"Acceptation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... (Voices—"Yes.") Now I propose to discuss that resolution in some degree. First, it proposes a cessation of hostilities. I have heard the word armistice mentioned to-night. The declaration of that resolution is not for an armistice. An armistice, according to its general acceptation and use, implies a suspension of hostilities upon the expectation and condition that they are to be resumed; and if hostilities are not to be resumed then a cessation of hostilities is an abandonment ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... God there is no error; all is comparatively good." The same work says that God views error as "undeveloped good." A. J. Davis ("Nature of Divine Revelation," p. 521) says: "Sin, indeed, in the common acceptation of that term, does not ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... that he specially recognises in himself the sense of power. Power in its simplest acceptation, may be exerted in either of two ways, either in his procuring for himself an ample field for more refined accommodations, or in the exercise of compulsion and authority over other living creatures. In the pursuit of either of these, and especially the first, he is led to ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... the Canadian border. Here then, almost before I had begun my story, I had two countries, two of the ends of the earth involved: and thus though the notion of the resuscitated man failed entirely on the score of general acceptation, or even (as I have since found) acceptability, it fitted at once with my design of a tale of many lands; and this decided me to consider further of its possibilities. The man who should thus be buried was the first question: a good man, whose return to life would be hailed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Emperor, "we would not willingly hold with the wild infidels, that Paradise is to be gained by the sabre; nevertheless, we would hope that a Roman dying in battle for his religion and his Emperor, may find as good hope of acceptation, after the mortal pang is over, as a man who dies in peace, and with ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... preparation; and we long for an epic, a world-moulding epic, to imbody and depict them. The undertaking is a dangerous one—many a lance is shivered in the first encounter. A mere tendency-novel is in itself a monster. A picture of the age must be, in the highest acceptation of the word, a poem. It must not represent real persons or places—it must create such. It must not ingraft itself upon the passing and the accidental, but be pervaded by a poetic intuition of the real. He that attempts it must look with a poet's eye at the real ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... Mothers Milk; there is no Diet to be found on Earth more fit for the nourishment of all men than Milk; for its best part is chiefly an Animal Sulphur, which yields the Nourishment. Even in like manner Tin is nourished by its Metallick Sulphur, which likewise feeds it with the greatest acceptation, it assumes in and to it more heat than Saturn, therefore is Jupiter more digested & broiled, whereby its Body likewise is more fixt and permanent in the degree ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... thousand years, from the fall of Troy to the capture of Missolonghi. This can, therefore, also be regarded as a unity of time in the higher sense of the term; the unities of place and action are, however, likewise most carefully regarded in the usual acceptation of the word. It ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... so disgusted, so distracted with remorse over any life, so much as my own. My heart was the foulest place I ever saw. I do not know what is in other people's hearts. Paul meant this when he said: "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief;" Said, this, "is worthy of all acceptation" or was, a good testimony. Because one can never see how bad the heart is, until God sheds the light to see it. So many people are deceived, as a blind man. They may be in filth, and do not know it. It is there, but not seen, ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... the work required. At length, however, I have sufficiently disengaged myself from these onerous pursuits to accomplish this necessary revision; and I now offer the work to the public, with the confidence that it will be found better deserving of the favorable acceptation and high praise it has already received. There are very few errors, either of fact or of inference, in the early editions, which I have had to correct; but there are many omissions which I have had to supply, and faults of arrangement and classification which ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... the insidious dangers of his thought, and it was in the hands of those disciples who developed his system and sought to reconcile it at all points with orthodoxy that his ideas displayed their true nature. Malebranche's philosophy revealed the incompatibility of Providence—in the ordinary acceptation—with immutable natural laws. If the Deity acts upon the world, as Malebranche maintained, only by means of general laws, His freedom is abolished, His omnipotence is endangered, He is subject to a sort of fatality. What will become of the Christian ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... in the right acceptation of the word, in it at all. At any rate, there is far more of the element of real sport in fox-hunting or in stag-hunting, especially in those districts where one is told that the stag practically enters into the spirit of the game, when, after a good run, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... speaking, includes every sort of ornamental work done with a sewing needle of any kind; but in its popular acceptation, it applies only to the ornamentation of any article by the eye, or from drawn or marked patterns—whatever may be the material, or combination of materials employed; Berlin or canvas work, on the contrary, is the usual designation ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... Sir James and Lady Kay Shuttleworth. Their house lies over the crest of the moors which rise above Haworth, at about a dozen miles' distance as the crow flies, though much further by the road. But, according to the acceptation of the word in that uninhabited district, they were neighbours, if they so willed it. Accordingly, Sir James and his wife drove over one morning, at the beginning of March, to call upon Miss Bronte and her father. Before taking leave, they pressed her to visit ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... which the knowledge of men should be classified as being of primary or of secondary importance. And this knowledge, which forms the guide to all other branches of knowledge, men have always called science in the strictest acceptation of the word. And such science there has always been, even down to our own day, in all human communities which have emerged from their primal ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... of Greek architecture, sculpture, and painting—begins much later. Nevertheless it will repay us to get some notion, however slight, of such prehistoric Greek remains as can be included under the broadest acceptation of the ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... was now divided between the danger of the government and the new preacher who electrified the world at St. Rosicrucius. The Rev. Nigel Penruddock was not at all a popular preacher according to the vulgar acceptation of the term. He disdained all cant and clap-trap. He preached Church principles with commanding eloquence, and he practised them with unceasing devotion. His church was always open, yet his schools were never neglected; there was a perfect ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... and I had a glimpse of a terrible past in the life of this man. Not only had he put himself beyond the pale of human laws, but he had made himself independent of them, free in the strictest acceptation of the word, quite beyond their reach! Who then would dare to pursue him at the bottom of the sea, when, on its surface, he defied all attempts made ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... acceptation, may be defined as a society or corporate body having for its object the cultivation and promotion of literature, of science and of art, either severally or in combination, undertaken for the pure love of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ordinary scientific tests. It is intended to prove the existence of an agent essential to the working of the machinery, as from the movements of a planet we infer the existence of a disturbing planet. The argument from design, in this acceptation, is briefly mentioned by 'Philip Beauchamp.' It is, he argues, 'completely extra-experimental'; for experience only reveals design in living beings: it supposes a pre-existing chaos which can never be shown to have existed, and the 'omnipotent ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... unsaved (as the term literally denotes) who is wasting away by his own fault; and this he really may be said to be; the destruction of his substance is thought to be a kind of wasting of himself, since these things are the means of living. Well, this is our acceptation of the term Prodigality. ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... but having an interest in the matter, we resolved, notwithstanding, to ascertain, if possible, whether the Wisdom who uttereth her voice in the streets had on this special occasion spoken to any purpose, and whether any, and how many, had proved themselves wise in the acceptation of Mr Allspice. On making the necessary inquiries after the affair had gone off, we learned, to our surprise and gratification, that the club had been entirely successful. Upwards of a hundred persons ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... six; involving probably many millions of years. The silliest of nurses, in her nursery babble, could hardly suppose that the mighty process began on a Monday morning, and ended on Saturday night. If we are seriously to study the value and scriptural acceptation of scriptural words and phrases, I presume that our first business will be to collate the use of these words in one part of Scripture, with their use in other parts, holding the same spiritual relations. The creation, for ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... always treated you with proper respect. You would not surely have had me as rude to you as you invariably were to me? I may not be a gentleman, Miss Amherst, in your acceptation of that term, but I make it ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... as will be readily believed, all acceptation from the huntsman, who, in requital, offered to bucklaw the compliment of his knife, which the young lady ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... means of intelligible language—a use of the word which certainly admits of no comparison with the meaning of science, but which also leads to no ideas of any educational interest. But I take the word literature in its common acceptation; and, while admitting that I can give no precise and exhaustive definition, I will venture to describe it as the expression of thought or emotion in any linguistic forms which have aesthetic value. Thus the subject-matter of literature is only limited by experience: as Emile Faguet ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... is a religion which inculcates love: filial love towards God; paternal love to those committed to our care; brotherly love, to our neighbour, nay, something more than is known by that term in its common acceptation, for we are instructed to ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... respect to its mysterious close. 'Yet the six days of Moses!' Days! But is any man so little versed in biblical language as not to know that (except in the merely historical parts of the Jewish records) every section of time has a secret and separate acceptation in the Scriptures? Does an on, though a Grecian word, bear scripturally [either in Daniel or in Saint John] any sense known to Grecian ears? Do the seventy weeks of the prophet mean weeks in the sense of human calendars? Already the Psalms, (xc) ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... their ordinary pursuits, and lent himself to the proper feelings of the occasion with a zeal and simplicity that gave Mark great satisfaction; for, hitherto, while aware that his friend was as honest a fellow as ever lived, in the common acceptation of such a phrase, he had not supposed him in the least susceptible of religious impressions. But the world had suddenly lost its hold on Betts, the barrier offered by the vast waters of the Pacific, being almost as impassable, in his ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... so clear-minded. It gave me great pleasure, and brings me a dear hope, of which I accept the augury with joy. Each one of your beloved letters, too, gives me the best of what life holds for me. My first letter of to-day replies to what you say about the acceptation of trials and the destruction ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... the battle-field with the ambulance party seeking for the dead and wounded, and came across a man who was dying, and said to him, "Do you know Jesus?" He replied, "Yes, I'm trusting Jesus as my Saviour." I said, "That's right, brother. 'This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.' 'Christ died the just for the unjust that He might bring us to God.' 'The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin.' Do you know me?" I asked. "Yes," he replied, "you are our chaplain," ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... extensive sea. Vegetation seemed labouring to commence, and a few tufts of the saxifraga oppositifolia, when closely examined, discovered some signs of life. A botanist, in short, might have considered vegetation as begun, but in the popular acceptation of the word it certainly had not. Such was the state of things on shore at the conclusion of the month of May. Upon the ice appearances were not more promising. Except in the immediate neighbourhood of the ships, where, from the constant trampling and the laying of various stores upon the ice, some ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... consequently that despotism in taste, which would seek to invest with universal authority the rules which at first, perhaps, were but arbitrarily advanced, is but a vain and empty pretension. Poetry, taken in its widest acceptation, as the power of creating what is beautiful, and representing it to the eye or the ear, is a universal gift of Heaven, being shared to a certain extent even by those whom we call barbarians and savages. Internal excellence is alone decisive, and where this exists, we must not allow ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... superstitions. Superstition of the grossest kind is prevalent among the lower orders in every part of England, and yet the nation prides itself on its rejection of this weakness. But according to another acceptation of the term, only such heathen customs as refer to the worship of false gods, are superstitions. These customs remain, unfortunately, in many countries, but in some they have been Christianized. Those who use the term superstition generically, still call the custom ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... world is NOT all before me," she said; "I should be very sorry if I thought so. To have the world all before you in the general acceptation of that term means to live long, to barter whatever genius you have for gold, to hear the fulsome and unmeaning flatteries of the ignorant, who are as ready with condemnation as praise—to be envied and maligned by those ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... see it, is the whole pith, mystery, outer form, common acceptation, purpose, usage usual, meaning and inner meaning, beauty intrinsic and extrinsic, and right character of Christmas Feast. Habent urbs atque orbis revelationem. Pray for ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... arguments, to his own views, to such an extent that I began to rebuild my hopes for the realisation of my ideal in art upon them. Thus there were two questions which concerned me very nearly: he wished to abolish matrimony, in the usual acceptation of the word, altogether. I thereupon asked him what he thought the result would be of promiscuous intercourse with women of a doubtful character. With amiable indignation he gave me to understand that we could have no idea about the purity of morals in general, and of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... son was going about his business with a leisurely savoir-faire which few could rival. Jack Meredith was the beau-ideal of the society man in the best acceptation of the word. One met him wherever the best people congregated, and he invariably seemed to know what to do and how to do it better than his compeers. If it was dancing in the season, Jack Meredith danced, and no man rivalled ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... her nuns, as for the vassals of the several parishes. This privilege, however, extended no farther than to an exemption from certain pecuniary fines, which the diocesans, in the middle ages, exacted from their flocks; and even in this confined acceptation, it was more than once the subject of litigation between the convent and the see. In like manner, the civil and criminal jurisdiction claimed by the abbess over the same parishes, brought her occasionally into disputes with the bailiff and viscount of Caen: ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... Like many other great men, he was not what might technically be called a Christian. He was a religious man in spirit and by nature; yet he never joined a church. Mrs. Lincoln says that he had no religious faith, in the usual acceptation of the word, but that religion was a sort of poetry in his nature. "Twice during his life," she said, "he seemed especially to think about it. Once was when our boy Willie died. Once—and this time he thought of it more deeply—was when he went to Gettysburg." But whatever his inner thoughts ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... residing in bodies to modify light after a particular manner, or else as light itself so modified as to strike upon the organs of sight, and cause the sensation we call color; and that this latter is the more proper acceptation of the word color will appear hereafter. And indeed it is the light itself, which after a certain manner, either mixed with shades or other-wise, strikes our eyes and immediately produces that motion in the organ which gives us the color of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... legislation upon the tariff, the terms Free-trade and Protection are used in their ordinary acceptation in this country,—not as accurately defining the difference in revenue theories, but as indicating the rival policies which have so long divided political parties. Strictly speaking, there has never been a proposition by any party in the United States for the adoption of free-trade. To be entirely ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... one is not infrequently doubtful as to the true road. The history of medicine is at once the history of human wisdom and the history of human credulity and folly, and the romantic element (to use the expression in its popular acceptation) thus introduced, whilst making the subject more entertaining, by no means detracts from its ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... notion of a literal acceptation of his words, where he says,—"It is the Spirit which profiteth, the flesh profiteth nothing; the words which I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are life." It seems impossible, therefore, to refer these words, which ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... had no such popular interpreter as Wolff was of Leibnitz, and hence his influence, though deep where prevalent, was felt in a more limited sphere. Wolff cannot be termed a Rationalist in the common acceptation of the term, though his doctrines contributed to the growth of neological thinking. Had he been theologian alone, and applied his principles to the interpretation of Scripture, he would have done much of Semler's work. It was, therefore, the latter and not the former whom we ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... some interesting critical notes which were printed with the original edition. George Herbert expresses his great love for "Valdesso," whose eyes, he says, God has opened, even in the midst of Popery, "to understand and expresse so clearly {238} and excellently the intent of the Gospell in the acceptation of Christ's righteousness," but he "likes not" his slighting of Scripture and his use of the Word of God for inward revelation. He believed, though wrongly, that de Valdes was a "mystic," and that he was advocating a religion ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... of the "Wealth of Nations." The result was a crude farrago of notions regarding the true nature of money, the soundness of currency, and relative value of capital, with which he nightly favoured an admiring audience at "The Crow"; for Bob was by no means—in the literal acceptation of the word—a dry philosopher. On the contrary, he perfectly appreciated the merits of each distinct distillery, and was understood to be the compiler of a statistical work entitled "A Tour through the Alcoholic Districts of Scotland." It had very early occurred to me, who ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... in the slight texture and whimsical pattern of "Vanity Fair." Everybody, it is to be supposed, has read the volume by this time; and even for those who have not, it is not necessary to describe the order of the story. It is not a novel, in the common acceptation of the word, with a plot purposely contrived to bring about certain scenes, and develop certain characters, but simply a history of those average sufferings, pleasures, penalties, and rewards to which various classes of mankind gravitate as naturally and certainly in this world as ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... had a great influence in forming the mind of the young author no one can read his works and doubt. A "precieuse in the most flattering and most exact acceptation"[19] of the term, she promoted a similar turn of mind in Marivaux. His dislike for Moliere may have received its encouragement from her, as she was never quite willing to forgive that great genius for his attack upon les femmes savantes. Marivaux, too, had, as Palissot expresses it, "un faible ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... This argument takes knowledge in the generic acceptation of the term: it is not thus that knowledge is a special gift, but according as it is restricted to judgments formed ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... facts that, although natural selection had been formulated by several writers before Darwin, and had been simultaneously elaborated by Wallace and Darwin, the Origin of Species was the foundation of the modern acceptation of evolution, and natural selection was the key-note of the origin of species, natural selection may be called Darwinism with both historical and scientific accuracy; and in this sense of the term Huxley was a ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... hazard the conjecture whether the subject be not a little out of range for the present. We are moving ahead rapidly, and many foolish ideas as to the intellectual differences of the sexes are becoming obsolete. We have literary and artistic ladies by thousands. Scientific ladies, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, are coming well to the front. Possibly we may have to "wait a little longer" before we get, on anything like a large scale, psychological or even ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... is more beautiful, in the common acceptation of the word; her eyes are larger, her cheek rosier, her smile more fresh and youthful, and her small but graceful figure is at the same time childlike and voluptuous. She would make an enchanting shepherdess, but is not fitted to be a queen. She has ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... please to allow me two propositions: First, that we are a most loyal people; and, Secondly, that we are a free people, in the common acceptation of that word applied to a subject under a limited monarch. I know very well, that you and I did many years ago in discourse differ much, in the presence of Lord Wharton, about the meaning of that word liberty, with relation to Ireland. But if you will not allow us to be a free people, there ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... foundation of which he was so distinguished an ornament. By profession Matthew Paris was a monk. A monk 'professed' is a term indicating the higher grade to which not every brother in a monastery attained. The very term 'profession' may be traced to the cloister. In its usual acceptation it is modern. ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... you read them: nevertheless, I wish you by all means to publish it, for these three eminent things observable therein: First, that God in the midst of Popery, should open the eyes of one to understand and express so clearly and excellently, the intent of the Gospel in the acceptation of Christ's righteousness,—as he sheweth through all his Considerations,—a thing strangely buried and darkened by the adversaries, and their great stumbling block. Secondly, the great honour and reverence which he every where bears towards our dear ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... perfection, but in a well assorted marriage; nothing betrays such a narrowness of mind as to be governed by words. What though custom, for which good reasons may be assigned, has made the words husband and wife somewhat ridiculous? A husband, in common acceptation, signifies a jealous brute, a surly tyrant; or, at best, a weak fool, who may be made to believe any thing. A wife is a domestic termagant, who is destined to deceive or torment the poor devil of a husband. The conduct of married people, in general, sufficiently ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... literally, or even closely, according to the common acceptation of the term, into the Mandchou language is of all impossibilities the greatest; partly from the grammatical structure of the language, and partly from the abundance of its idioms. The Mandchou is the only one of any of the civilised languages of the world with which the writer of ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... Ymp tree—According to the general acceptation, this only signifies a grafted tree; whether it should he here understood to mean a tree consecrated to the imps, or fairies, is left with ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... noticed that the words "saint," "saintly," and others of similar import are used throughout solely in their popular acceptation, and not with any intention of anticipating the decision of the Church regarding the sanctity of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation or of any other of God's servants mentioned ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... veterana I have met with in monkish writers, to express domesticated quadrupeds; and evidently from that word must have originated the word veterinary. But the question is still but one step removed; for, how came veterana by that acceptation in rural economy?] surgeons; whereas, for the horses, not only such ministrations were intermittingly required, but a costly permanent establishment of grooms and helpers. Lord Carbery, who had received an elaborate Etonian education, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... rate. It is a maxim worthy of all acceptation that a man may have that allowance he takes. Take the place and attitude which belong to you, and all men acquiesce. The world must be just. It leaves every man, with profound unconcern, to set his own rate. Hero or driveller, it meddles not in the matter. It will certainly ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... flagrant;' and that hence a question arose, whether fornication was a sin of a heinous nature; and that I had maintained, that it did not deserve that epithet, in as much as it was not one of those sins which argue very great depravity of heart: in short, was not, in the general acceptation of mankind, a heinous sin. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, it is not a heinous sin. A heinous sin is that for which a man is punished with death or banishment[508].' BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, after I had argued that it was not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... deep-rooted conviction that sin never goes, and never can go, unpunished. His doctrine, indeed, was something like the Buddhist doctrine of Karma—it was based on an instinctive apprehension of the sacredness of “law” in the most universal acceptation of that word. Sylvester Boswell’s definition of a free man, in that fine, self-respective certificate of his, as one who is “free from all cares or fears of law that may come against him,” is, indeed, the gospel of every true nature-worshipper. The moment ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... raised his voice, more excitably than angrily. "What did I say just now?—mother!—that's English, ain't it?" But his words had no meaning to her; there was nothing in their structure to change her acceptation of the word "mother," as an apostrophe. Then, in response to the blank unrecognition of her face, he continued:—"What—still? I'm not kidding myself, by God, am I?... No—don't you try it on! I ain't going to have you running away. Not yet a ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... or humane occupation, to be derived from the poverty of my village neighbors, I very soon found my expectation equally vain. Our village had no poor—none in the deplorable English acceptation of that word; none in the too often degraded and degrading conditions it implies. People poorer than others, comparatively poor people, it undoubtedly had—hard workers, toiling for their daily bread; but none who could not get well-paid work or find sufficient bread; ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... gown. Indeed, she looked for all the world as if she had been put into a furnace and blown red hot. Jorrocks having got rid of his "worser half," as he calls her, let out a reef or two of his acre of white waistcoat, and each man made himself comfortable according to his acceptation of the term. "Gentlemen," says Jorrocks, "I'll trouble you to charge your glasses, 'eel-taps off—a bumper toast—no skylights, if you please. Crane, pass the wine—you are a regular old stop-bottle—a turnpike gate, in fact. I think you take back hands—gentlemen, are ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... Britannica" is open to the same objection. The first edition of this great work appeared over ninety years ago. It contained neither historical, biographical, nor geographical articles, and was rather a collection of treatises on the principal arts and sciences than a cyclopaedia in the common acceptation of the term. It has since been five times almost remodelled, arranged alphabetically, and greatly enlarged; but it still preserves its old distinguishing feature of treating great scientific and historical subjects exhaustively under a single head: for instance, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... and save,—the peasants of England live wretchedly, and waste! Voila la difference! As with nations, so with individuals, —it is all a question of Will. 'Where there's a will there's a way,' is a dreadfully trite copybook maxim, but it's amazingly true all the same. Now let us to the acceptation of these good things,"—this, as a pallid, boyish-looking waiter just then entered the room with the luncheon, and in his bustling to and fro manifested unusual eagerness to make himself agreeable—"I have made excellent friends with this young Ganymede,—he has sworn never to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... could send up what would be considered a fairly good dish elsewhere. Kafirs can be taught to do one or two things pretty well, but even then they could not be trusted to do them for a party. In fact, if I stated that there were no good servants—in the ordinary acceptation of the word—here at all, I should not be guilty of exaggeration. If there are, all I can say is, I have neither heard of nor seen them. On the contrary, I have been overwhelmed by lamentations on that score in which I can ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... her. Gentle and affectionate in disposition, but at the same time, firm, enduring, and fall of energy, she combined the characteristic qualities of both her parents, and added to them an originality all her own. Her education, in the common acceptation of the term, had necessarily been both desultory and imperfect; and yet, under its influence, the mind and character of Edith had strengthened and matured in no common degree. The very circumstances by which she was surrounded had educated her; and sorrow—deep, abiding ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... every hope, every prospect of Enid's life, that bright young life which, in the fuller acceptation of the term, was only just going to begin, was connected more or less intimately ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... pleasure was at its height. Oh, the pity of Fate which makes the apex of everything so very limited as to standing room! Three minutes after the presentation and acceptation of the photograph Aunt Mary's glance became suddenly vague, ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... position that no doctrine can receive a general acceptation among men which does not depend on a truth of nature. The various religions agree on one point, and this is the doctrine of the immortal soul. Such a point of universal agreement, I am convinced, cannot have been entirely derived from the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... I do not mean either of the introduction of, or continuing, necessary inventions, or the improvement of arts and sciences before known, but a short account of projects and projecting, as the word is allowed in the general acceptation at this present time; and I need not go far back for ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... separate distich, the meaning of which she could distinctly gather from some uncouth and barbarous rhymes—the remnants, probably, of a more superstitious age—almost cabalistic in their form and acceptation. The following may serve as a specimen, though we have taken the precaution to render ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... observed that the writer of the letter, though a cavalier, here calls him Mr. Goring, when as his father was created Earl of Norwich in the previous year, he was Lord Goring in cavalier acceptation. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... taken out of that western continent and transported to Greece. Coleman was proud of the captain, The latter immediately went and bowed in the manner of the French school and asked everybody to have a cup of coffee, although acceptation would have proved his ruin and disgrace. Coleman refused in the name of courtesy. He called his party forward, and now they proceeded merely as one crowd. Marjory had ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... consideration practically, and face (as best I may) the fact of my incompetence and disaffection to the task. Toil I do not spare; but fortune refuses me success. We can do more, Whatever-his-name-was, we can deserve it. But my misdesert began long since, by the acceptation of a bargain quite unsuitable to all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... richer society crushes the poorer beneath its inventory of houses, and farms and paper securities! Envy and hateful jealousy, rendered still more irritable by the leisure of a cloistered life, are the necessary consequences of such a comparison; and yet nothing is less Christian—in the adorable acceptation of that divine word—nothing has less in common with the true, essential, and religiously social spirit of the gospel, than this insatiable ardor to acquire wealth by every possible means—this dangerous avidity, which is far from being atoned for, in the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... dialectics, dealing with the mere forms and expressions of thought, the formal analysis of ideas and words, the mutual relation of propositions and conclusions—in short, all that constitutes what we call formal logic, in its widest acceptation. At this point, the far-famed scholastic intellect, with its subtleties, its fine distinctions, its nice questions, its sophistical conclusions, reached ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... the general acceptation of the donkey as a help-meet to man are found in its small size and slow motion. These qualities make the creature unserviceable in active war or in agriculture, and they seem to be so fixed in ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... climates, which determine the actual state of vegetation on our planet. The geology of organized bodies, on the contrary, is a fragment of the history of nature, taking the word history in its proper acceptation: it describes the inhabitants of the earth according to succession of time. We may study genera and species in museums, but the Fauna of different ages, the predominance of certain shells, the numerical relations which characterize the animal ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... not a beauty in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but there was an expression of angelic sweetness and purity in her countenance which fascinated the orphan. She remarked the scrutiny of the young stranger, and, smiling good-humoredly, said, as she leaned ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... once more to surrender, declaring he had done his duty, and death alone would be the consequence of his further resistance. He received the message with a sneer, in which contempt was blended with sadness and despair; then taking the presented adarga,[24] the acceptation of which was a signification of peace, he threw it disdainfully on the ground, and ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... make any alteration upon such terms as are sanctified by ancient custom; and, therefore, continue to use the words water and ice in their common acceptation: We likewise retain the word air, to express that collection of elastic fluids which composes our atmosphere; but we have not thought it necessary to preserve the same respect for modern terms, adopted by latter philosophers, ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... God so loved the World, that he gave his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have Everlasting Life. John 6. 37. Him that comes unto me, I will in no wise cast out. I Tim. 1. 15. This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the World to ...
— A Little Catechism, 1692 • John Mason
... says that when the intense expectance of the subject has produced a compliant condition, a peculiar capacity is developed to change the idea that has been received into an action as well as a great acuteness of acceptation, which together will produce all those phenomena that we should call by the name of "pathological sleep," since they are only separable in a gradual way from the ordinary sleep and dream conditions. Bernheim is particularly strenuous ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... anything like the present acceptation of the term, having been once a new thing—a thing, as far as we can see, subsequent even to an individual centre of action and to a reproductive system (which we see existing in plants without apparent consciousness)—why may not there arise some new phase of mind which shall be as different ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... signifies a piece; a snag is a well-known word across the Atlantic; nogs are ninepins in the north of England; a noggin of bread is equivalent to a hunch in the midland counties; and in the neighbourhood of the Parret and Exe the word becomes nug, bearing (besides its usual acceptation) the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... workings of passion. It might be easily explained likewise in what manner this salutary antagonism is assisted by the very state which it counteracts, and how this balance of antagonism becomes organised into metre (in the usual acceptation of that term) by a supervening act of the will and judgment consciously and for the ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... disconnected, even though all appeared to be talking amicably, and in order, concerning a common topic. At one moment a suppressed laugh from a young woman would reach the ear; in the cabin, a party who had agreed to sing a song of general acceptation were failing to hit upon one, and disputing the point in low and dispassionate accents; and in each, such sound there was something vespertinal, gently sad, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... his "Dictionary," thus explains the word belive: "Speedily, quickly; it is still common in Westmoreland for presently, which sense, implying a little delay, like our expression of by and by, was formerly the general acceptation of the word." ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... have inhabited Rome for any length of time, speak of the middle-class as contemptuously as the princes. I once made the same mistake as they do, so my testimony on the subject is the more worthy of acceptation. ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... as a partaker), the happiness of a part of your royal father's time, so shall I live (in my way) to see the happiness of the times of your Highness too, if this child of mine, inanimated by your gracious acceptation, may so long ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... succeed in changing you. I shall not even succeed in making you understand how I envisage and how I lay hold upon HAPPINESS, that is to say, the acceptation of life whatever it may be! There is one person who could change you and save you, that is father Hugo; for he has one side on which he is a great philosopher, while at the same time he is the great artist that you require and that I am not. You must see him often. I believe that he will quiet ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... security so light-minded as this. One courier followed upon the heels of another, until he felt the necessity for leaving Naples; and he returned to Rome, as the historian says, praetrepidus; by which word, however, according to its genuine classical acceptation, we apprehend is not meant that he was highly alarmed, but only that he was in a great hurry. That he was not yet under any real alarm (for he trusted in certain prophecies, which, like those made to the Scottish tyrant "kept the promise to the ear, but broke it to the sense,") is ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... sheds a gentle melancholy upon the soul. There are always a good many houses to let in the street: it is a by-street too, and its dulness is soothing. A house in Lant Street would not come within the denomination of a first-rate residence, in the strict acceptation of the term; but it is a most desirable spot nevertheless. If a man wished to abstract himself from the world—to remove himself from within the reach of temptation—to place himself beyond the possibility of any inducement to look out of the window—we should recommend him ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... days, they have to cope with an enemy whose full strength is only just beginning to be put out, and whose forces, gathering strength year by year, are hemming them round on every side. This enemy is Science, in the acceptation of systematized natural knowledge, which, during the last two centuries, has extended those methods of investigation, the worth of which is confirmed by daily appeal to Nature, to every region in which the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... to and fro in his little back-office, troubled in mind by what had just occurred. To say that Ralph loved or cared for—in the most ordinary acceptation of those terms—any one of God's creatures, would be the wildest fiction. Still, there had somehow stolen upon him from time to time a thought of his niece which was tinged with compassion and pity; breaking through the dull cloud of dislike ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... because they are not bred to distinguish between the false and the real. We have seen the lesson of Horace: that happiness is not from without, but from within; that it is not abundance that makes riches, but attitude; that the acceptation of worldly standards of getting and having means the life of the slave; that the fraction is better increased by division of the denominator than by multiplying the numerator; that unbought riches are better possessions than those the ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... centuries the undisputed ruler of western Canada. The extraordinary and picturesque career of the East India Company is too well known to require comment here. In fact, most of the thirteen British colonies in North America were in their inception chartered companies very much in the modern acceptation of the term. But, though these companies contributed in no small degree to the commercial progress of the states from which they held their charters, though they gave colonies to the mother countries and an impetus to the development of their fleets, they were all too often characterized ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... a title frequently used in Servia. Its general acceptation is governor. It may be derived from Pan, the ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... it may be answered, that though the etymology of the word island,* and of others synonymous to it, points out only a land surrounded by the sea, or by any water, (in which sense the term is applicable even to the largest portions of the habitable globe) yet it is certain that, in the usual acceptation, an island is conceived to signify a land of only moderate extent, surrounded by the sea.** To define at what point of magnitude precisely, a country so situated shall begin to be a continent, could not answer any purpose of utility; but the best and clearest ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... ignorant of the purpose of our writings, and it is therefore upon his own acceptation of them that he casts discredit and not upon their real meaning; whereas if he had reflected on what is appropriate[208] to a soul which is to enjoy an everlasting life, and on the idea which we are to form of its essence and principles, he would not so have ridiculed the ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... gaily held out a hand to him and teased him by eluding his grasp. But not for long; with a great spurt he swept upon her, seized the tantalizing hand now accidentally bared, and the thrill of her touch, the joy of acceptation in that tiny squeeze, went warmly kindling through him. His colour came, his bright blue eyes grew brighter, he glowed in body and in spirit. Never before had she seemed so absolutely fascinating; never before had he felt how much she was to him, how wholly desirable and ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a part of our system, as our muscles and bones constitute another part: and hence they may alike be termed natural or connate; but neither of them can properly be termed instinctive: as the word instinct in its usual acceptation refers only to the actions of animals, as above explained: the origin of these actions is the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the intellectual movement in Greece is didactic rather than scientific, in the widest acceptation of the term. We have not yet here those strifes and debates which at the present time agitate and enliven the modern mind in Europe. We teach, and teach. This is our mission for the present. Debate, which, if I may so express myself, is the luxury of science,—strife, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... be it understood, in the ordinary acceptation of the term: I wish I had been: but in a form which I have never seen or heard described, though I have no doubt it is very common. I lay there, all the day long, quite coolly and contentedly; with no sense of weariness, with no desire to get up, or get better, or ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... himself too busy, getting the new study into what he termed ship-shape order, to be able to adopt his friend's suggestion about the lines. His idea of ship- shape did not in every particular correspond with the ordinary acceptation of the term. He had brought down in his trunk several fine works of art, selected chiefly from the sporting papers, and representing stirring incidents in the lives of the chief prize- fighters. These, after endeavouring ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... survival of the fittest" more a means of modification than, we will say, the fact that animals live at all, or that they live in successive generations, being born, continuing their species, and dying, instead of living on for ever as one single animal in the common acceptation of the term; or than that they ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler |
