. Exactly on the same spot on which, in July 1689, Schomberg had acknowledged the liberality of the nation, a chair was set, in July 1814, for a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... all taken up for the occasion, and that he had all the while been hidden in some hut slily watching till he heard that the strangers might be trusted; but on listening to the details given by these men of the appearances of the crops at different parts, and the astonishing minuteness of the speakers' topography, we were persuaded that in some cases we were wrong, and felt rather humiliated. Every knoll, hill, mountain, and every peak on a range has a name; and so has every watercourse, dell, and plain. In fact, every feature and portion of the ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... delightful story; and its faults—it contains many coincidences and improbabilities—are far more than atoned for by the masterly portrait of the simple, manly, generous, and wholly lovable vicar who is the central figure of the story. "It has," says Mitford, "the truth of Richardson, without his minuteness, and the humour of Fielding, without his grossness; if it yields to LeSage in the diversified variety of his views of life, it far excels him in the description of domestic virtues and the pleasing moral of the tale." Goldsmith died on April 4, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... with dismay at this recital of the events of the night. The mysterious boat he had twice seen was the only explanation of the minuteness of Mr. Presby's details that suggested itself to ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... behind him, and before the sound had died away, Eugene's car, coming from behind with what seemed fairly like one long leap, went by the runabout and dwindled almost instantaneously in perspective, with a lace handkerchief in a black-gloved hand fluttering sweet derision as it was swept onward into minuteness—a mere white speck—and ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... surface; but you will understand this theory better if I show you the internal motion that takes place in liquids when they experience a change of temperature. The motion of the liquid itself is indeed invisible from the extreme minuteness of its particles; but if you mix with it any coloured dust, or powder, of nearly the same specific gravity as the liquid, you may judge of the internal motion of the latter by that of the coloured dust it contains. —Do you see the small pieces of amber moving ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... intimacies of domesticity with a frankness and a minuteness which dismayed Carol. Juanita Haydock communicated Harry's method of shaving, and his interest in deer-shooting. Mrs. Gougerling reported fully, and with some irritation, her husband's inappreciation of liver and bacon. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... upon us, in the peremptory fashion in which it is sprung upon the interpreter, would carry the wildest dismay to our mind. Those understanding the Indian tongue have frequently assured me that the Indian, when interpreting, reproduces with minuteness, if he be granted, of course, a certain latitude for differences of idiom, the speaker's thought and expressions. It is said by one of his own writers that the Indian is much more prone to follow the evil than the moral practices of ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... this catastrophe, the worthy town-justice, Trinksgeld, in seventeen hundred ordered a painting to be executed, representing the fearful scene described. It occupies the whole of one side of the Town-hall, and in its quaint minuteness of detail, and defiance of perspective—depicting, not merely the slaughter of the betrayed Bertholdsdorfers, but the concealment of the two who were fortunate enough to escape, and who are helplessly apparent behind some loose timber—would be ludicrous, were ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... Frederick Townsend, colonel of Third Regiment of the enemy's forces, after stating with much minuteness the orders and line of march, describes how, "about five or six miles from Hampton, a heavy and well-sustained fire of canister and small-arms was opened upon the regiment," and how it was afterward discovered to be ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... the border into Hampshire, the village of Selborne is reached, one of the smallest but best known places in England from the care and minuteness with which Rev. Gilbert White has described it in his Natural History of Selborne. It is a short distance south-east of Alton and about fifty miles south-west of London, while beyond the village the chalk-hills rise to a height of three hundred feet, having a long hanging wood ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... by dragging him through every conceivable horror, physical and moral, to depict with lurid excitement and with offensive minuteness the life in jail and brothel—all this is to overreach the object.... Even things actually terrible may become distorted when a writer screams them out in a sensational way and in a high pitched key.... More convincing if it were ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... 'worthily of the saints.' It is only about the receiving of a good woman who was travelling from Corinth to Rome, and extending hospitality to her in such a manner as became professing Christians; but the very minuteness of the details to which the great principle is applied points a lesson. The biggest principle is not too big to be brought down to the narrowest details, and that is the beauty of principles as distinguished from regulations. Regulations try to be minute, and, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... might be, he would not allow himself to be talked out of his opinion on this occasion, and proceeded with much minuteness to explain to his wife the tone in which Mr. Slope had spoken of Mrs. Proudie's interference in diocesan matters. As he did so, a new idea gradually instilled itself into the matron's head, and a new course of conduct presented ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the exactness and minuteness of such descriptive character sketches, but even the shortest and most general is necessary to the proper appreciation of every play, even if it is being merely read. When a student is assimilating a role for rehearsing or acting, these additions of the author ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... portion of the ordinances of the Synod must have been penned by Gilbert himself. And the whole passage—by the minuteness of its description of the diocese, by the strength of the terms in which it is expressed, by the reference to the Cathedral Church as already existing—suggests that the diocese was formed and organized before the Synod met, as I have already assumed. We may even ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... began to talk in his slow drawl. He seemed to dole out facts, to disclose with sparing words the features of the coast, but every word showed the minuteness of his observation, the clear vision of a seaman able to master quickly the aspect of a strange land and of a strange sea. He presented, with concise lucidity, the picture of the tangle of reefs and sandbanks, through which the yacht had miraculously blundered in the ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... corda. Cookery is the first of arts. Chemistry is a mere subordinate science, whose chief value is that it enables man to impart greater relish and gust to his viands. The greatest poets, such as Homer, Milton, and Scott, treat the subject of eating and drinking with much seriousness, minuteness of detail, and lusciousness of description. Homer's heroes are all good cooks,—swift-footed Achilles, much-enduring Ulysses, and the rest of them. Read Milton's appetizing description of the feast which the Tempter set ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... great superiority to the French and Flemish illuminated work, and causing a proportionate inferiority in their large pictorial efforts. Even Rubens and Vandyke cannot free themselves from a certain meanness and minuteness ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... diary on this class of Scott's figures, though the good bishop seems to me to have been rather too severe. But the pictures of Woodstock Palace and Park have that indescribable and vivid charm which Scott, without using any of the 'realist' minuteness or 'impressionist' contortions of later days, has the faculty of communicating to such things. For myself, I can say—and I am sure I may speak for hundreds—that Tullyveolan, Ellangowan, the Bewcastle moor where Bertram rescued ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... well just now,' said Flora, allowing herself in one of her long deep sighs, before descending into the particulars of the child's anxiously-watched health. If she had been describing them to her father, there would have been the same minuteness, but the tone would have implied cheerful hope; whereas to Ethel she took no pains to mask her dejection. One of the points of anxiety was whether one shoulder were not outgrowing the other, but it was not easy to discover whether the appearance were not ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... use of for the scattering of seeds, by their being furnished with special structures of very different kinds. The diverse modes by which such seeds are dispersed are well expressed by Mr. Darwin. He says:[50] "Seeds are disseminated {66} by their minuteness,—by their capsule being converted into a light balloon-like envelope,—by being embedded in pulp or flesh, formed of the most diverse parts, and rendered nutritious, as well as conspicuously coloured, so as to attract and be devoured by birds,—by having hooks and grapnels ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... every thing he could, stepping as lightly as a fawn, his shoulders bending low, while he scrutinized the leaves with a minuteness which would have detected a pin lying on top of them. A faint trail leading through the wilderness is sometimes plainer a few steps distant than it is beneath one's own feet. The disturbance of the vegetation, ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... insignificant actions, and even the most innocent ones, must come to his knowledge. He is not content with the spontaneous declaration that the penitent feels disposed to make of all infractions of duty; but he insists on examining the case with the most scrupulous minuteness, and takes as much pains as would a clever, cunning lawyer to extract every particle of evidence from the witnesses for or against a culprit on his trial. Under this last point of view, auricular confession may be considered as the ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... his previous knowledge the material for theoretic images. He had only to change the magnitude of conceptions already in his mind to arrive at the Emission Theory of Light. Newton supposed light to consist of elastic particles of inconceivable minuteness, shot out with inconceivable rapidity by luminous bodies. Optical reflection certainly occurred as if light consisted of such particles, and this was Newton's justification for ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... to exclude all germs of life from the matter experimented upon. For the lower forms of life are excessively minute; and their germs—eggs, seeds, or spores—must be far smaller. It is known that these are constantly floating in the atmosphere, though, owing to their extreme minuteness, the fact can only be ascertained by the most skilful investigation. And the lower forms of animalcules have a singular tenacity of life; they can pass unharmed through processes which would be fatal to creatures of higher organization. One variety is known to survive ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... also, and the structural subtilties of a more developed literary period, we must not, of course, look in 'Beowulf.' The narrative is often more dramatic than clear, and there is no thought of any minuteness of characterization. A few typical characters stand out clearly, and they were all that the poet's turbulent and not very attentive audience could understand. But the barbaric vividness and power ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... villages, and also military ranks and movements, as well as coins and measures, dry and liquid, and weights, so as to be commensurable and agreeable to one another. Nor should we fear the appearance of minuteness, if the law commands that all the vessels which a man possesses should have a common measure, when we consider generally that the divisions and variations of numbers have a use in respect of all the variations of which they are susceptible, both in themselves and as measures of height ...
— Laws • Plato
... conducted it with the utmost minuteness, was quite unproductive of results. If the woman possessed a typewriter, she had apparently made away with it. The scrap basket contained nothing but a few torn bits of paper of no value. There was no stationery on the small desk in the living ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... Such was the minuteness of investigation employed, that, although the grate had contained a large fire during the night, they proceeded to examine even the very chimney, in order to discover whether escape by it were possible; but this attempt, too, was fruitless, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... presentments arose, and it was a female form, much resembling the first in shape and proportions, which slowly emerged from the floor. Her dress was also of red samite, fantastically cut and flounced, as if she had been dressed for some exhibition of mimes or jugglers; and with the same minuteness which her predecessor had exhibited, she passed the lamp over her face and person, which seemed to rival the male's in ugliness. But with all this most unfavourable exterior, there was one trait in the features of both which argued alertness and intelligence ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... pupils, not a few of whom became distinguished painters. But his style of painting was not one to attract Meissonier, who was ambitious to paint like the old Dutch artists, Terburg, Metzu, Mieris, and others, who have the charm that their pictures are finished with the most exquisite minuteness, and yet treated in such a large way that, after awhile, we forget the microscopic wonder of the performance and think only of the skill the artist has shown in painting character. Meissonier was the first artist to bring back into favor the Dutch school of painting ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... were sitting at breakfast, they heard a horse and chaise trot briskly into the yard, and, looking out, saw that Mr Hill's servant had arrived, bringing up the horse perfectly restored. Mr Hill did not fail to return thanks, and begged his fellow-traveller to consider whether the minuteness of his prayers had deserved the censure which had been directed ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... independent cities—points of reciprocal and indestructible repulsion, and within, theatres of action where the blind tendencies and traditions of classes and parties weighed little on the freedom of individual character, and citizens could watch and measure and study one another with the minuteness of private life. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Hudson there was something almost touching; it was an exquisite example of a ruling sense of beauty. The poor lady's small, neat, timorous face had certainly no great character, but Roderick had reproduced its sweetness, its mildness, its minuteness, its still maternal passion, with the most unerring art. It was perfectly unflattered, and yet admirably tender; it was the poetry of fidelity. Gloriani stood looking at it a long time most intently. Roderick wandered ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... its inquiries immediately, and continued them almost daily. Such, however, were the minuteness of examination to which the witnesses were subjected, and the mass of conflicting evidence brought forward on both sides, that the progress of the inquiry was but slow. Mr. Harvey had been one of the members ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the later school, sometimes toil to depict such subjects, but are apt to stiffen the lithe tendrils in the process. The poets succeed better, with Tennyson at their head, and often produce ravishing effects by dint of a tender minuteness of touch, to which the genius of the soil and climate artfully impels them: for, as regards grandeur, there are loftier scenes in many countries than the best that England can show; but, for the picturesqueness of the smallest object that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various |
