"Peculiarity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... get caught by a steam-engine, is natural enough. His dislike to the ultra-Liberals in the Peninsula is also very natural, because they uphold principles of Government which render Monarchy impossible, and the application of which to France would be the ruin of the King. England, from the peculiarity of its position, can do many things which in France would upset everything.... I must close my letter, and shall answer yours to-morrow. God bless you! Ever, my ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... melodious and full of feeling. She seems to thoroughly understand how to bring out the meaning of the words of her composition, the melody of one of them, "Ein Duerres Blatt" furnishing a particularly striking illustration of this peculiarity; they left a very lasting impression upon my mind. Among her collections is an English ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... I say: and by what divination? By a test more searching than any mere peculiarity of manners, dress, or speech; by a touchstone able to divide the gold of essential character from the alloy of superficial characteristics; by a standard which disregarded alike Franklin's fur cap and Putnam's old felt hat, Morgan's leather leggings and Witherspoon's black silk gown and John Adams's ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... but mention another peculiarity in this language which gives equal force and brevity to its ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the reasoning faculty itself, unworthy of a sensible person, and is generally exhibited only by those who, while boasting of exemption for themselves, have really little or nothing else to boast of. It is the infirmity of small minds, not a peculiarity of great ones. Prejudices are like household vermin, and the human mind is like the traps we set for them. They get in with the greatest facility, but find it impossible to get out. Beware of entertaining them yourself, Lizzie. Shun everything like repining at what you call your position as a sewing-girl. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... wonderfully clear, but that quality was less remarkable than the unhuman intelligence in them—fawn-like eyes that gazed steadily at you as one may gaze through the window, open back and front, of a house at the landscape beyond. This peculiarity was a little disconcerting at first, when, after making his acquaintance out of doors, I went in uninvited and sat down with him at his own fireside. The busy old wife talked of this and that, and hinted as ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... series has this peculiarity, that all of its constituent volumes are independent of one another, and therefore each story is complete in itself. OLIVER OPTIC is, perhaps, the favorite author of the boys and girls of this country, and he seems destined to enjoy an endless popularity. He deserves his success, for he makes ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... these things, and knowing also the peculiarity of the circumstances which surrounded me on that Sabbath evening, the reader will not be surprised, that when I saw the dense multitude surrounding the house of Mr. Porter, I at once came to the conclusion ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... singular ones which he had borne so long in his memory, and on which he was now acting in so strange a manner; but [though] there was a good deal of variety of incident in them, there never was any combination of incidents having the peculiarity of this. ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the funniest instance of this peculiarity of hers was one that happened in the Grosvenor Gallery on a certain occasion. She had been busy with her catalogue, doing the pictures conscientiously, and not talking at all, when suddenly ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... that although Greaves pretended to be an Englishman, he was evidently no such thing; for on more than one occasion, he gave utterance to expressions that were not only purely Irish, but tinged with a genuine Irish accent and native peculiarity, that no mere accident could account for, and which was, without doubt, the genuine thing itself peeping out at the elbows of a foreign dress. This idea seemed to find favor with O'Brien, although Barry was not impressed with its correctness, from the fact, no doubt, of his constant intercommunication ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... is the victim of a craze. Society is subject to crazes, as you know very well. They are not reprehensible in themselves, but the worst of my wife is that her crazes are never like those of the people with whom she naturally associates. They generally run counter to them. This peculiarity has given me some anxiety, you understand, in the position we occupy. People will begin to say that she is eccentric. Do you see ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... where political interests interfered family arrangements went to the wall. As to the general rule Walpole was quite right. We have seen the fact illustrated over and over again even in our {34} own days. But Walpole appears to have overlooked the important peculiarity of this family compact; it was an engagement in which the political interests and the domestic interests of the families were at last inextricably intertwined; it was a reciprocal agreement for the protection of common ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... eloquence; the twinkling stars of humble village spheres shun him for an ominous comet, whose very trail robs them of light, or as paling glow-worms hide away before some prying lantern; and all who have in one way or another prided themselves on some harmless peculiarity, avoid his penetrating glance as the eye of a basilisk. Then, again, those casual encounters of witlings in the world authorial, so anticipated by a hostess, so looked-forward-to by guests! In most cases, how forlorn they be! how dull; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... but the American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation, and the duty laid upon us by that beginning is the duty of bringing the things then begun to a noble triumph of completion. For it seems to me that the peculiarity of patriotism in America is that it is not a mere sentiment. It is an active principle of conduct. It is something that was born into the world, not to please it but to regenerate it. It is something that was born into the world to replace systems ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... Sometimes they had children with them, but these were very few; the most I saw with any one family was three, and many seemed to possess none at all. Both the women and the children, like the men, were decently clothed in long, white garments, another peculiarity which showed that these natives were ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... resolutions was by the unanimous order of the convention, transmitted to congress in a letter subscribed by the president, in which it was said to be, "the result of a spirit of amity, and of that mutual deference and concession, which the peculiarity of their political ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... peculiar essence, and that of the beings who act upon him. The object of all his institutions, all his reflections, all his knowledge, is only to procure that happiness toward which he is continually impelled by the peculiarity of his nature. All that he does, all that he thinks, all that he is, all that he will be, is nothing more than what Universal Nature has made him. His ideas, his actions, his will, are the necessary effects of those properties infused ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... the theatre, or the diversions which others follow, would have other than countenances that were grave. Their discipline also, which calls them so frequently to important duties, and the dispatch of serious business, would produce the same feature. I may observe also, that a peculiarity of gait, which might be mistaken for awkwardness, might not unreasonably be expected in those, who had neither learned to walk under the guidance of a dancing, master, nor to bow under the direction of the dominion of fashion. If those and ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... she send for me herself, the moment I go she will take refuge in the fact that she did not send for me. I know your wife's peculiarity ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... word Ronicky Doone was a dandy, but he had this peculiarity, that he seemed to dress to please himself rather than the rest of the world. His glances never roved about taking account of the admiration of others. As he leaned there in the door of the hotel he was the type of the young, happy, genuine and carefree ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... it, our church was a church of failures. They sent us the old gray preachers worn out in other fields. Such a succession of them I remember, each with some peculiarity, some pathos. They were of the old sort, indoctrinated Presbyterians, and they harrowed well our barren field with the tooth of their hard creed. Some thundered the Law, some pleaded Love; but of all of them I remember best the one who thought ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... and see the sunrise, and some are so well-mailed that even that experience would leave them unaffected and unsoftened. The 'hair and eyes of several complexions' was a trait taken from myself; and I do not bind myself to the opinions of Sir John. In this case, perhaps - but no, if the peculiarity is shared by two such pleasant persons as you and I (as you and me - the grammatical nut is hard), it must be a very good thing indeed, and Sir John must be ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these gorges and cliffs abound in better things also. They are rich in unexploited coal measures and they contain also many mines of the purest copper ore. The river that washes its borders here bears the name of Kinsha, the river of "golden sands." Some of its rivers have the curious peculiarity of flowing the reverse way, that is, to the west and south instead of toward the eastern sea. The Chinese accordingly call the province "Tiensheng" the country ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... this question, it is necessary to examine one peculiarity of feeling which manifests itself among the European nations, so far as I have noticed, irregularly,—appearing sometimes to be the characteristic of a particular time, sometimes of a particular race, sometimes ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... read the service. His manner had been extremely reverent and devout, but Malcolm found his delivery unpleasing. The peculiarity in his speech was very noticeable in the reading-desk, and there was ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... question of the points that help and hinder legibility and that should therefore be considered in reforming the shapes of letters. Enlargement of size and increase of differences are obvious aids to clearness. Simplicity of outline and concentration of peculiarity upon one feature are important elements of legibility. Even a letter of small size, like v, is brought into the first group by a combination of these two qualities. Serifs are necessary to prevent irradiation, or an overflowing of the ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... quality; thus, an excess of phlegm made a person phlegmatic, or dull; or an excess of black bile, melancholy. In the Elizabethan idiom, therefore, 'humor' came to mean a mood, and then any exaggerated quality or marked peculiarity ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... have been already observed, that to Grizzie came not unfrequently an odd way of riming what she said. She was unaware of this peculiarity. The suggestion of sound by sound was as hidden from her as it was deep-seated in her and strong. And this was not all: the riming might have passed unperceived by others too, but for the accompanying tendency ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... reason to know the doctor's peculiarity in this respect, and took care to give his friend a few hints about starting work, which otherwise he might never have evolved ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... or anything else once become customary and it will be practised by people to whom it is not at all natural, but whose rule of life is simply to do only what everybody else does, and who would lose their employment and starve if they indulged in any peculiarity. A respectable man will lie daily, in speech and in print, about the qualities of the article he lives by selling, because it is customary to do so. He will flog his boy for telling a lie, because it is customary to do so. He will also flog him for not telling a lie if the boy ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... author that it would require a veritable effort to remember the throng of characters which exists in his books; and it is more than difficult not to confuse their individual doings and achievements. This abundance is connected with a peculiarity in the author's talent. He does not exhaust his subject; the psychology of his characters is emphasized by two or three expressive traits only, and this epitome is enough to make the theme of a story, the simplicity and naturalness of which demand, nevertheless, a high degree of art. The author ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... and to nearly every name Mr. Sidney gave the marked character or peculiarity of the man. One was very nervous, another very tall and lean; this one was penurious, that one stubborn; this was a farmer, and that a clergyman; this name was written in a frolic; this was a genuine name, though ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... miserable, and their possessions limp and moldy, and insect life revels, and human existence spent in a vapor bath becomes burdensome. But the city is healthy to those who live temperately. It has, however, a remarkable peculiarity. Standing in and on rock, one fancies that fever would not be one of its maladies, but the rock itself seems to have imprisoned fever germs in some past age, for whenever it is quarried or cut into for foundations, or is disturbed in any way, fever ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the buck-board, and says to the little man: "I greatly regret that this unfortunate incident should have occurred while you are with us. From every point of view the event is lamentable. Brother Green, known familiarly among us because of his facial peculiarity as Nosey Green—the gentleman piled up over there on the other side of the road—was as noble-hearted a man as ever lived; so was Brother Michael, whom you met in all the pride of his manly strength only this morning at the Forest Queen bar. ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... wearisome production, in which Justin endeavours to convince a Jew that Christ is the Messiah, by quotations from the Jewish Scriptures (which, by the way, include Esdras, thus placing that book on a level with the other inspired volumes). A noticeable peculiarity of this Dialogue is, that any alleged incident in Christ's life is taken as true, not because it is authenticated as historical, but simply because it was prophesied of; Justin's Christ is, in fact, an ideal, composed out of the prophecies of the ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... small cone which is very pretty and often brought to this country by travelers for their friends at home. In The Land and the Book there is a picture of small branches with cones, and the author says of the cedar: 'There is a striking peculiarity in the shape of this tree which I have not seen any notice of in books of travel. The branches are thrown out horizontally from the parent trunk. These again part into limbs, which preserve the same horizontal direction, and so ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... as a loving dog might, to await her time. It was devotion, not coolness. To remain standing before her would have seemed a demand on her attention; to lie down was to withdraw and wait. But Florimel, although pleased, was only the more inclined to torment—a peculiarity of disposition which she inherited from her father: she bowed her face once more over her book, and read though three whole stanzas, without however understanding a single phrase in them, before she spoke. Then looking up, and regarding for a ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... own excesses at an early age; or their conduct makes them unattractive as mates; or they give so little care to their children that the latter die from neglect, exposure or accident. As these drunkards would tend to hand down their own inborn peculiarity, or weakness for alcohol, to their children, it must be obvious that their death results in a smaller proportion of such persons in the next generation. In other words, natural selection is at work again here, with alcohol as its agent. By killing off the worst drunkards in ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... microcosm, or epitomized mirror of that same Universe; or, rather, is not that Universe even Himself, the reflex of his own fearful and wonderful being, "the waste fantasy of his own dream?" No wonder that man, that each man, and James Boswell like the others, should resemble it! The peculiarity in his case was the unusual defect of amalgamation and subordination: the highest lay side by side with the lowest; not morally combined with it and spiritually transfiguring it; but tumbling in half-mechanical juxtaposition with it, and from time to time, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... is the peculiarity of this first and most certain knowledge which renders it self-evident and independent of all proof, which makes us absolutely unable to doubt it? Its entire clearness and distinctness. Accordingly, I may conclude that everything ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... 'Therein consists the peculiarity of your situation. You are at the mercy of the inevitable. You cannot retard by one day the catastrophe, any more than you can prevent one of the planets from returning to a given point in its orbit. He will return—let ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... better one knows his surroundings, the more clearly one begins to perceive that his chief peculiarity, when compared with his contemporaries, was a somewhat sluggish avoidance of needless invention. When anyone else had done a popular thing, Shakspere was pretty sure to imitate him and do it better. But he hardly ever did ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... of the opposition interposed a negative, or even a doubt, in favor of him or his opinions. If an idea consonant to the doctrine of his book, or favorable to his conduct, lurks in the minds of any persons in that description, it is to be considered only as a peculiarity which they indulge to their own private liberty of thinking. The author cannot reckon upon it. It has nothing to do with them as members of a party. In their public capacity, in everything that meets the public ear or public eye, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Navy scientific project recently found that strange radio signals are constantly being sent out from a "hot spot" in the Milky Way; other nebulae or "hot" stars may be similarly identified by some peculiarity in their radio emanations. If so, these could be used as check points in ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... schools where incompetent teachers preside three months in the year. One of these students says that for years he worked on alone, puzzling over books by himself, occasionally trying to find some one who could help him, only to be thrown back on his own resources. A peculiarity of his is, that he will not profess to understand what he does not see clearly. This trait, in connection with his practical, unselfish plans for the benefit of his people, seems likely to make this unassuming young man ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 3, September, 1898 • Various
... think that we ever knew his real name. Our ignorance of it certainly never gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar in 1854 most men were christened anew. Sometimes these appellatives were derived from some distinctiveness of dress, as in the case of "Dungaree Jack"; or from some peculiarity of habit, as shown in "Saleratus Bill," so called from an undue proportion of that chemical in his daily bread; or for some unlucky slip, as exhibited in "The Iron Pirate," a mild, inoffensive man, who ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... you Yankees seldom think of, that Englishmen can't endure to live in America. Well, that peculiarity is just as active after they "shuffle off the mortal coil." They must have their little England, ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... peculiarity about this gentleman's name. It starts off with "M" and then there is eight bars rest until it comes to Santos. This is a French custom. Every man in France begins his first name with "M" and then refuses to tell the rest of it. It seems such ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... but it is a birth-mark, and not a witch-mark. It is a simple curving line of red," and the girl blushed crimson at being compelled to such a reference to a personal peculiarity. But she faltered not in her speech, though her tones were more indignant than before. "It is not a peculiarity of mine, but of my mother's family. Some say that a distant ancestor was once frightened by a large snake coming into her chamber; and her child was born with this mark upon her breast. ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... built up by a layer of thin stone externally, and the soil of the garden has been heaped up against it and the whole south wall to the depth of several feet, it is difficult to make out its full relations and character. There is a peculiarity, however, about the head of this entrance which deserves special notice. The top of the doorway, as seen both from within and from without the building, is arched, but in two very different ways. When ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... two hours before he reappeared, and the landlord, who met him with the news that the missing suit-case had been awaiting him in his room since twenty minutes past ten, was struck by a certain peculiarity in his manner. It was nothing very much beyond a suggestion of suppressed excitement and that rather wild look which lingers in a man's eyes when he is just fresh from a dispute or has experienced a narrow escape from danger. Then Gifford ordered a stiff glass ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... already been written of Shakespeare that it would seem as if nothing remained to be said; yet it is the peculiarity of a great mind ever to stimulate other minds. This time I propose to consider Shakespeare from more than one point of view—first as a poet in general, then as compared with poets ancient and modern, and finally, as a strictly dramatic poet. I shall endeavor to show what effect ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... rising not ungracefully, as you enter the inner harbor; it looks the better for being almost windowless, though beauty was not the aim of the omission. A curious stranger is said to have asked one of our city fathers the reason of this peculiarity. "No use in windows," said the experienced official sadly; "the boys would only break 'em." It seems very unjust to assert that there is no subordination in our American society; the citizens show deference to the police, and the police to ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... little island of Montserrat has one peculiarity. The negroes all speak with the strongest of Irish brogues. Cromwell deported to Montserrat many of the "Malignants" from the West of Ireland, who acquired negro slaves to cultivate their sugar and ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... confronted Julian on the top of the flight of steps which led down the rock from the Castle court. We ought to observe, that as Julian's manner to the unfortunate girl had been always gentle, and free from those teasing jests in which his gay friend indulged, with less regard to the peculiarity of her situation and feelings; so Fenella, on her part, had usually shown much greater deference to him than to any of the household, her mistress, the Countess, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... it may be seen, that the complex and divisible structure of the English moods and tenses, produces, when verbs are connected together, a striking peculiarity of construction in our language, as compared with the nearest corresponding construction in Latin or Greek. For we can connect different auxiliaries, participles, or principal verbs, without repeating, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... victory. He was too much the child of his time not to be at times tempted by that happiness which the Middle Ages regarded as the supreme bliss of the elect in paradise—peace. Beati mortui quia quiescunt! His distinguishing peculiarity is that he ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... flesh undergoes very considerable changes. For instance, when the animal is young, the fluids which the tissues of the muscles contain, possess a large proportion of what is called albumen. This albumen, which is also the chief component of the white of eggs, possesses the peculiarity of coagulating or hardening at a certain temperature, like the white of a boiled egg, into a soft, white fluid, no longer soluble, or capable of being dissolved in water. As animals grow older, this peculiar animal matter gradually decreases, in proportion to the other constituents of the juice ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... passed his time at the club, his wife, a fair-complexioned nerveless woman, helped to ruin the Rougon business by her inordinate passion for showy gowns and her formidable appetite, a rather remarkable peculiarity in so frail a creature. Angele, however, adored sky-blue ribbons and roast beef. She was the daughter of a retired captain who was called Commander Sicardot, a good-hearted old gentleman, who had given her a dowry of ten thousand francs—all his savings. Pierre, in selecting ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... I knew to be very true. Had it not been for this peculiarity of Mr. Hinckman, I might have been more willing to talk to him ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... number of spots which he has discovered, and he finds that some of these spots in about 27 deg. north latitude indicate rotation in a period of 10 hrs. 14 mins. to 15 min., while equatorial spots require no more than 10 hrs. 12 min. to 13 min. There is, however, the peculiarity that spots in the same latitude, but at different parts of the planet, rotate at rates which differ by a minute or more, while the period found by various groups of spots seems to ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... Diffusion of the chansons. Their authorship and publication. Their performance. Hearing, not reading, the object. Effect on prosody. The jongleurs. Jongleresses, &c. Singularity of the chansons. Their charm. Peculiarity of the geste system. Instances. Summary of the geste of William of Orange. And first of the Couronnement Loys. Comments on the Couronnement. William of Orange. The earlier poems of the cycle. The Charroi de Nimes. The Prise ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... trains and pages suggests the fact that in old times the heroes and heroines of tragedy always wore, either in peculiarity of dress or pomp of surroundings, the badge of greatness. Nowadays a few bars of romantic music, to usher these characters on the stage, will suffice. But things were different then; our ancestors insisted that the aforesaid dramatis personnae should ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... had handled many curious cases in the past, many that had been notable for their intricacy, their complexity of motive and detail. But here, he felt, was a case of a very different sort, the peculiarity of which lay in its astonishing lack of clues of any sort. Usually in the past there had been motives, evidence, traces of some kind or other, upon which to build a case. Here there was nothing, except the three mysterious letters, the one ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... material, and it is only because the whole serves the parts that the parts adapt themselves to the end. The political artist has to treat his material—man—with a very different kind of respect than that shown by the artist of fine art to his work. He must spare man's peculiarity and personality, not to produce a defective effect on the senses, but objectively and out of consideration ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the placentals, which diverges most from that of the amphioxus, the primitive form, is reduced to the original type, the invagination of a modified blastula. Its chief peculiarity is that the folded part of the blastoderm does not form a completely closed (only open at the primitive mouth) blind sac, as is usual; but this blind sac has a wide opening at the ventral curve (opposite to the ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... peculiarity of manner. He did not attract the world of women by elaborate brutalities, or charm it by silly suavities. He seemed always very natural, intelligent, alive, and thoroughly interested in the person with ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... of peculiarities about this intruder. To begin with, she was hatless, quite as if she were a habitue; of the house, and was costumed in a prim lilac-colored lawn of the style of two decades past. But a greater peculiarity was the resemblance this lady bore to a faded daguerrotype. If looked at one way, she was perfectly discernible; if looked at another, she went out in a sort of blur. Notwithstanding this comparative ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... the effects which this monopoly of education by women is having on the curriculum of the schools we must first agree on what constitutes the peculiarity of women's minds as compared with men's minds.[29] In our first chapter, it was asserted that women are more interested in the concrete, human, personal, conserving and emotional aspects of life; while men more easily turn ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... surprising, for the local mixtures (either Italian stuff which is dumped down in shiploads at Nice, Marseille, Cette, etc., or else the poor though sometimes aromatic product of the Var) are not gratifying to the palate. One imbibes them, none the less, in preference to anything else, as it is a peculiarity of what goes under the name of wine hereabouts that the more you pay for it, the worse it tastes. If you adventure into the Olympic spheres of Chateau Lafite and so forth, you may put your trust in God, or in a blue pill. Chateau Cassis ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... three cars perform each two journeys to some spot or spots unknown, and, returning, deposit their passengers before the porch of Hillside. The limousine used by Ormuz Khan, upon its second appearance had partaken of the same peculiarity as the others: there were ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... disadvantages, I am able to keep above water, in the esteem of mankind, I shall feel myself happy; but if, from the unknown peculiarity of my circumstances, I suffer in the opinion of the world, I shall not think you take the freedom of a friend, if you conceal the reflections that may be cast upon my conduct. My own situation is so irksome to me at times that, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... each one of the eight, for there was not one of them without his peculiarity. First, there was an Englishman—a genuine type of his countrymen—full six feet high, well proportioned, with broad chest and shoulders, and massive limbs. Hair of a light brown, complexion florid, moustache and whiskers full ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... The peculiarity of trout-fishing in the Traun is that one catches principally grayling. But in this it resembles some other pursuits which are not without their charm for minds open to the pleasures of the unexpected—for ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... water,' as he remembers (and he is always careful to remember) how his dearest friend, who has been so successful in life, can no more read Miss Austen than he can read the Moabitish stone." The same peculiarity is noticeable in the more ardent lovers of Charles Lamb. They seem to want him all to themselves, look askance upon any fellow-being who ventures to assert a modest preference for their idol, and brighten visibly when some ponderous critic ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... proportions, scarcely to be surpassed by those of any other Norman building; that the capitals of the pillars throughout the church are destitute of sculpture; and that the walls of the clerestory are altogether without buttresses. This last peculiarity is likewise observable in the nave of the church at Tollevast, an edifice of the plainest and earliest architecture. At Than, the clerestory is externally decorated with twenty-nine arches, of which ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... it was proposed that I should go to school, that was a remedy I could not listen to with patience for a moment. The peculiarity of my education had separated me entirely from the girls around, except that when they were playing at active games, I would sometimes go out and join them. I liked violent bodily exercise, which always relieved ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... characteristics, each province has its own, founded on the government, climate, mode of husbandry, customs, and peculiarity of circumstances. Europeans submit insensibly to these great powers, and become, in the course of a few generations, not only Americans in general, but either Pennsylvanians, Virginians, or provincials under ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... Providence," answered John Girdlestone, with an earnestness which showed that his mind still retained its habitual peculiarity. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... robbery, murder and covetousness, but always exerted itself to the fullest extent of its power in attacks upon chastity. All other visions were absent in the hair-shirted, and self-scourgings brought out nothing but sexual idealities, sensual temptations. The reason for this peculiarity is not far to seek. What is dominant in the minds always finds egress when a favorable opportunity is presented, and the very thought of unchastity as something to be avoided, leads to its contemplation, or its creation in the form of temptation. The virtue of ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... lands. It was the romantic vision of a boy; yet he lived to realize it. The dream became a passion, rooted in his very life; and he pursued his determination through youth up to manhood, with that calm but indomitable force of will which was the most striking peculiarity of his character. The orphan boy became one of the most powerful men of his time; he retrieved the fortunes of his line; bought back the old estate, and rebuilt the family mansion. "When, under a ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called a small silver clock; in other words, it was a watch as to shape and intention, and a small clock as to size. This instrument being several years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either too fast or not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to. The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied by thumps and ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... for speaking of Watteau's mannerisms, the mannerisms that proclaim his originality. Only your academic, colourless painter lacks personal style and always paints like somebody he is not. Watteau's art is peculiarly personal. Its peculiarity—apart from its brilliancy and vivacity—is, as Mauclair remarks, "the contrast of cheerful colour and morbid expression." Morbidezza is the precise phrase; morbidezza may be found in Chopin's art, in the very feverish moments when he seems brimming over with high spirits. Watteau was not ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... home and my slave-merchants abroad have orders to send to my villa in Sicily all women who are born most beautiful in the Empire, or can be brought most beautiful from the nations around. I will have them displayed before me, of every shade in complexion and of every peculiarity in form! At the fitting period I shall commence my investigations, undismayed by difficulty, and determined on success. Never yet has the true Venus been personified! Should I accomplish the task, how exquisite will be my triumph! My work will be the altar at which thousands ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... not on the wonderful tapestries of which Spain has always had a collection to make envious the rest of Europe. He might forget his two poor little boys who were left as hostages on his release, but he forgot not whatever contributes to the pleasure of life. That peculiarity was one which was yielding luscious fruit, however, for Francis was the bearer of the torch of the Renaissance which was to illumine France with the same fire that flashed and glowed over Italy. This is a fact to remember ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... successively higher groups of organisms are severally characterized, not only by greater differentiation of parts, but also by greater differentiation from the surrounding medium in sundry other physical attributes. It would seem that this peculiarity has some necessary connexion with superior vital manifestations. One of those lowly gelatinous forms which are some of them so transparent and colourless as to be with difficulty distinguished from ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... animal products, as well as a few vegetable products, especially honey, strawberries and buckwheat, were most likely to be the cause of these violent disturbances. More recently it has been found that cow's milk very often shows the same peculiarity. It is now known that this remarkable phenomenon is due to the fact that the body sometimes becomes sensitized to certain proteins which thereafter act as most violent poisons and may cause death. Sensitization to animal proteins is much the more frequent. In such cases nut products ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... followed, not a system of the science itself. But, at the same time, it marks out and defines both the external boundaries and the internal structure of this science. For pure speculative reason has this peculiarity, that, in choosing the various objects of thought, it is able to define the limits of its own faculties, and even to give a complete enumeration of the possible modes of proposing problems to itself, ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... mental juxtaposition, a peculiarity different in each person, and depending upon each one's own experiences. Thus, "St. Charles" suggests "railway bridge" to me, because I was vividly impressed by the breaking of the Wabash bridge at that point. "Stable" and "broken leg" come near each other in my experience, as do "cow" ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... he was a little satiated with Society's nervous wrecks. You cannot hold your nose for long over any kind of smoke without being nauseated; but the fumes which men and women have tried to consume themselves, and failed, have this peculiarity, that they are perhaps more foetid, more unsavoury, more asphyxiating, than any that can be produced by the combustion of the ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... recommended, is somewhat different from what is commonly pursued. I contemplate the continued exercise of a most curious and prying, as well as a most vigilant and observing eye. No difficulty is to be neglected; no peculiarity of expression is to be disregarded; no minute detail is to be overlooked. The hint let fall in an earlier chapter is to be compared with a hint let fall in the later place. Do they tally or not? ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... or had a little play acted, our critics were in the habit of flying into an ungovernable passion and behaving as if the publication of the book or the performance of the play were a mortal insult to themselves and the newspapers in which they wrote. As already remarked, I puzzled long over this peculiarity. At last I got to the bottom of the matter. Whilst reading the Danish Monthly Journal of Literature I was struck by the fact that old State-Councillor Molbech was invariably seized with a fit of rage when a young author published a book or had ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... the atmosphere around, quivering in a summer haze in the valley beneath, and stirred to the faintest summer wind-sighs as it moved among the pines and birches overhead. Its lightness was its most striking peculiarity. You felt as if your lungs could never weary of inhaling deep breaths of such an air. Warm without oppression, cool without a chill. I can find nothing but paradoxes to describe it. As for fatigue, one's muscles might get tired, and need rest, but the ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... of the Ranunculus amplexicaulis in part surround the stalk at their base, whence its trivial name; in colour they differ from most others of the genus, being of a greyer or more glaucous hue, which peculiarity joined to the delicate whiteness of the flowers, renders this species a very desirable one to add to a collection of hardy, ornamental, herbaceous plants, more especially as it occupies but little space, and has no tendency to injure the ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... premises in a velvet jacket and a pair of black kid gloves with one little white button; as also, that she should apply a thick coating of powder to her face, which had a charming oval and a sweet weak expression, like that of most of the Venetian maidens, who, as a general thing—it was not a peculiarity of the land- lady's niece—are fond of besmearing themselves with flour. You soon recognise that it is not only the many-twinkling lagoon you behold from a habitation on the Riva; you see a little of everything Venetian. Straight across, before my windows, rose the great pink ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... of this voice is greatly dependent on cultivation and management, and experiments have proved that more depends on cultivation than on natural peculiarity. Much care and labour are necessary for acquiring this improved condition of the speaking voice, the lungs must be kept well supplied with breath, there must be a full expansion of the chest, causing the abdomen gently to protrude, the throat ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... personalities is the peculiarity of the timid, which their fitful efforts of will only heighten, alienating from them the sympathy which might be of ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... one, for he does not know what it is to die. There is the same insensibility in his heart as in his manners. Indifferent, like every child, to every one but himself, he takes no interest in any one; his only peculiarity is that he will not pretend to take such an interest; he is less ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... John no concern, for he knew this peculiarity of Fayette's; so he walked quietly away toward the old shed where he had tied his horses, to give them their food and secure his own. Before he reached them, however, he heard a loud shout, and, turning, ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... the general peculiarity should always be remembered, that the barometric column usually stands higher with easterly than it does with westerly winds; and with winds from the polar regions higher than with those from the direction of the equator. Hence the highest ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy
... about Calais does not differ materially from that in the immediate neighbourhood of Dover, which is much less fertile than the greater part of Kent; but the cottages are decidedly inferior to the English. The first peculiarity that struck us was the grotesque appearance of the Douaniers, who came to examine us on the coast; and when we had passed through the numerous guards, and been examined at the guard-houses, previously to our admission ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... as here, in the "Tain be Cuailnge," and several other Irish romances, though it is by no means common to all of them. It may be noted that the Irish version of the "Tale of Troy" shows this feature, and although it is possible that the peculiarity is due to the great clearness and sharpness of detail that characterises much of the early Irish work, it may be that this is a case of an introduction into ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... a friend of Fielding, the Reverend William Young. Like Adams, he was a scholar and devoted to AEschylus; he resembled him, too, in his trick of snapping his fingers, and his habitual absence of mind. Of this latter peculiarity it is related that on one occasion, when a chaplain in Marlborough's wars, he strolled abstractedly into the enemy's lines with his beloved AEschylus in his hand. His peaceable intentions were so unmistakable that he was instantly released, and politely ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... of his nature. Although I had frequently seen him in the progress of the Revolution and had corresponded with him from France in 1781 and 1782, this was the first occasion on which I had contemplated him in his private relations. I observed a peculiarity in his smile which seemed to illuminate his eye; his whole countenance beamed with intelligence, while it commanded confidence and respect. The gentleman who had accompanied me from Alexandria left in the evening, and I remained alone in the enjoyment of the society of Washington for two ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... the eyes of the lieutenant. He was greatly relieved, however, at finding that neither of the three meant or understood more than was simply expressed. As for his uncle, he had not the smallest intention of making any allusion to the peculiarity of his nephew's birth; and the other two, in common with the world, supposed the reputed heir to be legitimate. Gathering courage from the looks of those around him, Tom answered with a steadiness that prevented his ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... diameter. Round it are cellars and chambers for domestic purposes. Others are accessible from the gallery that leads to the court. One of them, the Cave-Noire, possesses a chimney bored upwards through the rock to the level of the surface. Another peculiarity of this cavern is that along one side, throughout its length, 120 feet, are rings cut in the rock showing tokens of having been fretted by usage. They are at the height of four feet above the soil, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... pages of the Chronicle was usually devoted to literature. Extracts were frequently given from the works of Johnson, Smollett, and other popular writers, and a column was often occupied by an essay from a contributor to the paper, generally treating of some social evil or peculiarity, but never intermeddling with local or general politics. These effusions displayed a very respectable amount of ability, and the general getting-up, or what would now be termed the sub-editing of the paper, was also performed with care and ability. The scraps of news were ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... roads. No man of English blood then regarded the aboriginal Irish as his countrymen. They did not belong to our branch of the great human family. They were distinguished from us by more than one moral and intellectual peculiarity, which the difference of situation and of education, great as that difference was, did not seem altogether to explain. They had an aspect of their own, a mother tongue of their own. When they talked English ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be frightened, Leo; I have been far from well lately, and my illness seems to have slightly affected my brain; sometimes I detect myself saying things which I had not the remotest intention of saying a moment before. If you should observe any little peculiarity of that kind in me, take no notice of it, let it pass. And now, if your boxes are all ready—as I suppose they are—let them be brought down and put on the chaise; we shall sleep in Poole to-night, and we ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... somewhere in view of the Lone Mountain Cemetery; ran for a term across that rather windy Olympus of Nob Hill, or perhaps just skirted its frontier; passed almost immediately after through a stage of little houses, rather impudently painted, and offering to the eye of the observer this diagnostic peculiarity, that the huge brass plates upon the small and highly coloured doors bore only the first names of ladies—Norah or Lily or Florence; traversed China Town, where it was doubtless undermined with opium cellars, and its blocks pierced, after the similitude of rabbit-warrens, with a hundred doors ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... worshipped before the new ikons as devoutly as they had done before the old. The son in old age refused to eat meat and imposed upon himself the rule of silence, considering all conversation as sin; it was the peculiarity of the grandsons that they interpreted the Scripture not simply, but sought in it a hidden meaning, declaring that every sacred word ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Now the first broad characteristic of the building, and the root nearly of every other important peculiarity in it, is its confessed incrustation. It is the purest example in Italy of the great school of architecture in which the ruling principle is the incrustation of brick with more precious materials; and it is necessary before we ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... this account, Sulla, who disapproved of his conduct, never employed him again in any public business. However, Crassus was most expert in gaining over everybody by flattery; and, on the other hand, he was easily taken in by flattery from any person. It is further mentioned as a peculiarity in his character, that, though very greedy of gain,[23] he hated and abused those most who ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... have far exceeded in public utility, the pittance of income to the treasury, which used to be wrung out by the tax upon letters. The same examination will also show, that there is no substantial reason, either in the system itself, or in any peculiarity of our circumstances, why the same system is not equally practicable and equally applicable here, nor why we should not realize at least as great benefits as the people of ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... applies (in books) to the Damascus-plain because "it abounds with water and fruit trees." The Ghutah is one of the four earthly paradises, the others being Basrah (Bassorah), Shiraz and Samarcand. Its peculiarity is the likeness to a seaport the Desert which rolls up almost to its doors being the sea and its ships being the camels. The first Arab to whom we owe this admirable term for the "Companion of Job" is "Tarafah" one of the poets of the Suspended Poems: he likens (v. v. 3, 4) the camels ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... all skilled in magic, and to some extent are able to command or propitiate even the gods. A peculiarity of Finnish magic is what is called ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... in the face of a good man, and Dr. Morrison had this peculiarity in a remarkable degree. His face seemed to radiate light; moreover, he was a man anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows, and John no sooner felt the glow of that radiant countenance on him than his heart ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... can receive its first chaplet. All our literature teaches this unquiet and discontented spirit as to the present, and this rash and impatient determination to achieve immediate success. Now, this is a peculiarity of our country, the land of all others which should cherish a disposition to be gratefully contented with the unequaled blessings with which it is endowed. There is no necessity for this forcing system to expand properly and in due ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the soft tread which was his peculiarity, he surprised her with her face in her hands in an attitude of such abandonment that he drew back hesitating. But, suddenly aware of him, she sprang up swiftly, with no sign ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... personality to the front of the cathedral, which has none of its own. Shabby, rusty, unfinished, this front has a romanesque portal, but nothing in the way of a tower. One sees from without, at a glance, the peculiarity of the church—the disparity between the romanesque nave, which is small and of the twelfth century, and the immense and splendid transepts and choir, of a period a hundred years later. Outside, this end of the church ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... little Grayson villa we found two large eyed detectives and a very angry woman waiting impatiently. Heaped up on a table in the living room was a store of loot that readily accounted for the ocular peculiarity of ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... a certain amount of flexibility to the shell; whereas in the ordinary living forms these plates are firmly articulated together by their edges, and the shell forms a rigid immovable box. The Carboniferous Sea-urchins which exhibit this extraordinary peculiarity belong to the genera Lepidechinus and Lepidesthes, and it seems tolerably certain that a similar flexibility of the shell existed to a less degree in the much more abundant genus Archoeocidaris. The Carboniferous Sea-urchins, like the modern ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... perfectly familiar to every student of comparative folk-lore, but the modifications which they have undergone, the changed forms in which they reappear, are all new, and every such change or modification points to some peculiarity in the character of the people who originated it. The variations of a story, therefore, are so many "Fraunhofer's lines" which reveal to us the nature of the intellectual medium through which it has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... "mutilated and putrefying." Our reflex to those who would say that, in the climate of India, it would not take long for fishes to putrefy, is—that high in the air, the climate of India is not torrid. Another peculiarity of this fall is that some of the fishes were much larger than others. Or to those who hold out for segregation in a whirlwind, or that objects, say, twice as heavy as others would be separated from the lighter, we point ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... one, as you shall see presently," replied Jack. "It is called the aoa here, if I recollect rightly, and has a wonderful peculiarity about it. What an enormous one ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... DEAR MRS. LILLY,—I send you a little book for your sick child, and some medicine for her poor broken back. The peculiarity of this medicine is that in order to produce any good effect it must be taken by the nurse. This is rather hard upon the nurse; but if she is a good nurse she will not mind ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... harder surfaces, which at times is very serious, is that the ball is very much more liable to skid off them than off others, and thus the golfer may often blame himself for shots that look like a mixture of foozle and slice when the fault is not his at all, but that of the peculiarity of the club with which he is so much in love. On the other hand, it must be admitted that he scores over his opponent with the leather-faced club when the weather is wet, for the leather is then liable to soften and ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... fond of fishing, and it is a remarkable coincidence that Daniel Webster, and many other famous men, have manifested a decided passion for this exciting sport. No doubt a fondness for angling is a peculiarity of genius; and if being an expert fisherman makes a great man, then our hero was ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... was little in life worth living for. Notwithstanding this, it was observed that she had a good appetite. Indeed, Miss Harding appeared to thrive on her gloomy views of life and human nature. She was, it must be acknowledged, perfectly consistent in all her conduct, so far as this peculiarity was concerned. Whenever she took up a newspaper, she always looked first to the space appropriated to deaths, and next in order to the column of accidents, casualties, etc., and her spirits were visibly exhilarated when she encountered a familiar ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... exhibited. The rest being reserved for future sport, were either dragged out of the ring in the manner above described, or, when supposed to be too strong to be mastered by the men of the fork, were tamely driven out among a flock of oxen introduced into the area as a decoy. Another peculiarity of the Lisbon bull-fights is the presence of a buffoon on horseback called the Neto, who first enters the ring to take the commands of the Inspector, and occasionally bears the shock of the bull, to the no small diversion of the lower class of spectators. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... Protoplasm.—What is this material, protoplasm? As disclosed by the early microscope it appeared to be nothing more than a simple mass of jelly, usually transparent, more or less consistent, sometimes being quite fluid, and at others more solid. Structure it appeared to have none. Its chief peculiarity, so far as physical characters were concerned, was a wonderful and never-ceasing activity. This jellylike material appeared to be endowed with wonderful powers, and yet neither physical nor microscopical study revealed at first anything more than a uniform homogeneous mass of jelly. ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... is that the power of crowds being on the increase, and this power being less and less counterbalanced, the extreme mobility of ideas, which we have seen to be a peculiarity of crowds, can manifest itself ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... connected in parallel with others between the two leads of the primary circuit. The term refers to the connection only and not to any peculiarity of the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... another step and notice a frequently occurring fracture that is caused by the constant pressure and tuning up of the A peg, at a part which in many violins, owing to the peculiarity of design, is a very weak one, the grain of the wood above the peg being short and liable to overstraining by impetuous performers. Being one of the most inconvenient positions on the instrument for working upon, if the repairing ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... and in similar situations it is so in some degree with us; but on our flower-borders, where it is usually sown, it grows so luxuriantly, that the stalks becoming juicy and tender, are generally destroyed by our frosts; hence it is an annual from peculiarity of circumstance; as such, it is very generally cultivated; the flowers exhibit a pretty, innocent appearance, and strongly diffuse an agreeable honey-like smell. They continue to blow through most of ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 3 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... precious thoughts to writing; and these thoughts were to antiquity what the "Imitation of Christ" was to the Middle Ages,—accepted by Christians as well as by pagans, and even to-day regarded as one of the most beautiful treatises on morals ever composed by man. The great peculiarity of the "Manual" and the "Discourses" is the elevation of the soul over external evils, the duty of resignation to whatever God sends, and the obligation to do right because it is right. Epictetus did not go into the dreary dialectics of the schools, but, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord |
