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Alpha   /ˈælfə/   Listen
Alpha

adjective
1.
First in order of importance.  "The alpha star in a constellation is the brightest or main star"
2.
Early testing stage of a software or hardware product.



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"Alpha" Quotes from Famous Books



... number of girls make more noise in a house than the same number of young fellows. I know that they do in boarding- houses and rooming-houses, and I believe it's so as between sororities and fraternities. Put a noise-gauge in the main hall of the Alpha-Alpha house and another in the main hall of the Beta-Beta house, and the girls would run the score above the boys every time. If ever I build a sorority house, it will be for the Delta-Iota-Nus, and a statue of the great goddess DIN ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... flight. There is, to be sure, an arcanum of prosodic theory which is the province of specialists. It has its place in the scheme of things; but it is no more necessary for the genuine enjoyment of Milton (or the 'moderns') than a knowledge of the formulae for calculating the parallax of Alpha Leonis is necessary for enjoying the pillared firmament. We must then compromise with a system which reveals the existence of all the phenomena and tries ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... you to take a look along with us at the choice critics of other days, waked by our potent voice from the long-gathering dust. In our plainer style, we beg, ladies and gentlemen, to draw your attention to a series of articles in Blackwood, of which this is Alpha. Omega is intended for a Christmas present ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... THE ONEROUS DUTIES which enter into the position of the mistress of a house, and such are, happily, with a slight but continued attention, of by no means difficult performance. She ought always to remember that she is the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega in the government of her establishment; and that it is by her conduct that its whole internal policy is regulated. She is, therefore, a person of far more importance in a community than she usually thinks she is. On her pattern her daughters model themselves; ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... president, officers, and members of the original society, it was established soon after at Harvard College, through the influence of Mr. Elisha Parmele, a graduate of the year 1778. The first meeting in Cambridge was held Sept. 5th, 1781. The original Alpha of Virginia is ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... Alpha of the Plough says in the London Star: "I was walking with a friend along the Spaniards-road the other evening talking on the inexhaustible theme of these days, when he asked, 'What is the biggest thing that has happened to this country as the ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... warningly, and shook them over the congregation while he lowered his voice. "Hush! hush! lest he hear—lest he mark—lest the great Jehovah"—his voice swelling suddenly into loud, piercing tones—"Maker of heaven and earth, Judge of the quick and the dead, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the eternal Godhead from everlasting to everlasting, should know that you, pitiable, crawling worm—that you, corrupt in nature and conceived in sin! child of wrath and of the devil! say ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... and Hydrus. Flamsteed's maps also contained Mons Menelai. This list contains nothing new except Robur Caroli, since Columba Noachi (Noah's dove) had been raised to the skies by Bartschius in 1624. The constellation Robur Caroli and also the star Cor Caroli ([alpha] Canum Venaticorum) were named by Halley in honour of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... the alpha and omega of this piece of philosophy were furnished by the publication of the case of Nicolai, the bookseller of Berlin. Its details were read before the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, in 1799. The substance ran thus. Nicolai had had some family troubles which much annoyed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... from [alpha] and [delta] Ursae Minoris, complaining of being put on daily duty, and praying for an increase of salary.—Laid on the plane of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... she was one of four sisters, daughters of a Welsh clergyman, who all became nurses at Mrs. Warburton's, Hoxton, whither, I imagine, Mary Lamb had often retired. Mrs. Parsons, one of the sisters, became Mary Lamb's nurse when, some time after Lamb's death, she moved to 41 Alpha Road, Mrs. Parsons' house. The late John Hollingshead, great-nephew of these ladies, says in his interesting book, My Lifetime, that their father was rector of Beguildy, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... find it, must exist a diary of one of these ancient astronomers—and from it I quote in anticipation. "Early this night to my roof," it runs, "the heavens being bare of clouds (coelo aperto). Set myself to measure the elevation of Sagittarius Alpha with my new astrolabe sent me by my friend and master, Hafiz, from out Arabia. Did this night compute the equation a(Dx/2T)f(a, b c T3). Thus did I prove the variations of the ellipse and show Hassan Sabah to be the mule he is. Then rested, pacing my roof even to the rising of ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... where this series of exhortations occur very significant, but the order in which they appear is also instructive. The great principle which covers all conduct, and may be broken up into all the minutenesses of practical directions is self-surrender. Give yourselves up to God; that is the Alpha and the Omega of all goodness, and wherever that foundation is really laid, on it will rise the fair building of a life which is a temple, adorned with whatever things are lovely and of good report. So after Paul has laid deep and broad the foundation of all Christian virtue ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... follows. In its synthesis 1,000 grammes of picoline were first converted into alphapicoline, 380 grammes being obtained. This was heated with paraldehyde, whereby it was converted into allylpyridine (48 grammes), and this by reduction with sodium yielded alpha-propylpyridine, a body in almost every respect identical with coniine. The more important difference was its optical inactivity, but he succeeded in splitting up a solution of the acid tartrate of the base by means of Penicillium ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... eighteen times. Of one of his works Montesquieu said to a friend: "You will read it in a few hours, but I assure you it has cost me so much labor that it has whitened my hair." He had made it his study by day and his dream by night, the alpha and omega of his aims and objects. "He who does not write as well as he can on every occasion," said George Ripley, "will soon form the habit of not writing well ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... The modern term corresponding to this definition is photons. The modern concept of radiation also includes particles— neutrons, protons, alpha (helium) and beta (electrons) rays and other ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... all about thee and me. "I know My sheep." We do not take Him by surprise. He does not come in late, and find the performance half over! He is in at our beginnings, when grave issues are being born. "I am Alpha." ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... Since this is my alpha and omega in the art of education, I repeat now what I said at the beginning of this book and half way through it. Try to leave the child in peace; interfere directly as seldom as possible; keep away all crude and impure impressions; but give all your care and ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key

... must fight the battle together. That was the Alpha and Omega of her thoughts. He had not yet measured the height and depth of her love. Let her only make this clear to him, and he must give in; if not to-night, at least before his leave was up. Years of living with Michael had accustomed her to getting her own way in all essentials. But ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... nor his ways of eating; his habits, morals, and opinions will vividly illustrate the history of the valley. This renegade serves to show the utility of democracy; he is at once its theory and its practice, its alpha and its omega, in short, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... I am the light and the life of the world. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... Alpha," said Omega joyfully. "In very truth he may be able to carry on. Moisture may return to earth, and it is more likely to return here than elsewhere. Remember what the Mirror showed last week over the Sahara ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow

... In Mrs. Shelley's editions the various sections of this Ode are severally headed as follows:—'Epode 1 alpha, Epode 2 alpha, Strophe alpha 1, Strophe beta 2, Antistrophe alpha gamma, Antistrophe beta gamma, Antistrophe beta gamma, Antistrophe alpha gamma, Epode 1 gamma, Epode 2 gamma. In the manuscript, Mr. Locock tells us, the headings ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos. Hello! Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... worship him. His dominion is the dominion of an age, which shall not pass away; and his kingdom that which shall not perish,' Dan. vii. 13, 14. They are further celebrating the Lord from these words in the Revelation: 'To JESUS CHRIST be glory and strength: behold he cometh with clouds. He is alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last; who is, who was, and who is to come, the almighty. I, John, heard this from the SON OF MAN, out of the midst of the seven candlesticks,' Rev. i. 5-7, 10-13; ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... for I the Lord have put forth my hand to exert the powers of heaven: ye cannot see it now; yet a little while and ye shall see it, and know that I am, and that I will come and reign with my people. I am Alpha and Omega, the ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... all other things of no moment whatever in comparison. The jargon of argumentative Greek Sects, vague traditions of Jews, the stupid routine of Arab Idolatry, there was no answer in these. A Hero, as I repeat, has this first distinction, which indeed we may call first and last, the Alpha and Omega of his whole Heroism, That he looks through the shows of things into things. Use and wont, respectable hearsay, respectable formula: all these are good, or are not good. There is something ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... throughout the world who has not either a foster-father or some old servant, upon whose knees he has been dandled! There ought to exist by means of your management, a hatred like that of Artreus and Thyestes between your wife and this Nestor —guardian of your gate. This gate is the Alpha and Omega of an intrigue. May not all intrigues in love be confined in these ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... the British Museum, where the symbols of the four Evangelists, placed over corresponding columns of lessons from their gospels, are portrayed looking up to a palm tree, rising from the earth, on the summit of which is a cross, with the symbolical letters alpha and omega suspended ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... importance, and I note that Professor Smyth passes it over as if it really were unimportant; but in reality it corresponds to somewhat large time-differences. He quotes Sir J. Herschel's correct statement, that about the year 2170 B.C. the star Alpha Draconis, when passing below the pole, was elevated at an angle of about 26 deg. 18' above the horizon, or was about 3 deg. 42' from the pole of the heavens (I have before me, as I write, Sir J. Herschel's original ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... dear, is to be without money; that's our disease, yours and mine. Now inasmuch as we have plenty of wit, we thought it would be a good thing to parade our dear little honor, or dishonor, to catch an old boy; but that old boy, my dear heart, knows the Alpha and Omega of female tricks,—which means that you could easier put salt on a sparrow's tail than to make me believe I have anything to do with your little affair. Go to Paris, my dear; go at the cost of an old celibate, I won't prevent it; in fact, I'll help you, for an old bachelor, Suzanne, ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... that dramatic art can give: that of a man striving onward and upward in his own strength, confronting (as Goethe says in reference to Shakespeare's plays) the inexorable course of the universe with the might of human will. We might take as the Alpha and Omega of Faust these two ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... stars in the heavens, and one that can be seen most of the year, is a Lyrae, or Alpha of the Lyre, known also as Vega. In a spring evening it may be seen in the northeast, in the later summer near the zenith, in the autumn in the northwest. On the scale we have laid down with the earth's orbit as a finger-ring, its distance would be some eight or ten miles. The small stars ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... Republican, but that party declines the responsibility; the infidels call me a religious crank, the clergy an Atheist, and even the Mugwumps regard me with suspicion. But let me tell you right here that whatever I may or may not be, I am an American from the ground up—from Alpha to Omega, world-without- end. I may be a man without a party and without a creed; but so long as Old Glory blazes in God's blue firmament I will never be a man ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... certainly grown taller and handsomer since his last visit at home, in her eyes at least; and who is now entertaining himself by teaching his pet, Emma, (a little girl of four,) to repeat the Greek alphabet, and whose funny pronunciation of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, &c., is received with peals of ...
— Arthur Hamilton, and His Dog • Anonymous

... fifty and sixty years ago. The collegian danced and drove and flirted and dined and sang the night away. Robert Tomes echoed the strain in his tale of college life a little later, under stricter social and ecclesiastical conditions. There was a more serious vein also. In 1827 the Kappa Alpha Society was the first of the younger brood of the Greek alphabet—descendants of the Phi Beta Kappa of 1781—and in 1832 Father Eells, as he is affectionately called, founded Alpha Delta Phi, a brotherhood based upon ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis

... entering "senior prep", Pauline was able to make freshman with only three conditions. In the first week she was initiated into Olivia's fraternity, the Kappa Alpha Kappa, joined the woman's literary and debating society, and was fascinated and absorbed by crowding new events, associations, occupations, thoughts. In spite of herself her old-time high spirits came flooding back. She caught herself humming—and checked herself reproachfully. ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... naturally I dinna think I was ever what could be called a funny man, but only just as ye would say a thought ajee in that way. Howsever, I soon became, both by habit and repute, a man of popularity in the town, in so much that it was a shrewd saying of old James Alpha, the bookseller, that "mair gude jokes were cracked ilka day in James Pawkie's shop, than in Thomas Curl, the barber's, on a ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... awfully true, in the very deepest sense: but they do not think of him—in spite of what he himself and his apostles declared of him—as The Living, Working Lord, to whom all power is given in heaven and earth, and not merely over the souls of a few regenerate; as the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, of whom St. Paul says, 'that the mystery of Christ has been hid from the beginning of the world in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ.' * * * 'That, in the dispensation of the ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley

... latter, then correct yourself. It is human to err, but it is stupidity to persist in error and refuse to be enlightened. If you cannot see for yourself, common sense demands that you get another to see for you. You are not supposed to know the alpha and omega of theological science, but you are bound to possess a satisfactory knowledge in order that your ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... the Great Reality; Love the Alpha and Omega of Life; Sex-love the basis of all other loves; Sex-love the true spiritual love; what is love of an abstract God? Love the perfect mathematician; the moral code and Nature; why we cannot break the laws of God; why Love is depicted with bandaged eyes; Eros and Cupid explained; why the ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... was carried without a dissenting voice at every one of these meetings: "We hereby reaffirm the resolve of the great Ulster Convention of 1892: 'We will not have Home Rule.'" These words became so familiar that the laconic phrase "We won't have it," was on everybody's lips as the Alpha and Omega of Ulster's attitude, and was sometimes heard with unexpected abruptness in no very precise context. A ticket-collector, when clipping the tickets of the party who were starting from Belfast in a saloon for Enniskillen, made no remark and no sign of recognition till he reached Carson, when ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... with soul and flesh! I asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged—that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my heart's wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... indiscretion, to accept the hospitalities of our friends in Halifax, during our brief stay there. But duty called us back to the Confederacy, and passage was engaged for the whole party by the first steamer (the Alpha,) to sail ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... the golden process prove; Gaze, as they learn; and, as they listen, love. The first from Alpha to Omega joins The letter'd tribes along the level lines; 125 Weighs with nice ear the vowel, liquid, surd, And breaks in syllables the volant word. Then forms the next upon the marshal'd plain In deepening ranks his dexterous ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... 31 Alpha, the cause of causes, first In station, fountain, whence the burst Of light and blaze of day; Whence bold attempt, and brave advance, Have motion, life, and ordinance, And heaven itself ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... chosen by other imitators, namely the bull's head, and which in the cursive form, especially the Phoenician, became a yoke. In numerals "Alif" denotes one or one thousand. It inherits the traditional honours of Alpha (as opposed to Omega) and in books, letters and writings generally it is placed as a monogram over the "Bismillah," an additional testimony to the Unity. (See vol. i. p. 1.) In mediaeval Christianity this place of honour was occupied by the cross: ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... Bruno? Was she convinced of the intellectual rightness of the stand she had taken? Was hers a steady, enlightened opposition to superstition? or—and a subtler thought—was she mastered by some vaster, profounder superstition, a fetish-worship of which the Alpha and the ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London

... time we had more pride. What right have we to the word "civilised" till we give mothers and children a proper chance? This is but the Alpha of decency, the first step of progress. We are beginning to realise that; but, even now, to make a full effort and make it at once—we ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... months with Sir Peter Rumchase. My uncle found part of the money for these developments; he was growing interested and competitive in this business because of Lord Boom's prize and the amount of reclame involved, and it was at his request that I named my first navigable balloon Lord Roberts Alpha. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... instance, reference is made to a man who was "born under the Nakshatra Rohini ".[341] "Nakshatras" are stars in the Rigveda and later, and "lunar mansions" in Brahmanical compositions.[342] "Rohini, 'ruddy', is the name of a conspicuously reddish star, [Greek: alpha] Tauri or Aldebaran, and denotes the group of the Hyades."[343] This reference may be dated before 600 B.C., ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... forget about one thing! I am not one of these petty little women, to whom men are the alpha and omega! If you assumed that, of course ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... of white light. We also have electric waves, the waves of the alternating current, and shorter still we find the Hertzian waves, which are used in wireless. We have only begun to know of X-rays and the alpha, beta, and gamma rays from them, of radium, radioactivity, and finally of this new force which I have discovered and ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... may at any rate understand this, that I love you with all my heart and all my strength. If things prosper with me, all my prosperity shall be for you. If there be no prosperity for me, you shall be my only consolation in this world. You are my Alpha and my Omega, my first and last, my beginning and end—my everything, my all." Then he turned away and left her, and there had come no negative from her lips. As far as her lips were concerned, no negative was any ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... and the hero—played by an actor who had interrupted his seventh honeymoon to play the part—splendidly prepared to build it all over again. The second ending closed with the Platform headed for Alpha Centaurus—which was hardly the intention of anybody outside of filmdom. The third ending was secret, but it was said that hard-boiled motion-picture executives had cried like babies when it was thrown on ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... had a fine view of Alpha Lyrae, whose disk, through our captain's spy-glass, subtends an angle of half a degree, looking very much as our sun does to the naked eye on a misty day. Alpha Lyrae, although so very much larger ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... arc of a circle whose radius is the distance. By an important theorem in geometry it is learned, that when anything subtends an angle of one second its distance is 206,265 times its own diameter. The greatest parallax of any star is that of Alpha Centauri—nine-tenths of a second; hence it is more than 206,265 times 91,400,000 miles—the distance of the sun—away, or twenty thousand billions of miles. This is the distance of the nearest fixed star, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... with his universities shall manage or attempt to teach will be ruled by what the Society with its practical industries is continually demanding that men should learn. We spoke once of vital lungs for Society: and in fact this question always rises as the alpha and omega of social questions, What methods the Society has of summoning aloft into the high places, for its help and governance, the wisdom that is born to it in all places, and of course is born chiefly in the more ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... [alpha] and [beta] denote the front wheels of the Chariot generally known as the "pointers;" [gamma] and [delta] the hind wheels; [epsilon], [zeta], [eta] the three horses. All these stars are of the second order of magnitude (the specific meaning ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... and his wife were living at this time in the Alpha Road, Regent's Park. It was said she was Washington's grand-niece, but I am not sure what the relationship was, if any. She was certainly ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... bend of the Lachlan named Gonniguldury. I learnt from the old native guide who accompanied us from Regent's lake that they call those ponds of a river which never dry up quawy, a word which proved to be of use to us in descending the Lachlan. At this camp I found, by a careful observation of alpha and beta Centauri, that the magnetic variation was 8 degrees 56 minutes 15 ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... the Alpha and Omega of all that Tuskegee stands for. From the moment the new student comes on the grounds until he leaves, he is appealed to in ways innumerable to regard life as more than bread or meat, as more than mere mental equipment. Cleanliness, decorum, promptness, ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various

... result of this immutability of character on the one hand, and, on the other, of the strict necessity which attends all the circumstances in which character is successively placed, every man's course of life is precisely determined from Alpha right through to Omega. But, nevertheless, one man's course of life turns out immeasurably happier, nobler and more worthy than another's, whether it be regarded from a subjective or an objective point of view, and ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... concentration in the thyroid gland. In addition, there is plutonium-239, frequently used in nuclear explosives. A bone-seeker like strontium-90, it may also become lodged in the lungs, where its intense local radiation can cause cancer or other damage. Plutonium-239 decays through emission of an alpha particle (helium nucleus) and has a half-life ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

... Editor, is only conjecture, in reply to "ALPHA's" query (No. 12 p. 185.); but perhaps you will receive it, if no better etymology of the word ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various

... gave them life and shadows that hail them home. Great is the hour, O Soul, and great is the wonder to see! Thou art alone with God as he writes on the future's page Two words in letters of fire—(one Doom,—one Mystery,— Alpha the last, and the first Omega) and ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove

... on some occasion had to go to London and brought back for me a pair of 12-inch globes. They were invaluable to me. The first stars which I learnt from the celestial globe were alpha Lyrae, alpha Aquilae, alpha Cygni: and to this time I involuntarily regard these stars as the birth-stars of my astronomical knowledge. Having somewhere seen a description of a Gunter's quadrant, I perceived that I could ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... disappointed me, if I had prepared myself against falling in the unsparing clutches of a shoal of land-sharks, who swarmed at that time the Yarra Yarra wharfs. Five pounds for landing my luggage, was the A, followed by the old colonial C, preceded by the double D. Rapacity in Australia is the alpha and omega. Yet there were no poor! a grand reflection for the serious. Adam Smith, settled the question of "the wealth of nations." The source of pauperism will be settled in Victoria by any quill-driver, who has the pluck to write ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello

... philosophy which had reigned without a rival for many hundreds of years. But antagonistic as these philosophies are to one another, they have one conception in common. The popular belief that the world of man's normal experience is the Alpha and Omega of Nature, is the very platform on which their controversies are carried on. Were any one to suggest to them that this belief was without foundation, that there was room and to spare in Nature for the "supernatural" ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... works; works in which one letter of the alphabet is omitted. A lipogrammatist is a letter-dropper. In this manner Tryphiodorus wrote his Odyssey; he had not [Greek: alpha] in his first book, nor [Greek: beta] in his second; and so on with the subsequent letters one after another. This Odyssey was an imitation of the lipogrammatic Iliad of Nestor. Among other works of this kind, Athenaeus mentions an ode ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... with her at the top of the falls of the Linter, and had told her of the hopes which he had dared to indulge. And when at the bottom of the falls he had presumed to take her in his arms, she had forgiven him without difficulty to herself, telling herself that that would be the alpha and the omega of the romance of her life. She had not felt herself bound to tell Mr. Kennedy of what had occurred,—but she had felt that he could hardly have been angry even had he been told. And she had often thought of her lover since, and of his love,—telling ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... Tau—I would give him a worse designation, but that is a manifest impossibility; for without the assistance of two good presentable members of your Estate, Alpha and Upsilon, he would be a mere nonentity—he it is that has dared to outdo all injuries that I have ever known, expelling me from the nouns and verbs of my inheritance, and hunting me out of my conjunctions and prepositions, till ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... The stars are the eternal reflections of God's patience, for they endure His Human Passion, since together they form the shadow of the Word made Flesh. They are the singing echo in time of God's speechless patience, as we are destined to be if we conquer our wills. But patience is suffering, and Alpha must submit to the yoke of Omega. Since God is the Alpha and Omega he caused the Incarnation and Passion. THE IDEAL OF HUMAN LIFE IS THE PASSIONATE REDEMPTION OF THE WILL. This is life's darkest secret, unless we live in the Eucharist. ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton

... thoroughly consistent with their origin and their up-bringing. I venture to asset that, although it is possible to read individual volumes of the Rougon-Macquart series while neglecting others, nobody can really understand any one of these books unless he makes himself acquainted with the alpha and the omega of the edifice, that is, "The Fortune of ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... tunnel which should, according to this view, have been formed in order accurately to orient the pyramid's base, assuming that the time of the building of the pyramid corresponded with one of the epochs when the star Alpha Draconis was distant 3 deg. 42' from the pole of the heavens. In other words, there is a slant tunnel directed northwards and upwards from a point deep down below the middle of the pyramid's base, and inclined 26 deg. 17' to the horizon, the elevation of Alpha ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... editor of the Harvard Advocate, which opened the door of the O.K. Society, where he found congenial intellectual companionship with the editors from the classes above and below him; and when Dr. Edward Everett Hale wished to revive and perpetuate the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity, Roosevelt was one of the half-dozen men from the Class of 1880 whom ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... upon his coins is the Labarum, or sacred banner, bearing the monogram of Christ—the letters [Greek: Ch] and [Greek: R]—being the initials of [Greek: CHRISTOU], the angles of which are occupied by the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha and Omega, in allusion to Christ's declaration in Revelation. A rarer type of Constantine's coins has the monogram, and the legend, In hoc signo vinces. The signum was the vision of a beautiful cross in the heavens, which was presented to the view of Constantine, near Milan, during his march ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... he return to civilization, don a stiff collar, and recognize an institution. During his meteoric career at the University he had been made a member of the Alpha Delta fraternity, in recognition of his varied accomplishments. Not only could he sing and dance and tell a tale with the best, but he was also a mimic and a ventriloquist, gifts which had proven invaluable in crucial conflicts with the faculty, and had constituted him a hero ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice

... engenders real and divine assurance of such pardon; because it alone really pacifies the conscience and fully satisfies the heart; and because it alone bestows new spiritual powers of sanctification. Christianity is absolute and final, it is the non plus ultra, the Alpha and Omega, of religion, because its God is the only true God, its Mediator is the only-begotten Son of God, its ransom is the blood of God, and its gift is perfect union with God. Compare John 8, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente

... a alpha b beta g gamma d delta e epsilon z zeta ae eta th theta i iota k kappa l lambda m mu n nu x Xi(Zi) o omicron p pi r rho s sigma t tau u upsilon ph phi ch chi ps ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins

... E. Rutherford, then of Montreal, discovered that the radiation from uranium, thorium and radium was complex. (Rutherford, "Radio-activity" (2nd edition), Cambridge, 1905.) Three types of rays were soon distinguished. The first, named by Rutherford alpha-rays, are absorbed by thin metal foil or a few centimetres of air. When examined by measurements of the deflections caused by magnetic and electric fields, the alpha-rays are found to behave as would positively electrified particles of ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... The alleged antineuritic properties of the alpha- hydroxy-pyridine and adenine. Biochem. J., ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy

... need. We haven't drawn a frank from a plant in a month, and we've had to cut our field strength down to a whisper to keep from burning out our accumulators. We can hunt as far as Neptune easy—we can go to Alpha Centauri if we want to. This thing of piffling and monkeying around here's pulling my cork, and for the ten thousand four hundred and sixty seventh time I say let's prowl and prowl now! In fact, I'm getting so sick of sticking around doing nothing that I'm going out anyway, if I have ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... interstate business. Likewise a Massachusetts tax based on "the corporate surplus" of a foreign corporation having only an office in the State for the transaction of interstate business was held in Alpha Portland Cement Co. v. Massachusetts to be virtually an attempt to license interstate commerce.[632] In the same category of unconstitutional taxation of the interstate commerce privilege, the Court has also included the following: ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... would endanger the public safety, but because they are profitable to their owners, they also believe that the consumers of slave goods contribute to a fund for supporting slavery with all its abominations; that they are the Alpha and the Omega of the business; that the slave-trader, the slave-owner, and the slave-driver, are virtually the agents of the consumer, for by holding out the temptation, he is the original cause, the first mover in the horrid ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... take it all down, so that his argument could be analyzed at leisure, it would show its anatomical knitting and structure. Do you remember how Burke's speech on Conciliation was parsed and sub-headed in the preface to the school-texts? Just so, in I and II and III, A. B. and C, ([alpha]), ([beta]), and ([gamma]), i, ii, and iii, we could articulate the strict and bony logic that vertebrates B——'s talk. Reservations, exceptions, qualifications, parentheses, sub-clauses, and humorous paraphrases ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... being, while it is independent of them. (Plato, Symposium, 210, 211.) Unless the ascent be prosecuted thus far, the contemplation is inadequate, the happiness incomplete. The mind needs to travel to the beginning and end of things, to the Alpha and Omega of all. The mind needs to reach some perfect good: some object, which though it is beyond the comprehension, is nevertheless understood to be the very good of goods, unalloyed with any admixture of defect ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... my brother-in-law, Edmund Casey, was then managing for the Messrs. Fairbairn. I found he had broken in to harness for me two Arab ponies which would trot their 12 miles an hour. I trucked these and a buggy I had purchased in Sydney to Alpha, the then terminus of the Central railway line, where my other horses—brought from Winton—met me. Good rains had fallen in July, thus breaking up the long drought which had commenced three years before. I had plenty ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... blushed, and giggled convulsively. "No offence. Quite natural, I'm sure. You have much better things to do than to read my articles, Miss Virginia. I only thought you might have happened to read Mr. Spence's 'Sonnet to Alpha' in our ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... word surrounded by a cedilla such as this signifies that the word is bolded in the text. A word surrounded by underscores like this signifies the word is italics in the text. Greek letters are translated into English and are in brackets, e.g. [alpha]. ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons

... said I, "what sort of truth is this, which involves duty, and yet is opposed to prudence? It is, that there is no truth, it seems, and this completes the paradox. This strange truth—the Alpha Omega of the sceptic, his first and his last—is to involve duty; he is to be a confessor and martyr for it! Nothing less than happiness and prudence are to be sacrificed to conscience in the matter. ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... satisfied myself that I lacked this grand requisite, I turned my attention to the subject again only to find that No. 1 was quite alone in its glory. It was the Alpha and Omega of the preliminary requisites. I should never be able to get ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... world. But George writes that he feels decidedly pleased with the look of things. He has been carrying on like all possessed since I left, having company to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and finally went and had Chi Alpha all himself. ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... Mystery. That's what the explorers had called it back in 2041, nearly a century and a half before, when they'd found the great city on one of the planets of the Alpha Centaurus system. Man's first interstellar trip had taken nearly five years at sublight velocities, and bing!—right off the bat, they'd found something that made interstellar travel worthwhile, even though they'd found no planet in the Alpha Centaurus system that was really habitable ...
— Dead Giveaway • Gordon Randall Garrett

... known as 61 Cygni, which is thus shown to be no less than 40 billions of miles away from us—many thousand times as far as we are from the Sun. The nearest of the Stars, so far as we yet know, is [Greek: alpha] Centauri, the distance of which is about 25 billions ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... vicious practice was recently made in the interpretation of an inscribed stone alleged to have been unearthed near Zanesville, Ohio. Two of the characters were supposed, in liberal exercise of the imagination, to represent the [Greek letter: Alpha] and [Greek letter: Omega] of the Greek alphabet. At the comparatively late date when the arbitrary arrangement of the letters of that alphabet had become fixed, the initial and concluding letters might readily have been used to represent ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... cliffs—the man of now and the man-thing of the earliest, forgotten then, imbued by the same deathless passion that has come down unchanged through all the epochs, periods and eras of time from the beginning, and which shall continue to the incalculable end—woman, the imperishable Alpha and Omega of life. ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... during the summer, but more than doubles in size during the winter and extends to the encircling landmasses; the ocean floor is about 50% continental shelf (highest percentage of any ocean) with the remainder a central basin interrupted by three submarine ridges (Alpha Cordillera, Nansen ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... redolent of memories of the argonauts and emigrants. Yonder are Yuba, Dutch Flat, the North Fork, the South Fork (of the American River), Colfax, Gold Run, Midas, Blue Canyon, Emigrant Gap, Grass Valley, Michigan Bluff, Grizzly Gulch, Alpha, Omega, Eagle Bird, Red Dog, Chips Flat, Quaker Hill and You Bet. Can you not see these camps, alive with rough-handed, full-bearded, sun-browned, stalwart men, and hear the clang of hammer upon drill, the shock of the blast, the wheeling away ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... of course," Neel told him. "Chances are that that will be enough to straighten things out. Since the completion last year of the refining equations of Debir's Postulate, all sigma-110 and alpha-142 ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)

... where alpha is the angle made by a jet against a surface; and in order to test the accuracy of the simple machinery employed for these researches, the oblong jet which gave 71 unit when impinging vertically upon a circular plate, was directed at 60 deg. and 45 deg. thereon, with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end: I will give unto him that is athirst, of the fountain of the ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poorhouse. You try to tell me anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been through it from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands. Heaven knows if I had but been ignorant instead of cultivated, and impudent instead of diffident, I could have made a name for myself in this cold, selfish ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... out against it because its function in society is not understood, and very difficult to explain. I cry out against it, because it jumbles all ideas, causes the means to be taken for the end, the obstacle for the cause, the alpha for the omega; because its presence in the world, though in itself beneficial, has, nevertheless, introduced a fatal notion, a perversion of principles, a contradictory theory, which, in a multitude of forms, has impoverished mankind and deluged ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... [Greek: Alpha-Omega] Samueli Johnson Grammatico et Critico Scriptorum Anglicorum litterate perito Poetae luminibus sententiarum Et ponderibus verborum admirabili Magistro virtutis gravissimo Homini optimo et singularis ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... two divine moments, Schelling recognizes another, original unity of the two. The not yet unfolded unity of the beginning (God as Alpha) he terms indifference or groundlessness; the more valuable unity of the end, attained by unfolding (God as Omega) is called identity or spirit. In the former the contraries are not yet present; in the latter they are present no longer. The groundless ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... has been tried, no sensible parallax could be detected; from which the same inference was to be made in their case. But a sensible parallax of about one second has been ascertained in the case of the double star, alpha alpha, of the constellation of the Centaur, {3} and one of the third of that amount for the double star, 61 Cygni; which gave reason to presume that the distance of the former might be about twenty thousand millions ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers



Words linked to "Alpha" :   letter, of import, important, start, explorative, exploratory



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