"Adaptation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... process of continuously adapting organisms to their environment takes place in nature at all, there is no reason why we should set any limits on the extent to which it is able to go up to the point at which a complete and perfect adaptation is achieved. Therefore we might suppose that all species would attain to this condition of perfect adjustment to their environment, and there remain fixed. And so undoubtedly they would, if the environment were itself unchanging. ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... of the world for saving time and energy by the adaptation of physical and intellectual forces to pursuits in which they are most effective, is a profitable study for nations, as it is for individuals. Hand in hand, however, with such occupation should go the ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... are given to serve the purpose of illustration. The American reader will not fail, of course, to make due allowance for the difference of rent, prices, etc., between this country and England, and the matter of adaptation then ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... mastered by our navy by the time of the Trafalgar campaign. The effect of those lessons showed itself in our ship-building policy, and has been placed on permanent record in the history of maritime achievement and of the adaptation of material means to ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... when I first made myself master of the central idea of the Origin, was: "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that." I suppose that Columbus's companions said much the same when he made the egg stand on end. The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness, and the beacon-fire of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... in regard to their use, they have been given up altogether; but the tenacity with which the Eskimo clings to these ancient observances, even in places where they have been nominal christians for years, is an evidence of the vitality of these ancient rites and their adaptation to ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... preserve the unity of subject matter, it was felt desirable to divide the book according to subjects rather than according to daily lessons. The varying lengths of recitation periods in different schools, and the adaptation of the course to individual instruction as well as to class work, also made a division into lessons impracticable. Each teacher will soon discover about how much matter her class, if she uses the class method, can take each day. Probably the average section will ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... that man, after having satisfied his first longing for facts, wanted something fuller—some grouping, some adaptation to his capacity and experience, of the links of this vast chain of events which his sight could not take in. Thus he hoped to find in the historic recital examples which might support the moral truths of which he was conscious. Few single careers could ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... Jews opened their minds to Greek culture and philosophy, appropriating new ideas, and explaining their Scriptures in accordance with wider conceptions of the divine presence; though such adaptation turned aside the original sense. Consciously or unconsciously they were preparing Judaism in some degree to be the religion of humanity. But the Rabbins shut out those enlarging influences, confining their religion within the narrow traditions of one people. The ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... to Keats new, and on a high level It calls back to my mind an adaptation of his self- chosen epitaph which I made in my very earliest days of boyish rhyming, when I was rather proud to be as cockney as Keats could ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... to the bee the mathematical instinct could endow man with the instinct of speech. Even to animal instinct we find a certain variation and permitted latitude in what is called adaptive instinct. So in man we find this same instinct of adaptation in a higher sense. The instinct comes into play when we suppose a number of persons separated from others, each living in different quarters of the globe. In such a condition, though of the same language when first separated, they would not remain so long—that is, in the primitive state of ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... dwindling or disappearance of one kind of plant, an allied kind was eaten. In the lapse of the many generations arising before the next upheaval, the sensible or insensible alterations thus produced in each species would become organized—there would be a more or less complete adaptation to the new conditions. The next upheaval would superinduce further organic changes, implying wider divergences from the primary forms; and so repeatedly. But now let it be observed that the revolution thus resulting would not be a substitution of a thousand more or less modified ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... of annoying privations than in acts of obtrusive cruelty. [166] The French were themselves compelled to extract sugar from beetroot, and to substitute chicory for coffee; the Germans, less favoured by nature, and less rapid in adaptation, thirsted and sulked. Even in such torpid communities as Saxony political discontent was at length engendered by bodily discomfort. Men who were proof against all the patriotic exaltation of Stein and Fichte felt that there must be something ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... beauty that we should desire Him'? 'Unite my heart to fear Thy name.' Oh I if that were our prayer, and if the effort to secure its answer were honestly the effort of our lives, all His loveliness, His sweetness, His adaptation to our whole being, would manifest themselves to us. The eye must be 'single,' directed to Him, if the heart is to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... vertebrae of its backbone are not biconcave, but flat in front and behind. And, finally, we discover that it suckles its young. It, too, is in all its deep-seated characteristics a mammal. It is fish-like only in characteristics which it might easily have acquired in adaptation to its aquatic life. And there are other aquatic mammals, like the seals, in which these characteristics are much less marked. Their adaptation has ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... everything that might enhance the beauty and splendor of their own city. Greek artists were transported to Rome and placed in charge of the most important public works. Roman art is, consequently, but a development or adaptation of the Greek. It is noticeable, however, that it almost completely ignored the most characteristic and popular of the Greek forms—for example, the anthemion—and adapted those, such as the acanthus and the scroll, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... kisses, and thrust it next my fluttering heart. I then proudly showed the note to Mackaye. He looked pleased, yet pensive, and then broke out with a fresh adaptation of his favourite song, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... three sides of a quadrangle. The fourth is occupied by an embattled wall and an elaborate gate-way. The building was erected about the beginning of the sixteenth century; and, with all its faults, it is a fine adaptation of Gothic architecture to civil purposes. It is in the style which a friend of mine chooses to distinguish by the name of Burgundian architecture; and he tells me that he considers it as the parent of our Tudor ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... deal of apparent interest in herself, and deference to her opinions; a very little skilful flattery, too delicately administered for its hollowness to be perceived; a quick apprehension of what pleased and amused her, and a ready adaptation to her mood of the moment—these were Mr Welles' tactics with the heiress for whom he was angling. As to Phoebe, he simply let her alone. He soon saw that she was of no account in Rhoda's eyes, and was not her chosen confidante, but simply the person to whom she ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... that the idea of evolution emerging from Goethe's mode of regarding nature is the exact opposite of the one held by Darwin and - in whatever modified form - by his followers. A brief consideration of the Darwinian concepts of inheritance and adaptation will show this. ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... mind. These are founded chiefly on three considerations,—the tendency of virtue to produce happiness, and of vice to be followed by misery,—the unequal distribution of good and evil in the present life,—and the adaptation of our moral faculties to a state of being very different from that in which we are at present placed. There is much in these arguments calculated to elevate our conceptions of our condition as moral beings, ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... should have warned you. Those alterations were made by roboticists from the Ministry of Security; they were installing an adaptation of a device used in the criminalistics-labs, to insure more uniform measurements. They'd done that already for Prince Travann, the Minister, and he'd ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... little thought to the perfection of labor. It was confidently assumed that labor, out of its own necessities, would adapt itself automatically to the new requirements of the machine, and to the shifts of business interest. When it was discovered that there were limitations to labor's voluntary adaptation under the conditions laid down, intelligent business in America decided that the responsibility for realizing labor's adaptation or "labor's cooeperation" as they call it, must be assumed by the management of industry and that that ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... and again when Fielding's Tom Thumb killed the ghost. The design for the frontispiece of the edition of 1731, here reproduced, is from the pencil of Hogarth; and is the first trace of a connexion between Fielding and the painter who was to be honoured so frequently in his pages. An adaptation from Moliere, produced in 1733, under the title of the Miser, won from Voltaire the praise of having added to the original "quelques beautes de dialogue particulieres a sa [Fielding's] nation." The leading character in the Miser, Lovegold, became a stock part, and survived ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... face. Enough snow fell to whiten the open patches of ground. In an hour Carley realized that she had the hardest task of her life to ride to the end of the day's journey. No one could have guessed her plight. Glenn complimented her upon her adaptation to such unpleasant conditions. Flo evidently was on the lookout for the tenderfoot's troubles. But as Spillbeans, had taken to lagging at a walk, Carley was enabled to conceal all outward sign of her woes. It rained, hailed, sleeted, snowed, and grew colder all the time. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... Ana are wonderful mathematicians—wonderful for the adaptation of the inventive faculty ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... an animal-like adaptation to its surroundings than an intellectual one," Toolls replied. "Its civilization is divided into various sized units of cooperation which it calls governments. Each unit vies with the others for a greater share of its world's ...
— Vital Ingredient • Charles V. De Vet
... organs, and natural activities in the woods, will show how strangely adapted it is to its surroundings. But an observation of birds in the air and of fishes in water reveals the same curious fitness to surrounding nature. The study of plants and animals in their adaptation to environment, of the relation between organ and function; between organs, mode of life, and environment, leads up to a general law which applies to all plants and animals. The law of growth and development from the simple germ to the mature life form can be seen in the ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... miles from Quetta we struck the wide Kandahar Road at the foot of the Takatu Mountain. From this point we got the first glimpse of Shalkot or Quetta. "Quetta" is the English corruption, abbreviation, or adaptation, if you please, of the word "Shalkot!" One almost wished one could have trembled when one stopped for a moment to read the first notice in English on approaching the town, warning new-comers of the dreadful things that would happen to any one entering the town carrying a camera or found ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Winter because some parts of Canada during that season possess a climate similar to that of Central Russia, while in other parts the climates are identical. In fact, Canada is the only country in the world where the climatic conditions are at all analogous. The construction of new hospitals, the adaptation of already existing buildings for hospital use, the internal arrangement, and the perfection of their internal machinery had long been matters of deep interest ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the last of the classical styles of antiquity, the Roman,—a style which, however, is rather an adaptation or amalgamation of other styles than an original and independent creation or development. The contrast is very great between the "lively Grecian," imaginative and idealistic in the highest degree—who ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... labour is of course always determined within certain limits, but much may and could be done by pursuing from the beginning a right method in educating the child to develop its power of self-adaptation to the needs of ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... according to the indications placed upon each in order to construct the whole edifice.[256] As, however, the plan would frequently undergo a change, and as each fragment had been written without reference to the others, the task of ultimate combination and adaptation of the ultimate atoms was often very perplexing. Bentham, as we shall see, formed disciples ardent enough to put together these scattered documents as the disciples of Mahomet put together the Koran. Bentham's revelation was possibly less influential than Mahomet's; ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... the laws of a delicate, but most severe taste. His poems are probably planned with views to their artistic effects, and are then constructed from his exhaustless wealth of poetical material, by a nice adaptation of each part to the perfect whole of his design. If he has less imagination than Mr. Taylor, he has a richer and more glowing fancy; if his figures are less apt and striking, they are more elegant and symmetrical; ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... pueblo, however, still shows a well defined court bounded on all sides by clearly traceable rooms. At the extreme south end of the ruin the houses have very irregular outlines, a result of their adaptation to the topography, as may ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... Tar," was on the program of the opening performance, and for more than a score of years the Park Theater played an important rle in local operatic history. For a long term English operas of both types held the stage, along with the drama in all its forms, but in 1819 an English adaptation of Rossini's "Barber of Seville"—the opera which opened the Italian rgime six years later—was heard on its stage, and two years after that Henry Rowley Bishop's arrangement of Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro." At the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... type of the everlasting war which good men wage against sin. In Coptic literature we have the well-known legend of the slaughter of the dragon by St. George, and this is nothing but a Christian adaptation of the legend of ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... ornament are also of comparatively equal size, and if possible symmetrically grouped. The one almost universal moulding is decorated with acanthus units, and the capitals have acanthus leaves around their bells. These caps are of two types. One, that is manifestly an adaptation of a classic cap, is a union of an Ionic and a Corinthian, or at other times of a Roman Doric and a Corinthian capital. The other is peculiar to Byzantine work, and is that shown in Plates XXI. to XXIV. in the last number. This cap, as at S. Vitale, ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... readers weary of the task or neglect it entirely. In this volume a different case confronts us and we put the discussions on a higher plane. If these suggestions are used in the instruction of children, some care in adaptation will be necessary. The age and sex of the children, their advancement in their studies, their surroundings at home and in school, will all need to be taken into account in determining what selections to use and how ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... conscious selection of codes that tend to preserve life is a factor of growing importance in insuring movement in this same direction. Altogether, moral progress consists primarily in an increasing adaptation of codes to the preservation ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... ceremonial of the Roman Church, on the ground that it was not only overloaded with superfluous ornament, but too fatally disfigured by irrational, superstitious, or impious observances to be susceptible of correction or adaptation to the wants of their infant congregations, the founders of the reformed churches of the continent did not leave the inexperienced ministers to whose care these congregations were confided altogether without a guide in the conduct of divine worship. Esteeming a written account ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... continuously at a subject, and all the while get the thoughtful criticism of his observers, without improving his methods. From a review of a recent volume by the writer, the following is taken:—"It seems to us that it is in the adaptation, rather than strict translation, that the wealth of thought and emotion buried in the service books of the Eastern Church will be minted into coin of golden praise meet for sanctuary use, and comparable in worth and beauty to the splendid currency of ...
— Hymns from the Morningland - Being Translations, Centos and Suggestions from the Service - Books of the Holy Eastern Church • Various
... FOLDING CAMERA, is superior to every other form of Camera, for the Photographic Tourist, from its capability of Elongation or Contraction to any Focal Adjustment, its Portability, and its adaptation for taking either Views or Portraits.—The ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... which, for the purpose of tracing out the innermost workings of the soul, advantage has been taken of the dramatic method, without otherwise conforming to the stringent rules of theatrical composition, or seeking the dubious advantage of stage adaptation. It must be admitted as somewhat inconsistent that three very remarkable people, whose acts are dependent on perhaps a thousand contingencies, should be completely developed within three hours, considering ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... I must observe, in his adaptation of himself to a new state of society, had acquired a bold buccaneering air, not absolutely lawless, but defensive and prompt. One might have supposed him a child of the wilderness, long accustomed to live out of the confines ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... example and the benefit of all, runs with singular beauty through the infinite combinations of human action, verifying the very theory which the baronet saw dimly, but doubted; we mean that harmonious adaptation of moral justice to those actions by which the original principles that diffuse happiness through social life are disregarded and violated. The very order that characterizes all creation, taught him that we are not here without ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... fall'n] Sir Thomas Hammer reads, folly shewn. [The sense is, But wise men's folly, when it is once fallen into extravagance, overpowers their discretion. Revisal.] I explain it thus. The folly which he shows with proper adaptation to persons and times, is fit, has its propriety, and therefore produces no censure; but the folly of wise men when it falls or happens, taints their wit, destroys the reputation of their ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... criticism, or dramatization. Among collections special mention should be made of The Fairy Library, by Kate D. Wiggin and Nora A. Smith; the Fairy Books, by Clifton Johnson; and the Fairy Books, by Andrew Lang. Among tales, particular mention should be made for the use, in adaptation, made of Oeyvind and Marit, given in Whittier's Child Life in Prose; of The Foolish Timid Rabbit, given in The Jataka Tales, by Ellen C. Babbit; of The Sheep and the Pig, in Miss Bailey's For the Children's Hour; of Drakesbill, ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... the arguments made use of by supporters of the older view is that drawn from the study of adaptation. Animals and plants are as a rule remarkably well adapted to living the life which their surroundings impose upon them, and in some cases this adaptation is exceedingly striking. Especially is this so in the many instances of what is called protective coloration, where the animal ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... a real and we may almost say natural influence over the weather, which is often manifested in a striking congruity or harmony between the things themselves and the effects which they are calculated to produce. This adaptation of means to end in nature may perhaps be regarded as a beautiful proof of the existence of spirits and ghosts working their purposes unseen behind the gaily coloured screen or curtain of the physical universe. At all events men who are acquainted with the ghostly properties ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... therefore analytical, being to distinguish each religion from the rest. We compare them to see wherein they agree and wherein they differ. But the next problem in Comparative Theology is synthetical, and considers the adaptation of each system to every other, to determine its place, use, and value, in reference to universal or absolute religion. It must, therefore, examine the different religions to find wherein each is complete or defective, true or false; how each may supply the defects of ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... he had "not half the power" he had in Canada "with a constitutional and changing cabinet." With respect to the maintenance of the position and due influence of the governor, he used language which gives a true solution of the problem involved in the adaptation of parliamentary government to the colonial system. "As the imperial government and parliament gradually withdraw from legislative interference, and from the exercise of patronage in colonial affairs, the office of governor tends to become, ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... employment necessitated. So only petroleum remained, and the inconvenience attaching to its use was so great that victory and fortune would certainly rest with the manufacturer who should be able to replace it by some other hitherto unknown agent. In the discovery and adaptation of the latter ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... is an adaptation to the necessities of his calling; as a matter of fact, it is an elaboration on that. The broad heavy felt hat he has found by experience to be more effective in turning heat than a lighter straw; he further runs to variety in the shape of ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... adaptation of this creature to the desert, in which the Maker and Ruler of all has placed him? No heat exceeds the power of his endurance; steadily, patiently, silently he stalks his long strides over the yellow ground—one ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... understand and approve of Christianity; I have not yet said my last word about Christ." It is a solemn question, Had he said it when his career was ended? If so, it was far from a satisfactory word. His policy of reserve and adaptation had probably kept him from uttering all that was in his heart; but it was a sorely mistaken policy. Had he temporized less ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... was nothing coarse, nothing virulent, nothing contumelious, nothing ungenerous in his triumph. Whether he addressed the Liverpool electors, or the House of Commons, it was with the same ease, the same adaptation to his auditory, the same unrivalled dexterity, the same command of his subject and his hearers, and the same success. His only faults as a speaker were committed when, under the inebriating influence of popular applause, he was led away by the heat and passion of the moment. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... laughingly repeated it. I have heard my father say that on the occasion of this visit of Talma's to London, he consulted my uncle on the subject of acting in English. Hamlet was one of his great parts, and he made as fine a thing of Ducis' cold, and stiff, and formal adaptation of Shakespeare's noble work as his meagre material allowed; but, as I have said before, he spoke English well, and thought it not impossible to undertake the part in the original language. My uncle, however, strongly dissuaded him from it, thinking the decided French ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... a guide to immortality, Infinite Wisdom gave not a dictionary, nor a grammar, but a Bible—a book of heavenly doctrine, but withal of earthly adaptation.'—J. Hamilton. ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... with only a few, a very few, whose attributes of power seemed to me quite equal to his. The clearness of his conceptions was almost angelic. If I am fitted to do any good in the world, I owe what intellectual adaptation I have very much to his admirable training, especially as he took us through ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... this free type becomes at the same time social or institutional. It consists no longer in a skilful adaptation of the individual organism, but in a system of terms common to all intelligence, and preserved in those books and other monuments which serve as the articulate memory of the race. A knowledge that is social must be composed of unequivocal conceptions and fixed symbols. The mathematical laws ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... floating stem, according as it is surrounded by water or by relatively dry soil. In other cases utility is often less manifest, but some use may either be proved, or shown to be very probable. At all events the term adaptation includes the idea of utility, and obviously useless contrivances could hardly be ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... Shelley's conception of love; here we need only notice that it inspired him to translate Plato's 'Symposium', a dialogue occupied almost entirely with theories about love. He was not, however, well equipped for this task. His version, or rather adaptation (for much is omitted and much is paraphrased), is fluent, but he had not enough Greek to reproduce the finer shades of the original, or, indeed, to avoid ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... the author in writing poetry against his uncle's orders. MISS BURNEY AT COURT deals with an interesting incident in life of the author of "Evelina" when she was at the Court of George III. THE FAIRIES' PLEA, which is an adaptation of Thomas Hood's poem, shows Shakespeare intervening to save the fairies from the scythe of Time. Designed in general for young people near enough to the college age to feel an interest in the personal and human aspects ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... IDA—DIE. Mr. Stedman, in his Victorian Poets, devotes a valuable chapter to the discussion of Tennyson's relation to Theocritus, both in sentiment and form. "It is in the Oenone that we discover Tennyson's earliest adaptation of that refrain, which was a striking beauty of the pastoral ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... powers interchanged whatsoever they could. (See Conyer's Middleton; and see Blount of our own days.) It marked the earthly nature of paganism, that it could borrow little or nothing by organization: it was fitted to no expansion. But the true faith, from its vast and comprehensive adaptation to the nature of man, lent itself to many corruptions—some deadly in their tendencies, some harmless. Amongst these last was the Ovidian form of connecting the unseen powers moving in nature with human sympathies of love or reverence. The legends of this kind are universal and ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the gorge from which it issues forth in its course towards Chesapeake Bay, and here, where the hills recede to a distance, it expands into a great width, and its face is covered with islands. The only drawback to its being a grand river is its shallowness, and want of adaptation, therefore, to the purpose of navigation. There are no splendid steamboats to be seen here as on the Ohio, which make one feel that river, at the distance of more than 2000 miles from the sea, to be a noble highway of commerce, ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... tolerably satisfied, the majority of mankind, even in a civilised life full of solicitations, are with difficulty aroused to the distinct conception of an object towards which they will direct their actions with careful adaptation, and it is yet rarer to find one who can persist in the systematic pursuit of such an end. Few lives are shaped, few characters formed, by the contemplation of definite consequences seen from a ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the problems presented by history will be complete until the knowledge of man is perfect; but we cannot approach the threshold of understanding without realizing that our national achievement has been the outcome of singular powers of assimilation, of adaptation to changing circumstances, and of elasticity of system. Change has been, and is, the breath of our existence and the condition ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... say a word here as to another phase of this perpetual newness of the old Christ—viz., in His adaptation to deal with all the complications and perplexities and problems of each successive age. It has taken the Church a long, long time to find out and to formulate, rightly or wrongly, what it has discovered in Jesus. The ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... only to increase her influence,—as is natural to women who are well-favoured,—but also with a well-considered calculation that she could obtain material assistance in the procuring of bread and cheese, which was very necessary to Her, by a prudent adaptation to her purposes of the good things with which providence had endowed her. She did not fall in love, she did not wilfully flirt, she did not commit herself; but she smiled and whispered, and made confidences, and looked out of her own eyes into men's eyes as though ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... men; he himself was well, perhaps even deeply, read. Certainly his intellectual acquisitions were more profound than they have been generally esteemed, though with the common subtlety of a ready genius, he could make the quick adaptation of a timely fact, acquired for the occasion, appear the rich overflowing of a copious erudition. He was a man who instantly perceived, and liberally acknowledged, the merits of others. No connoisseur had a more felicitous knowledge of the arts, or was more just in the general objects of his patronage. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was not Mr. Lydgate's style of woman any more than Mr. Chichely's. Considered, indeed, in relation to the latter, whose mied was matured, she was altogether a mistake, and calculated to shock his trust in final causes, including the adaptation of fine young women to purplefaced bachelors. But Lydgate was less ripe, and might possibly have experience before him which would modify his opinion as to the most excellent ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... seeking answers to numerous questions which have been made in connection with these developing industries. I believe that we have contributed very materially to the knowledge of varieties, particularly as regards their adaptation to different geographic locations. We have also assisted the industries to solve some of their problems of cultivation, particularly of propagation, and also the problems growing out of the maintenance of soil fertility. With a new crop, in a new environment, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... sage. Why this peculiar formation of the long curved arm pivoted on its stalk? Considered in the abstract, it can have no possible meaning; but taken in association with the insect to which it is shaped, how perfect is its adaptation, how instantly intelligible it becomes! Every one is familiar with the sage of the country garden, its lavender flowers arranged in whorls in a long cluster at the tips of the stems. One of these flowers, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... which it is unfortunately no longer possible to number among his genuine works. The poem of the "Court of Love," which was likewise long erroneously attributed to him, may be the original work of an English author; but in any case its main contents are a mere adaptation of a peculiar outgrowth on a foreign soil of conceptions ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... your honour," he remarked, oracularly, and in his usual manner of literal adaptation, "was also part of the news I had for your honour from my last journey; but, my faith, I did not know how to take myself to it, as your honour was so much occupied with old times this evening. But I had seen Mademoiselle at the castle, as ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... to a state of fusibility, it requires a most intense heat. Of all the metals, it is the widest diffused and most abundant; and few stones or mineral bodies are without an admixture of it. It possesses the valuable property of being welded by hammering; and hence its adaptation to the numerous purposes of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... improved arms which were at hand and which might easily have been used with good effect remaining in the rear. His conclusion is that a wide-awake American trained in the hustle of daily life, with a good basis of common sense and some capacity for adaptation, could, with a few month's experience, undertake to good advantage the direction of soldiers, and that the West Point preceding 1861 had an influence rather nugatory in bringing about success. It is perhaps sufficient answer ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... As an Adaptation of the Original English version, was concluded in the last Number. The remaining portion ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... contrary, is the invention or adaptation of one of the tribe, who, although he borrowed most of the Roman letters, in addition to the forty or more characters of his own devising, knew nothing of their proper use or value, but reversed them ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... Evolution and Adaptation (New York, Macmillan & Co., 1903), Thomas Hunt Morgan has dealt in a critical manner with many of the speculations upon problems subsidiary to the theory of descent, in so convincing and complete a manner, that I think myself justified in neglecting these ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... quantities formerly produced are as nothing in comparison with that which is now manufactured. In 1782 the whole wool crop of the preceding three years lay unused for want of workers, and would have continued so to lie if the newly invented machinery had not come to its assistance and spun it. The adaptation of this machinery to the spinning of wool was most successfully accomplished. Then began the same sudden development in the wool district, which we have already seen in the cotton districts. In 1738 there were 75,000 pieces of ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... valued friend who acted as spokesman for his fellow-members, and who was himself the only non-American member of the said Cabinet. There is a horseman by Macmonnies, and a big bronze vase by Kemys, an adaptation or development of the pottery vases of the Southwestern Indians. Mixed with all of these are gifts from varied sources, ranging from a brazen Buddha sent me by the Dalai Lama and a wonderful psalter from the Emperor Menelik to a priceless ancient Samurai sword, coming from Japan ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... most perfect, most vivid recollection of my habitual thoughts and feelings; and at that age, I can unhesitatingly declare, my mind was deeply tinctured with a romance not derived from books, nor from conversation, but arising, as I verily believe, out of the singular adaptation to each other of my natural taste and the scenery amidst which it began to develop itself. Our abode was changed to another part of the city before this period arrived; but the bishop's garden was still our haunt, and my ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... the libretto of an opera from the whole world, from poets ancient and modern,[189] and after having tried to write one himself, he finally took that of Madame Rosa Mayreder, an adaptation of a Spanish novelette of Don Pedro de Alarcon. This was Corregidor, which, after having been refused by other theatres, was played in June, 1896, at Mannheim. The work was not a success in spite of its musical qualities, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... diet, a diet consisting of almost anything any creature had ever considered edible. Like most successful forms of intelligent life, Gresth Gkae was omnivorous. An intelligent form of life is necessarily adaptable, and adaptation meant being able to eat what ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... religion is accused of being a system of forms and ceremonies, but therein lies its wonderful adaptation to humanity. Thought ever seeks expression in form, even as a mother's love for her infant finds ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... this explanation that the reader may know I do not presume to offer the little tale which follows as an "adaptation" of Andersen's famous story. I offer it plainly as a story which children have liked, and which grew out of my early memories of Andersen's ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... Tradition and Propriety. There is little to be wondered at, if this matter of curriculum was treated by the more passive scholars as a matter of course, and by the sharper and less reverent disciples as a matter of fun. Indeed, if any personality is then evinced in the adaptation of these old world themes, it is generally connected with a more or less emphatic disparagement or grotesque distortion of ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... probably, is because you have no sufficiently generic conception of the term "substance" itself. We must not regard it as a quality, but as a sentiment:—it is the perception, in thinking beings, of the adaptation of matter to their organization. There are many things on the Earth, which would be nihility to the inhabitants of Venus—many things visible and tangible in Venus, which we could not be brought to appreciate as existing at all. But to the inorganic beings—to the angels—the whole of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a Bureau in London, and appointing Officers whose business it will be to acquire every kind of information as to suitable countries, their adaptation to, and the openings they present for different trades and callings, the possibility of obtaining land and employment, the rates of remuneration, and the like. These enquiries will include the cost of passage-money, railway fares, outfit, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Abundance or Rarity of a Species dependent upon its more or less perfect Adaptation ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... that his stiff felt hat was an inch taller in the crown than those worn generally by the farming community, the pathetic assertion, perhaps, of an old sovereignty; invariably, too his coat and trousers betrayed a form within, which, in the effort at adaptation, had become high-shouldered and lank of leg. And the brown skin was there to be noticed, though you might pass it by, and the high cheek-bones and the liquidly muddy eye. He had taken on the signs of civilization at the level which he occupied; the farming ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... girl several weeks to find her first place. During this period of looking for work the immigrant girl is subjected to great dangers. It is at such times that immigrants often exhibit symptoms of that type of disordered mind which alienists pronounce "due to conflict through poor adaptation." I have known several immigrant young men as well as girls who became deranged during the first year of life in America. A young Russian who came to Chicago in the hope of obtaining the freedom and self-development ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... order, and design, and special adaptation which crowd the universe, and the a priori ideas of an unconditioned Cause and an infinite Intelligence which arise in the mind in presence of these facts, are inadequate to produce the logical conviction that it is the work ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... felt that if a mill grinding spring wheat exclusively was capable of producing a flour infinitely superior in every way to the best that could be made from the finest varieties of winter wheats, the new North Western territory, with its peculiar adaptation to the growing of spring grain, and its boundless capacity for production, must at once become one of the most ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... one case, in the vast volume of casuistry, is so difficult to treat with justice and reasonable adaptation to the spirit of modern times, as this of duelling. For, as to those who reason all upon one side, and never hearken in good faith to objections or difficulties, such people convince nobody but those who were already convinced before they began. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... instance, is modelled on that of the Giralda, at Seville; while the new University Club, on Fifth Avenue, is simply a Florentine fortress-palace of somewhat disproportionate height. But along with a good deal of sheer reproduction of European models, one finds a great deal of ingenious and inventive adaptation, to say nothing of a very delicate taste in the treatment of detail. New York abounds, it is true, with monuments of more than one bygone and detestable period of architectural fashion; but they are as distinctly survivals from a dead past as is the wooden shanty which occupies ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... are committed to the assault the commander is powerless to divert them to another purpose. His control is exercised in {58} the correct interpretation or adaptation of his original plan by his subordinate commanders. Before launching his troops to the attack in accordance with the decisions arrived at from information received, the commander will assemble his subordinates and the representatives ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... enabled to bring it to the full light of an historical incident, it will be seen in the perusal of this narrative, have successively, and by most curious process of development, risen into view through a series of accidental discoveries, which have all combined, with singular coincidence and adaptation, to furnish an unquestionable chapter of Maryland history, altogether worthy of recital for its intrinsic interest, and still more worthy of preservation for the elements it supplies towards a correct estimate of the troubles which beset the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... he brought out a "corrected" version of the Merry Wives with the title of the Comical Gallant or the Amours of Sir John Falstaffe. The adaptation of Coriolanus, which was the occasion of the Letters given in this volume, appeared as the Invader of his country, or the Fatal Resentment. It was produced at Drury Lane in November, 1719, but ran for only three nights. It was published in 1720. An account of it will be found ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... Europe a fluent script so beautiful and legible as that of our very best English writers of to-day. But their aesthetic mastery has come from loving study of the forms that conscious artistry had perfected, and through a constant practice in their harmonious adaptation. ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... nodded. Gordon had learned that a fair number of third-generation people got that way. Their chests were only a trifle larger, and their heartbeat only a few points higher; it was an internal adaptation, like the one that had occurred in test animals reared at a simulated forty-thousand-feet altitude on Earth, before Mars ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... perhaps with truth, that as many converts are made, among the natives, by presents, as by persuasion. But no small degree of the prosperity of the mission must be attributed to the superior shrewdness and ability of the persons engaged in it—to their skilful adaptation of their precepts and modes of instruction to the people with whom they have to deal, and to their employment of the maxims of worldly policy in aid of their religious views. These qualities and rules of conduct have characterized ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... that the answer must be, from conflict: the conflict between the pull-back of his racial origin and the pull-forward of his spiritual destiny, the antagonism between the buried Titan and the emerging soul, each tending towards adaptation to a different order of reality. We may as well acknowledge that man as he stands is mostly full of conflicts and resistances: that the trite verse about "fightings and fears within, without" does really describe the ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... comprising Great Britain and all its colonies and dependencies throughout the world, is known as John Bull & Co., and the distinctive sign of the house, in all its ramifications, is the Union Jack or some adaptation of the red cross of St. George to local predilections. As in ordinary mercantile transactions, a debt incurred by any branch of the establishment involves the responsibility of the whole, and can be levied for in London ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... finer type than that of Charles Brockden Brown and the English Gothic school (p. 88), for Irving's fondness for Addison and Goldsmith, in conjunction with his own keen sense of humor, taught him restraint, balance, and the adaptation of means to ends. ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... special attention to that everyday heroism in which the age is specially rich and of which so many good people are grossly ignorant; a survey of scientific achievement, with reports of recent discoveries in knowledge and adaptation of knowledge to human need; a group of biographies of the men and women—mostly Americans—who are the most stimulating companions for boys and girls; a volume on the Fine Arts dealing with music, painting, sculpture, architecture, in a way to instruct ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... the coniferae, or evergreen family, as well worthy of attention; for almost from the first, according to geologists, this family records on the rocky tablets of the earth its appearance, large and varied development, and its adaptation to each change in climate and condition of the globe's surface during the countless ages of preparation. Surely, therefore, he who is evolving a home on one acre of the earth's area cannot neglect a genus of trees that has been so signally honored. Evergreens will ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... the blending of the parts of different comedies into one whole—e.g. the Andria of Terence, an adaptation of Menander's Andria ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... is an instance of the well-known tendency of the human mind to blend numbers of different incidents into one story. An episode of one experience, having been transferred to an earlier one, becomes rationalized in adaptation to its different environment. This process of psychological transference is the explanation of the reference to Elephantine as the source of the d'd', and has no relation to actuality. The naive efforts of Brugsch and Gauthier to ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... England itself the extension of local institutions, as political training schools for the masses, as checks upon the sweeping action of the great central assembly, and as the best organs of legislation in all matters requiring (as popular education, among others, does) adaptation to the circumstances of particular districts, would, I think, have formed a part of any statesmanlike revision of our political system. Here, also, much good might be done, and much evil averted, by committing the present business of quarter ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... ask, if such unity exists, why this dissimilarity in the tissues of the respective bodily organs? How is it that a bone in its stonelike hardness is essentially the same as the infinitely tender tissues of the eye? This difference is due to and accounted for by the adaptation of certain portions of the immense accumulation of cells to diverse functions, which has necessitated the variable conformity of the supporting elements. But all of these elements are in the blood, which carries them in the necessary quantities to the different organs to which ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... Beauharnais toucans, and the P. flavirostris, whose breast is adorned with broad belts of red, crimson, and black. "Wherefore such a beak?" every naturalist has asked; but the toucan still wags his head, as much as to say, "you can not tell." There must be some other reason than adaptation. Birds of the same habits are found beside it—the ibis, pigeon, spoonbill, and toucan are seen feeding together. "How astonishing are the freaks and fancies of Nature! (wrote the funny Sidney Smith). ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... right," said Deering; "it is only a new adaptation in which I saw fortune, for it could be used in hundreds of ways where hot-water is not applicable now. I saw large works springing up, and an engineering business in which I hoped you, Vane, would share; for with your brains, my boy, I foresaw ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... and circumstances of a man determine his office in the work of charitable relief. I know there are some persons who have a peculiar natural adaptation to the work of visiting the subjects of sickness and of need. Their presence and their sympathy are grateful to those to whom they delight to minister. They are masters and mistresses of all those thrifty economies which ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... national Irrigation Congress, and the National Board of Trade, have uniformly, emphatically, and most of them repeatedly, expressed themselves in favor of placing all Government forest work in the Department of Agriculture because of the peculiar adaptation of that Department for it. It is true, also, that the forest services of nearly all the great nations of the world are under the respective departments of agriculture, while in but two of the smaller nations and in one colony are they under the department ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... thickness of the basal plates and of the rim of the hexagons be a good adaptation to carry the vertical weight of the cells filled with honey and supporting clusters of ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... THE DRAMA; RISE OF THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL.—During the Middle Ages men of letters followed each other in the cultivation of certain literary forms, often with little regard to their adaptation to the subject. The vast extension of thought and knowledge in the sixteenth century broke up the old forms and introduced the practice of treating each subject in a manner more or less appropriate to it. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... property destroyed, commercial disaster, and social derangement, has given a rare opportunity for the testing of our national character, and of our ability to meet and overcome the most tremendous difficulties and dangers. Perhaps the versatility of American genius and its ready adaptation to the new circumstances, are even more wonderful than any other exhibition made by our people in this great national crisis. There has never been any good reason to doubt the capacity of any portion of American citizens for warlike occupations, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is simply reaching forward in his activities to the realization of his ideals. Play is idealized experiences. There is always a significance of wider and maturer experience in children's play. Therefore the family must find space and time and adaptation of organization to the child's need of spontaneous, free activity ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... at anchor in the Downs, and a gradually increasing swell caused the Gull to roll a little and tug uneasily at her cable. Nevertheless the warning light at her mast-head retained its perpendicular position in consequence of a clever adaptation of mechanism on the ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... are essential to a successful career; he said, 'Open, wheat!' instead of 'Open, sesame!' and the barriers remained unaffected by his magic. The secret may really be simple enough. The complete success of such a book as 'Robinson' implies, it may be, the precise adaptation of the key to every ward of the lock. The felicitous choice of situation to which Lamb refers gave just the required fitness; and it is of little use to plead that 'Roxana,' 'Colonel Jack,' and others might have done the same trick if only they had received ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... obtained a patent in 1856, in England, for an improved means of obtaining aluminum metal, and the adaptation thereof to the manufacture of certain useful articles. Powdered fluoride of aluminum is placed alone or in combination with other fluorides in a closed furnace, heated to a red heat, and exposed to the action of hydrogen gas, which is used as a reagent in the place of sodium. A ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... deeply imbued both with the doctrines and the spirit of Plato. He was born about twenty years before Christ, and survived him about thirty years. The weight of his character, the force of his talents, the fascinating adaptation of his peculiar philosophical speculations and of his bold and subtle allegorical expositions of Scripture to the mind of his age and of the succeeding centuries, together with the eminent literary ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of geological history, the vegetable world developed enormously; in response probably to liberal supplies of carbon dioxide. A structural adaptation to the rich atmosphere occurred, such as was calculated to cooperate in rapidly consuming the supplies, and to this obedience to a law of progressive transfer of energy we owe the vast ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... tragedy or comedy or broad farce or delicate irony, of character or action. The thing that first made itself known as a little tale, usually salacious, dealing with conventionalized types and conventionalized incidents, has proved itself possibly the most flexible of all the literary forms in its adaptation to the needs of the mind that wishes to utter itself, inventively or constructively, upon some fresh occasion, or wishes briefly to criticise or represent some phase ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 12:30 pray or are prayed for audibly, only peti- tioners (per se or by proxy) should get well. In divine Science, where prayers are mental, all may avail them- 13:1 selves of God as "a very present help in trouble." Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and 13:3 bestowals. It is the open fount which cries, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... Are we unstrangulable, I ask you? Think on these things. I am shocked sometimes at the shape of my own fingers,—not for their resemblance to the ape tribe, (which is something,) but for the exquisite adaptation of them to the purposes of picking, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... fantastical; he spun a shining web to catch conceits inevitably as a spider casts his thread; the quick-building wit was itself warm while erecting its ice-houses." Coleridge says of the "Venus and Adonis" that its most obvious excellence "is the perfect sweetness of the versification; its adaptation to the subject; and the power displayed in varying the march of the words without passing into a loftier and more majestic rhythm than was demanded by the thoughts, or permitted by the propriety of preserving ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... human efficiency. He wastes a lot of nervous power and energy instead of accomplishing the greatest possible amount of work for the force expended. Judging the American hustler from my observation of him in his own country, I should say that the American hustler shows a lack of adaptation of means to ends because he puts more mental, physical, and nervous energy into his work at all times than it demands. Regarded as a machine he is not an economical one. He breaks down too often and has to be laid off for repairs too often. He ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... had established the Historical and Prophetical grounds of the Christian Religion, and that sure testimony of its truth which is found in its perfect adaptation to the heart of man. It was reserved for him to develop its analogy to the Constitution and Course of Nature; and, laying his strong foundations in the depth of that great argument, there to construct another and irrefragable ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... jurisprudence. And the misfortune of this legislation is heightened by the probability of its continuance; for it is not easy to uproot a body of laws once accepted by a people, however mischievous in their character. Custom, and the faculty of adaptation, have a very reconciling influence upon communities as well as individuals. Moreover, men absorbed in a feverish and hazardous industry, and stimulated by the hope of sudden wealth, are not disposed to consider the advantages of permanent ownership and security of title. ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... the notes of the musical scale to numbers, whereby harmony results from vibrations in equal times, and discord from the reverse, led Pythagoras to apply the word "harmony" to the visible creation, meaning by it the just adaptation of parts to each other. This is the idea which Dryden expresses in the beginning of his "Song for St. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... woman's jealousy distinguishes with a scent as certain as that of a dog which finds a stranger in the house. And, finally, although there is in the transition from doubt to certainty a laceration of the heart, it is at least the laceration of a heart prepared. That preparation, that adaptation, so to speak, of her soul to the truth, Maud had been deprived of. The care taken by Madame Steno to strengthen the friendship between her and Alba had suppressed the slightest signs. Boleslas had no need to change his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... given clearly, even to the farthest depth, and yet the surface is not lost, and it would deprive the painter of much power if he were not sometimes so to represent them, especially when his object is repose; it being, of course, as lawful for him to choose one adaptation of the sight as another. I have, however, left the above paragraphs as first written, because they are true, although I think they make too much of an unimportant matter. The reader may attribute to them such weight as he thinks fit. He is referred to Sec. 11 of this ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... Ida C. Haughton, is a brief and vivid sketch of a fatal accident. "Tragedy," an exquisite poem by Emilie C. Holladay, deserves very favourable notice for the delicate pathos of its sentiment, and perfect adaptation of the measure to the subject. We may discern a few traces of immaturity in the handling of the metre and in the presence of "allowable" rhymes. As elsewhere stated, we personally approve and employ the old-fashioned "allowable" ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... a strictly American Fair might be got up which would evince more originality of creation or design. If I am wrong in this, I shall cheerfully say so when convinced of it. Many of these machines are very good of their kind without involving any novel principle or important adaptation. With regard to Flax-Dressing, for example, I find less here than I had hoped to see; and though what I have seen appears to do its work well and with commendable economy of material, I think there are more efficient and rapid Flax-Dressers in the United States than are contained ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... these people. They ought to become a very valuable asset in the new economic development of the entire territory of Alaska. When properly trained and disciplined they make excellent workmen. Their natural adaptation to the climatic conditions should prove a valuable commercial asset. In the name of a common humanity; in the name of the gospel of the brotherhood of man, as well as for commercial reasons, I do not hesitate to say that ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... direction, from without inwards, or from the branches towards the trunks and roots. In many places two valves are so placed and fitted, that when raised they come exactly together in the middle of the vein, and are there united by the contact of their margins; and so accurate is the adaptation, that neither by the eye nor by any other means of examination, can the slightest chink along the line of contact be perceived. But if the probe be now introduced from the extreme towards the more central parts, the valves, like the floodgates ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... the method in which these various substances break, so as to produce the forms which are of chief importance in landscape, as well as the exquisite adaptation of all their qualities to the service of men, it will be well that I should take some note of them in their order; not with any mineralogical accuracy, but with care enough to enable me hereafter to explain, without obscurity, any ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... of human nature that imparts a keen perception of the character and motives of men, and hence, almost instinctively knows whom to trust. He is also quick in forming his judgment, ready in the adaptation of means to secure an end, vigorously prosecutes his plans, and seldom ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... kingdom of Whitefriars, with all its frowzy and questionable population, has been admirably drawn by Scott in his fine novel of "The Fortunes of Nigel," recently so pleasantly recalled to our remembrance by Mr. Andrew Halliday's dexterous dramatic adaptation. Sir Walter chooses a den of Alsatia as a sanctuary for young Nigel, after his duel with Dalgarno. At one stroke of Scott's pen, the foggy, crowded streets eastward of the Temple rise before us, and are thronged with shaggy, uncombed ruffians, with greasy shoulder-belts, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... approached her simple algebraic problems Jose saw the working of a rule infinite in its adaptation. She knew not what the answers should be, yet she took up each problem with supreme confidence, knowing that she possessed and rightly understood the rule for correctly solving it. She knew that speculation regarding the probable results was an idle waste of time. And she likewise ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... social life need frequent restating and adaptation to new needs. They are customs because they are the best rules of conduct that have been garnered from the experiences of succeeding generations ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... were specially painted by him for Fra Angelico's picture, we must suppose, and indeed firmly believe them to have been added at a later time. In fact, the form of the foliated Gothic decoration lacks character and does not harmonize with the pilasters which clearly show, too, a subsequent adaptation of the frame. The finials of the pilasters do not match the style of the gables, in fact it is clear that the Gothic ornamentation, taken from some painting by Lorenzo Monaco, was at a more recent date ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... and rapid succession of new patterns, either original or adapted from the French designs, which lie scattered on their tables. They are a very intelligent class, possessing considerable originality, and, what is even more important, thoroughly understanding the art of practical adaptation of costly designs to the necessities of the manufacture, without which the ingenious sketches of the French would be valueless. It is proper to add, that their powers of invention are steadily increasing year after year, and that the time is probably not remote ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... of that admiral's ship, with himself and his whole crew. The loss of the Dutch was altogether nineteen ships. De Witt the pensionary then took in person the command of the fleet, which was soon equipped; and he gave a high proof of the adaptation of genius to a pursuit previously unknown, by the rapid knowledge and the practical improvements he introduced into some of the most intricate branches of ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... years ago, I am afraid I should have taken stock in the Babel enterprise, not really expecting to leave this terrestrial ball in that way, but just to see how high we could go. The audacious tower of the Centennial I shall certainly patronize. But on domestic buildings, unless for better adaptation to the site, or for some special use, there are other things more to be desired than these lofty appendages. An open balcony, hanging from the highest point of the main roof, just below the scuttle, or the flat, if there is one, on the top of the whole, surrounded by ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... was, however, only an adaptation of the same principle I had used in Swedish lakes, when my course was towards a bright sun so dazzling in the water that I invented the plan of covering my eyes with my straw hat, and steering the canoe by the bright reflection of the sun on its cedar ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor |
