"Calculating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... manner of life, you dwarf its legs, wings, and general muscular development; but you make its liver grow as large as itself. I have known human beings who practised on their mental powers a precisely analogous discipline. The power of calculating in figures, of writing poetry, of chess-playing, of preaching sermons, was tremendous; but all their other faculties were like the legs and wings of the ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... certain means; while Carmen, penetrating externals, consciously sought to turn those who would employ her into channels for the expression of her own dominant thought. Be that as it may, the Beaubien was now the stone before the door of their hope, and Carmen the lever by which these calculating women intended it should ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... immediately at home among such kind and friendly people, and have never felt homesick, except when I think of my poor mother's farewell embrace when she accompanied us to the cars. As soon as my step-mother had arrived, and our excitement was over, they commenced calculating upon placing me in the Sabbath school at the church where my mother belonged. On the next Sabbath I accompanied her and joined the Sabbath school, she occupying a side seat about middle way up the house. I was not reminded of ...
— The Story of Mattie J. Jackson • L. S. Thompson
... staircase led to the top, where fires were lighted every night, visible from the distance of a hundred miles, to guide the coasting vessels. Sostratus is said to have engraved an inscription on stone, and covered it with a species of cement, upon which he sculptured the name of Ptolemy, calculating that the cement would decay, and bring to light his original inscription. Strabo says it read, Sostratus, the friend of kings, made me. Lucian reports differently, and more probably, thus, Sostratus of Cnidus, the son of Dexiphanes, to the Gods the Saviors, for the safety of Mariners. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... support the burden of a great action, did not recommend itself either to Schlegel or Coleridge, who take the mental rather than the moral disposition to task. Schlegel, with some asperity, speaks of "a calculating consideration that cripples the power of action;" and Coleridge, with more subtlety, applies Hamlet's antithesis of thought and resolution to the elucidation of his own character, concluding that Hamlet "procrastinates ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... miser was touched. He knew not why, it is true, but he felt that the view he got of one immortal spirit uncorrupted by the crimes and calculating hypocrisy of life, made the contemplation of his own state and condition, as well as of his future ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... so, against the offense of false doctrine. All these things could not be done in one day, nor in one month. Those fifty years during which Seth lived after the translation of Enoch, formed but a very short period for him (for spiritual men have an altogether different method of calculating time than the children of this world) in which to instruct all his family in the nature of this glorious consolation—that another and eternal life is to be hoped for after this life, a hope which God revealed to his saints by the ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... place called Tibur, a few miles east of the city. There was always a master of horse appointed to attend upon and second a dictator. The name of this officer in the case of Fabius was Minucius. Minucius was as ardent, prompt, and impetuous, as Fabius was cool, prudent, and calculating. He levied the troops and brought them to their place of rendezvous. Fabius went out to take the command of them. One of the consuls was coming to join him, with a body of troops which he had under his command. Fabius sent word to him that ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... hated her for a moment, she seemed so cold, so calculating and sly. I couldn't bear to think that she was my step-sister, and I was glad that, at least, not a drop of the same ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... crossbow-men under the command of the Lord De Fiennes and a number of other knights. At a little distance from the castle he was met by Almeric de Pavia, who yielded his son as a hostage according to his promise, calculating, as was the case, that he would be recaptured by the English. Then, having received the greater portion of the money agreed upon, he led a party of the French over the castle to satisfy them of his sincerity. Upon receiving their report that all was quiet De Charny detached twelve knights ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... with our small means and slow workmen to defend the cities and coast here. Against ordinary numbers we are pretty strong, but against the hosts our enemies seem able to bring everywhere there is no calculating. But if our men will stand to their work, we shall give them trouble and damage them yet. They have worked their way across the marshes, with their dredges, under cover of their gunboats, to the Savannah River, about Fort Pulaski. I presume they will endeavour to reduce the fort and thus open ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... p. and m.), and of the sign for equality and of V [square root symbol] for root, were additional conveniences. To this might be added the popularization of decimals by Simon Stevin in 1586, which he called "the art of calculating by whole numbers without fractions." How clumsy are all things at their birth is illustrated by his method of writing decimals by putting them as powers of one-tenth, with circles around the exponents; ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... stop long in Belfast; for if there is anything we detest, when on our journeys, it is to mix too much with people of industry, thrift, and business sagacity. Sturdy, prosperous, calculating, well-to-do Protestants are well enough in their way, and undoubtedly they make a very good backbone for Ireland; but we crave something more romantic than the citizen virtues, or we should have remained in our own country, where they ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the impression she wished to convey, and it was usually some considerable time before her boarders grasped the fact that they were dealing with, a thoroughly shrewd, calculating business woman, who was bent on making every penny out of them that she could, compatibly with running the house on such lines as would ensure its answering ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... fulness of his longing to pacify her, Richard had pushed his chair back from the table, intending to go in search of the vagrant jewel. But the chair was high, and its make not of the most solid sort; and so he paused, instinctively calculating the amount of support it could be trusted to render him in his descent. And during that pause Helen had felt her heart stand still. She set her little teeth now, recalling it. For the extent of his deformity ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the population, as in St. Petersburg. I would say something about Paris, but I expect to go there after a while, and would dislike very much to be placed in the position of Mr. Dick Swiveller, who was blockaded at his lodgings, and never could go out without calculating which of the public ways was still left open. But if there be officers enough of all kinds in Paris to keep the public peace and suppress objectionable correspondence and pamphlets against members of the reigning family, there are also ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... savage-looking crew, as they sat there, calculating, apparently, how long their victim's strength would hold out, and when it would be safe to make ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... Locker, "it sounds to me as if he were calculating his last week's expenses. But when he gets to French cursing, I drop him. I can't fight him ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... which the second third of the produce had been devoted, may be dispensed with altogether: that some means are invented by which the same amount of produce may be procured without the assistance of any fixed capital, or the consumption of any seed or material sufficiently valuable to be worth calculating. Let us, however, suppose that this cannot be done without taking on a number of additional labourers, equal to those required for producing the seed and fixed capital; so that the saving shall be only in the profits of the previous capitalists. Let us, in conformity ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... physically impossible to control the force of large quantities in order to measure it, and small quantities give irregular results. Theoretically, the matter has been accomplished by Berthelot, the head of the French government "Commission of Explosives," by calculating the volume of gas produced, heat developed, etc.; and this method is excellent for obtaining a fair idea of the specific pressure of any new explosive that may be brought forward, and determining whether it is worth while to investigate it further; but the explosives ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... boldly with an important topic, and the calculating, ambitious minds of those present had been too long in suspense as to what they might hope for from the king to allow the scorn of their new leader to put an end to the scene. Rifoel hastily blocked the way before Montauran, and seized his hand to ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... Neil's was the winning side until they stood six and four, and then Grey roused himself and played as he had never done before, carefully watching the cards as they fell, knowing exactly what had been played, and calculating pretty accurately where the others were, and finally ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... extravagant these assertions might appear," said the incredulous naturalist, "it was necessary to collect precise information on the subject." The scientific Ulysses regarded the reputed Cyclops with a calculating scepticism. Had Polyphemus been at hand, Peron would have politely requested him to permit himself to be weighed and measured, and would have written an admirable monograph on his ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... ever possessed any self-assertion in manner or speech, it certainly vanished in the presence of the imperious Secretary, whose name at the time was the synonym of all that was cold and formal. I never learned what Mr. Stanton's first impressions of me were, and his guarded and rather calculating manner gave at this time no intimation that they were either favorable or unfavorable, but his frequent commendation in after years indicated that I gained his goodwill before the close of the war, if not when I first came to his notice; and a more intimate association ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... he had had some other object in view than mere instruction or amusement. His friends and neighbours gave him an excellent character; but on their cross-examination, all admitted his entire devotion to his favourite pursuit. The counsel for the banker exerted himself with considerable ability. Calculating in some degree on the state of the public mind, and upon the influence which vague rumours, coupled with the evidences of the mechanic's handicraft exhibited in court, might have on the mind of the jury, he dwelt upon every ward and winding—on the story of the iron chest—on the evident ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... the sexual appetite and love generally produces in man a peculiar phenomenon. While habitual gratification and education of the sexual appetite tends to make it more and more calculating and cynical, love, on the contrary, becomes more elevated and refined with age and less egoistical than in youth. Owing to general mental development, the education of sentiments progresses and becomes ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... from the problem at last and dozed in the sunshine, calculating with detailed knowledge of the trail and its difficulties just how long it would take Kitsong to reach the coroner and start ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... government, any cause, any doctrine, even the most righteous. There is a sense and humanity in the mass, in the long run, that will not bear them; and they will wreck their friends always, as they wrecked them in the working of the Poor-law-bill. Not all the figures that Babbage's calculating machine could turn up in twenty generations, would stand in the long ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... with the beautiful Comtesse de Kergarouet, a prude after the fashion of young women who are awaiting the death of an old husband and making capital of their virtue in the interests of a second marriage. Quite incapable of understanding that calculating virtue is invulnerable, Savinien paid court to Emilie de Kergarouet in all the splendor of a rich man. He never missed either ball or theater ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... authority, since Henry was supreme in England, and had won over to his cause the English bishops. The whole question became complicated and interesting. It was the common topic of discourse in all the castles and convents of Europe. The Pope, timid and calculating, began to fear he had supported Becket too far, and pressed upon him a reconciliation with Henry, much to the disgust of Becket, who seemed to comprehend the issue better than did the Pope; for the Pope had, in his desire to patch up the quarrel, permitted the son of Henry to be crowned by ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... aide," said the calculating young Vermonter. "Can't you sow those western seeds in his mind and keep on sowing them? The fact that you are from this western battle ground will give more weight to what you say. You do this, and I'll wager that within a week the Colonel will induce ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a slenderly built, fashionably dressed figure, surmounted by clear-cut, smooth-shaven features—a man of thirty, possibly, decidedly aristocratic, perfectly self-controlled, his eyes cool, calculating, his hands swift, unhesitating in play. From some mysterious cause this masterful repose of the absorbed dealer began immediately to exercise a serious fascination over the man watching him. He did not appear altogether human, he ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... entering and leaving the river, so that we could only give a very rough guess at its position. Fairburn, however, of course, expressed his anxiety to be of service; and by consulting the chart, and considering attentively the courses we had steered, and calculating the distance we had afterwards been driven by the gale, we came to the conclusion that the poor wretches must have been taken from the Balowi river, on the north-west coast of Borneo. For the mouth of that river we accordingly shaped our ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... where the event took place explored with care. The morality of the author of this frightful scene became the object of rigorous examination; the exigeances of the prisoner, the forms affected by him, his calculating silence, and his answers, coldly insulting, were feeble obstacles; and justice at length arrived, by its prudence, and by the discoveries it made, to the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... could do so was doubtful; but at least there was a hope, and with it the feeling of quiet resignation with which Vincent had faced what appeared to be inevitable at once disappeared, and was succeeded by a restless longing for action. His brain was busy at once in calculating the chances of his being ordered for instant execution or of the sentence being postponed till the following morning, and, in the latter case, with the question of what guard would be probably placed over him, and how Tony ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... that's quite clear to you. It's a very simple way of calculating the compass course, and I always do it ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... the work had been a matter of plans and maps, of compass and level, of observing the ground—incidentally dodging the bullets of the German snipers who caught glimpses of his crawling form—by day, and of intricate and exact figuring and calculating by night, in the grimy cellar of another ruined house by the light of a candle, stuck in ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... springs of intelligence poisoned at their source; treason stalking at noonday; insurrection rife; the equality of States and citizens denied, and derided; justice rebuked; treachery applauded; traitors canonized; anarchy inaugurated; monarchy calculating the end of republicanism; and the wheels of government clogged by the minions of despotism! All this, my Countrymen, and you passive, silent, sightless; reckless of your own and your children's doom? ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... bore him beyond a point of land which hid the steamboat from his view, and he began to fear that he should be actually carried out to sea. He was calculating, in fact, how many miles it was to the mouth of the river, when it suddenly occurred to him that, though he could not push with his pole, he might perhaps paddle with it. He accordingly took up the pole, ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... good deal. Their confidence in their plan was catching. So we went to Scott's, after all, had a bottle, and I went home, calculating what my third share of our losses in the Tissue would amount to, and how much ready cash I could lay my hands on to back our tip so as to balance the account. I was not the least ambitious to make a fortune. All I wanted was to get clean clear of my journalistic ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... only a slight wound from a dagger. It is the first recorded instance, he says, of a fugitive flying to a dungeon for safety. In this prison, under the care of Spanish officers, Arago found sufficient occupation in calculating observations which he had made; in reading the accounts in the Spanish journals of his own execution at Valencia; and in listening to rumors that it was proposed (by a Spanish monk) to do away with the French prisoner ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Elisabeth was advising Falleix how to play; Madame Saillard was knitting in the chimney-corner and overlooking the cards of the vicar; Monsieur Baudoyer, motionless as a mile-stone, was employing his mental capacity in calculating how the cards were placed, and sat opposite to Mitral, who had come up from Ile-d'Adam for the Christmas holidays. No one moved as the cashier entered, and for some minutes he walked up and down the room, his fat face contracted with ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... the lake. If it were to be set down here that within a certain space of time Standish did not care one continental objurgation whether Tina was a princess or a char-woman, the statement would simply not be believed, because we all know that Englishmen are a cold, calculating race of men, with long side whiskers and a veil round their ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... in calculating the financial possibilities of second forest crops, the growth to be expected is the easiest to determine with fair accuracy. Future stumpage value, tax burden and fire risk are all subject to uncertain influences, but the approximate yield of a given species under given ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... is seldom satisfied, and is certainly never exercising its highest functions, when it is doing the work of a calculating machine. What the man of science, whether he is a mathematician or a physical inquirer, aims at is, to acquire and develope clear ideas of the things he deals with. For this purpose he is willing to enter on long calculations, and to be for a season ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... hands do you suppose the things on this table passed through before they got here?" What a crowd of ideas is called up by these few words. In a moment the mists of excitement have rolled away. He is thinking, considering, calculating, and anxious. The child is philosophising, while philosophers, excited by wine or perhaps by female society, are babbling like children. If he asks questions I decline to answer and put him off to another day. He becomes impatient, he ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... suited to the temper of the day, and his speaking won the favour of the best judges in the House of Commons. Though he disappointed ardent crusaders like Lord Shaftesbury by his apparent coldness and calculating caution, he impressed his fellow members as pre-eminently honest and as anxious to advance in the most effective manner those causes which his judgement approved. He was not the man to lead a forlorn hope, but rather the sagacious commander ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... in the chace, succeeded in grappling one of the fugitives. The man struggled on to the brink of a deep quarry and finding that Milnes did not slacken his grasp, determined to dare the jump, calculating, as he afterwards confessed, that as his limbs were strong and well knit, that he should suffer no damage, but that Milnes, being slight, would break his leg. Milnes, nothing daunted, kept his hold, and went down with the poacher, whose calculations were ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... It was unthinkable! She and the world would think him a fool! It came to him suddenly that she and the world would be right. He was a fool, and it was a fool's paradise in which he had been wandering: to take his wife and home and sons for granted, and to spend all his leisure at the feet of a calculating little ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... action; I have one honest man of the age of fortie five, or there about, that traverses his ground three mile everie morning to speake to mee, and when hee is come, after the saluting ceremony, of 'how do you, Lady,' he falles to calculating the nativitie of the Moone, prognosticating what faire weather will follow, if it either snow or raine; sometime with a gentle pinche by the fingar intermixed with the volley[285] of sighes, hee falles to discoursing ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... in which all voluntary thought was swallowed up and lost. I was hurried away by fury; revenge alone endowed me with strength and composure; it moulded my feelings and allowed me to be calculating and calm at periods when otherwise delirium or death would have been ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... communiqu.... ascribed to the Germans with some appearance of justice heavy losses, extremely heavy, spoke of bloody sacrifices, heaps of corpses, hecatombs. Likewise the wireless constantly used the statistics of the intelligence bureau at Verdun, whose chief, Major Cointet, had invented a method of calculating German losses which obviously produced marvelous results. Every fortnight the figures increased a hundred thousand or so. These 300,000, 400,000, 500,000 casualties put out, divided into daily, weekly, monthly losses, repeated in all sorts of ways, produced ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... the justification to be derived from this life-long habit, when, in 1807-8, he voted against the wishes of those who had hoped to hold him in the bonds of (p. 064) partisan alliance. In point of fact, so far from these acts being a yielding to selfish and calculating temptation, they called for great courage and strength of mind; instead of being tergiversation, they were a triumph in a severe ordeal. Mr. Adams was not so dull as to underrate, nor so void of good feeling as to be careless of, the storm of obloquy which he had to encounter, ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... to exaggerate her eccentricity in eyes that looked upon her so kindly, and partly because she had the instinct to spare him the realization that there was no way in which he might come to her rescue in the event of disaster,—she did not inform him of her legacy. She knew that he was shrewdly calculating to stand behind her venture, morally and practically, and that the chief incentive of his encouragement and helpfulness was the hidden hope that through her experiment and its probable unfortunate termination she would learn to depend on him. Nancy was so sure of herself that this attitude ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... audience just when the curtain was rising on the second piece; but he certainly bore himself as if he remembered all of them and a few hundreds more. Anxious spectators looked at him as he came down, speculating painfully whether he was likely to take his seat in front of them, and calculating what would be their chances of seeing in that event. But the Judge was not going to sit down—no! At the gate he encountered a momentary obstruction, in the shape of the usher who looked after the orchestra tickets; but he swept him away as a spring freshet might carry away a bundle ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... inexperienced ears, I will impart a secret. A few weeks ago I detected an innocent intimacy between this foolish girl and a vagabond vaquero in my employ. You understand, it was on her part romantic, visionary; on his, calculating, shrewd, self-interested, for he expected to become my heir. I did not lock her up. I did not tax her with it. I humored it. Today I satisfied the lover that his investment was not profitable, that a marriage without my consent entailed the loss ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... officials, chiefly members of the "Giovani Fiumani," had gone round, asking the people whether they spoke Italian and usually filling in the papers themselves. Presumably the mayor did not propose to allow anyone who had then been described as an Italian now to call himself Croat.) I was just calculating what he was in 1910 when he played a trump card and begged me to go up to the cemetery and take note of the language used for the epitaphs. Then let me return to him on the morrow and say what was the nationality of Rieka. There seemed ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... least, I have been honest—give me credit for that! That is how all my troubles come—I say what is in my mind, and I pay the price for my blunders. It is not as if I were cold and calculating—so don't ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... we should carry with us a standard which would bring down the greatness, dwindle the duration, lighten the pressure, of the most crushing sorrow, and would set in its true dimensions everything that is here. It is for want of that that we go on as we do, calculating wrongly what are the great things and what are the small things. When, like some of those prisoners in the Inquisition, the heavy iron weights are laid upon our half-crushed hearts, we are tempted to shriek, 'Oh, these will be my death!' instead of taking in that great vision ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... continuous horizontal line of pixels, all with the same color. 2. /vi./ To paint a slab on an output device. Apple's QuickDraw, like most other professional-level graphics systems, renders polygons and lines not with Bresenham's algorithm, but by calculating 'slab points' for each scan line on the screen in succession, and then slabbing in the actual ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... hours before he could clearly make her out, for the wind was very light. She was a bark, and Dan could only hope that she was not bound to any port in the slave states. He had a very good knowledge of geography, and after calculating the position of the Isabel, he concluded that the bark could not have come ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... it in this way as a priori and self-evident. No school was in more deadly opposition to such a priori truths than the school of Bentham and the utilitarians. Yet, Bentham's famous doctrine, that in calculating happiness each man is to count for one, and nobody for more than one, seems to be simply the old principle in a new disguise. James Mill applied the doctrine to politics. J. S. Mill again applied it, with still more thoroughness, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... her to be what in fact she was, a weak, though a calculating woman, one clever to conceive, weak to execute: one whose best-laid schemes were for ever liable to be frustrated by the ineradicable blight of vacillation at the critical ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... Rattlesnake Valley filled with water by the last day of September. He had figured on everything, he had sat late into many a night after the grind of a twelve or fifteen hour day, frowning over details, calculating to the cubic yard what he must do each and every day, going over his calculations with a care which missed no detail. And he knew that he could play this game safely and win—if they would only let him alone! And still he knew that it was anybody's game. Could Swinnerton block him ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... Weather," commenced in last year's Companion—Chronological Table of Political Treaties, from 1326—a Literary Chronology of Contemporaneous Authors from the earliest times, on the plan of last year's Regal Table—Tables for calculating the Heights of Mountains by the Barometer—and illustrative papers on Life Assurance, the Irish Poor, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... he saw the superintendent pass over to the infants' side. He stole along the sounding corridors to the office, and noiselessly opened the door. There was somebody there. But it was only Looney, who, being able to count like a calculating machine because no other thoughts disturbed him, had been set to tie up in bundles of a hundred each certain pink and blue envelopes which lay in heaps on the floor. Each envelope contained a Christmas card with a text, and every child on Christmas ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... to be respected; or that, if this could not be done, the fate of the Empire was sealed. He therefore, with a gallantry and boldness that we cannot sufficiently admire—a boldness that seemed like rashness, but was in reality prudence—without calculating too closely the immediate chances of battle, led his troops against one of the most forward of the advancing tribes. But fortune, unhappily, was adverse. How the battle was progressing we are not told; but it appears that in the thick of an engagement Artabanus received ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... as they could judge, fifty paces apart. They were then to wait for half an hour, so as to be sure that all would have gained their allotted positions. Then, when they saw a certain star sink below the horizon (a method of calculating time to which all were accustomed) they were to creep forward into the Roman camp; and each to make his way, as noiselessly as possible, until he came within a few paces of one of the smoldering fires of the Romans, and to wait until they ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... resemblance in these respects also. As an example of industry the world will look in vain for a better one than is afforded by the little beaver of the Western Rivers. Look at them patiently felling the tallest trees; and, so nicely adjusting their fall and calculating their height, that they strike the opposite bank of their stream gaining a fixed and permanent lodgment. It is thus that these wonderful little creatures will often erect dams across wide rivers and effectually stop the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... and elders of the village were, according to custom of the eventide, seated in a group, chattering or consulting, or calculating, probably, about taxes, or respective shares of the common harvest, or the alliances to be contracted for the next border-warfare, or marriages being planned, or the dividing of inheritances, etc. My groom was admitted into their circle, ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... showed him your father's old residence at Heckfield), all the prose of the most splendid of the annuals, Finden's Tableaux, of which my longest and best story—a Young Pretender story—I have been obliged to omit in consequence of not calculating on the length of my poetical contributors. But my poetry, especially that by that wonderful young creature Miss Barrett, Mr. Kenyon, and Mr. Procter, is certainly such as has seldom before been seen in an annual, and joined with Finden's magnificent engravings ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... means and ends, while other men of his age were thinking of pleasure, sentiments, and the like illusions. He forced back into some inner depth the generosity and enthusiasms of youth, and by nature he was generous. He tried hard to be cool and calculating, to coin the fund of wealth which chanced to be in his nature into gracious manners, and courtesy, and attractive arts; 'tis the proper task of an ambitious man, to play a sorry part to gain "a good position," as we ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... I pretended a wild gaiety to induce him to play. He complained of giddiness which hindered him from calculating; his brain, he said, was squeezed into a vice; he heard noises, he was choking; and thereupon he sighed heavily. At last, however, he consented to the game. Madame de Mortsauf left us to put the children to bed and lead the household in family prayers. ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... interrupted us by a lively extravagant sally, on the expence of clothing his children, describing it in a very ludicrous and fanciful manner. Johnson looked a little angry, and said, 'Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate.' At another time, when she said, perhaps affectedly, 'I don't like to fly.' JOHNSON. 'With your wings, Madam, you must fly: but have a care, there are clippers abroad.' How very well was this said, and how fully has experience proved the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... and was not at all good at forming an estimate; he took more work than he could get through, and when calculating he was agitated, lost his head, and so was almost always out of pocket over his jobs. He undertook painting, glazing, paperhanging, and even tiling roofs, and I can remember his running about for three ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... as we were friends, he would let me have the halter for sixty sous. We needed a halter, so I parted with the sixty sous, calculating that we should now have but twenty sous left. I counted out the two hundred and thirteen francs, then again I stretched ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... perfectly tight and dry, and the new seats being all in their places. The oars, however, were not there. Forester recommended to Marco to send a detachment of his men, to go to the wagon-maker's shop and get them. So Marco sent off three of the boys, calculating very correctly that they could bring two oars apiece. Before many minutes they returned, each of the boys having two ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... carelessly from the shelf and goes off to the kitchen and down into the cellar, where he puts away the wine, and then he comes back to us, upstairs. Mouton disappears in a moment. Zotique pretends to play,—but he is calculating the seconds. Presently he says, "Monsieur le Cure, you and I are too good players. Let Mouton take my place, and do you play against Benoit and my cousin," and without waiting for any answer he flies out to the kitchen, and cries sharply: ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... bank instead of at once taking the plunge. "In order," he says, "to do anything that is worth doing in this world, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can. It will not do to be perpetually calculating and adjusting nice chances; it did all very well before the Flood, when a man could consult his friends upon an intended publication for a hundred and fifty years, and then live to see its success for six or seven centuries ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... was Armadale's shabby present to me on my marriage—the rubbishing little ruby ring. That irritated me, to begin with. The second thing that turned up was my bottle of Drops. I caught myself measuring the doses with my eye, and calculating how many of them would be enough to take a living creature over the border-land between sleep and death. Why I should have locked the dressing-case in a fright, before I had quite completed my calculation, I don't know; but I did lock it. And here I am back again ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... thick round curl on Milla's shoulder. Milla had a group of curls on each of her shoulders, for she got her modes at the Movies and had that sort of prettiness: large, gentle, calculating eyes, and a full, softly modelled face, implacably sweet. Ramsey was accustomed to all this charm, and Milla had never before been of more importance to him than an equal weight of school furniture—but all at once some ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... them. at the junction of the S. W. and Middle forks I found a note which had been left by Capt. Clark informing me of his intended rout, and that he would rejoin me at this place provided he did not fall in with any fresh sighn of Indians, in which case he intended to pursue untill he over took them calculating on my taking the S. W. fork, which I most certainly prefer as it's direction is much more promising than any other. beleiving this to be an essential point in the geography of this western part of the Continent I determined to remain at all events untill I obtained the necessary ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... to be distinctly understood, that I am not at all anxious about the mental and material development of the colored people of the United States. They are naturally shrewd, calculating and agreeable, possessing in a peculiar degree the art of pleasing; and these qualities will give them creditable positions in the business interests of the country in a few years. But they must have time to collect their wits, to sharpen their intelligence, to train their moral sense ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... had an interest in the process of corruption. With absolute indifference as to the idea of morality, and absolute indifference as to the moral quality of the means used to attain its end, it rejoiced in the superiority of secrecy, of the accomplished and calculating understanding, and in deceiving the credulous by means of its graceful, seemingly-perfect, ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... cried the Count, laughing. "Who would suppose our cold, calculating, ambitious, haughty, talented and opulent diplomat and aristocrat had so much blood in his veins? When before was he known to admire anything, male or female—but himself—or, at all events, to be guilty of the bad taste of ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... the bandit appeared to hesitate. One might have fancied that he was calculating the chances of an encounter. But the address and valour of the dragoon captain were known to him by too many proofs, to allow him to reckon many chances in his favour. He ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... steadfastly, he started up and exclaimed, d—n my bl—d what's that! It was soon recognised to be a sail, and caused a general acclamation of joy, for they doubted not it was a ship coming to their succour. Lieutenant Flinders, then commanding officer on the bank, was in his tent calculating some lunar distances, when one of the young gentlemen ran to him, calling, "Sir, Sir! A ship and two schooners in sight!" After a little consideration, Mr. Flinders said he supposed it was his brother come back, and asked ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... got nothing; the queen even begged a little meat for her child, who was recovering from an attack of small-pox. There being no shops we had to sit still without food. I took observations for longitude, and whiled away the time by calculating the lunars. Next day the chief gave us a goat cooked whole and plenty of porridge: I noticed that he too had the Assyrian ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... Great Secret could be discovered from the air; that danger had been foreseen fifty years ago, and half a century's camouflage screened the results of steady, calculating relentless diligence. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... now reveal the whereabouts of Belton and James Henry. They had clambered into the loft for the purpose of watching the progress of the preacher's meal, calculating at each step how much he would probably leave. James Henry found a little hole in the loft directly over the table, and through this hole he did his spying. Belton took his position at the larger entrance hole, lying flat on his stomach. ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... and great numbers were baptized. They called us, in their language, Carabi, which means men of great wisdom. The natives call this province Lariab. We left the port and sailed along the coast, in sight of land, until we had run, calculating our advances and retrogressions, eight hundred and seventy leagues towards the northwest, making many stops by the way and having intercourse with many people. In some places we found traces of gold, but in small quantities, it being sufficient for us to have discovered ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... that now began to pass through the thoughts of the Alderman, as they had already planted stings in the bosom of Ludlow. With reflection, conviction began slowly to assert its power. But the truth did not gleam upon the mind of the calculating and wary merchant, with the same instinctive readiness that it had flashed upon the jealous faculties of the lover. He pondered on each circumstance of the interview between the dealer in contraband and his ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... a wife once more—the last thing as ever he expected to happen to him. Indeed the discovery flustered the man not a little, and he set himself to consider such an upheaval most careful and weigh it, as he weighed everything, in the scales of his own future comfort and success. He was a calculating man in all things, and yet it came over him gradual and sure that Mrs. Bascombe had got something to her which made a most forcible appeal and awakened fires he thought were gone out for ever when his wife died. As for Nelly ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... her to a sofa. It was the first time he had held her in his arms since he had had a lover's right to do so, and all the man-soul in him rose in a desperate revolt of love and pity against the coldly calculating villainy of the man who had used the vilest of means to rob ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... doorway he said: "Remember this, Miss Agnes. Both a crime of violence and a confession like the one in your hand are the products of impulse. They are not, either of them, premeditated. They are not the work, then, of a calculating or cautious nature. Look for a ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in oratory was acting,—stage-play. Is it in oratory alone that the saying holds good? Apply it to all circumstances of fife, "stage-play, stage-play, stage-play!"—only ars est celare artem, conceal the art. Gleesome in soul to behold his visitors, calculating already on the three pounds to be extracted from them, seeing in that hope the crisis in his own checkered existence, Mr. Waife rose from his seat in superb upocrisia or stage-play, and asked, with mild ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... conception not immeasurably less complex than the scheme, say, of his own mortal constitution. There has been much talk lately of the irony of fate, but I suspect fate was never more ironical than when she led the most scientific, the most calculating of all painters to spend fifteen long years in building his goodly house upon the sand. And yet, after all, may not the playing of that trick represent but a deeper wisdom, since if the thing enjoyed the immortal health and bloom of a first-rate Titian we should have ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... that a flock of canvas-backs, consisting of several thousands, was seated upon the water not more than half a mile from the shore. Had my dog done his duty, I have no doubt they might have been brought within range; and, calculating upon this, I had made sure of a noble shot. My expectations, however, were defeated by the waywardness of the dog, and I saw there was no hope of doing anything ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... position with a banner of opinion, but rather studied to move forward compactly, exposing no detachment in front or rear; so that the course of his administration might have been explained as the calculating policy of a shrewd and watchful politician, had there not been seen behind it a fixedness of principle which from the first determined his purpose, and grew more intense with every year, consuming his life by its energy. Yet his sensibilities were not acute; he had no vividness ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... take lessons in philosophy from such as they. I wish I could do something to help them out of—" He sat down abruptly on the edge of the bed and pulled his wallet from his pocket. He set about counting the bills, a calculating frown in his eyes. Then he stared at the ceiling, summing up. "I'll do it," he said, after a moment of mental figuring. He told off a half dozen bills and slipped them into his pocket. The wallet sought its usual resting place for the night: ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... I speak to you at a disadvantage, dear Miss Haredale. Believe me that I am not so forgetful of the feelings of my younger days as not to know that you are little disposed to view me with favour. You have heard me described as cold-hearted, calculating, selfish—' ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... shelves full of them—writers who talk sense with wanton heed and giddy cunning, who spread their souls out on paper, who disarm hostility by taking you completely into their confidence. Addison, with the roguish gleam in his eye as he is calculating the number of sponges in the cost of a lady's finery; Goldsmith, in his London garret, talking of the ludicrous escapades of the Man in Black; Lamb luxuriating in reminiscences of Old Benchers. All these splendid, unsystematic delights, mingled with the breezes of byegone summers and the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... about two hundred and fifty feet in width. Quick the eye, steady the hand, unerring the judgment required. If now one look away! or his mind wander! or a rein slip! And what attraction in the ensemble of the thousands over the spreading balcony! Calculating upon the natural impulse to give one glance—just one—in sooth of curiosity or vanity, malice might be there with an artifice; while friendship and love, did they serve the same result, might ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Doctor Mary's common-sense afforded; out of this need the revelation came to Gertie in innocent confidence, and, with the narrator's tacit approval, ran through the family and its intimate friends. If Cynthia had been as calculating as she was guileless, she could not have done better for herself. Mrs. Naylor's motherliness, old Naylor's courtliness, Gertie's breathless concern and avid appetite for the fullest detail, everybody's desire to console and cheer, all these were at her ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... at Edinburgh. On March 14 he arrived home, 'full of enthusiasm and expecting (like the Vicar of Wakefield) every blessing—expecting my dear Mary to hang about my neck, and welcome me after my victory; when I found her out, not calculating I should be home till dinner. I then walked into town, and when I returned she was at home, and hurt that I did not wait, so this begat mutual allusions which were anything but loving or happy. So much for anticipations ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... 'Exercise great care in calculating the rations of the soldiers, that no trickery may succeed in defrauding the soldier ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... in his county, He was all things to all men, and dispensed To some civility, to others bounty, And promises to all—which last commenced To gather to a somewhat large amount, he Not calculating how much they condensed; But what with keeping some, and breaking others, His word had the same value ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... be caught, even if we could not buy any. Our acquaintances would often ask if we had anything for dinner that day, and would kindly suggest that somebody had been boiling lobsters, or that a boat had just come in with some nice mackerel, or that somebody over on the Ridge was calculating to kill a lamb, and we had better speak for a quarter in good season. I am afraid we were looked upon as being in danger of becoming epicures, which we certainly are not, and we undoubtedly roused a great deal of interest because we used to eat mushrooms, which ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... antiques, and it was these that drew the well-dressed women in automobiles from as far away as Hempfield and Nortontown; and yet there were men in plenty to poke the pigs, look sarcastically at the teeth of the two old horses, and examine with calculating and rather jeering eyes John Templeton's ancient buggy, and the harness and the worn plough and cultivator and mowing machine. Everything seems so cheap, so poor, so unprotected, when ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... much plot to "Woe from Wit." Moltchalin, Famusoff's secretary, a cold, calculating, fickle young man, has been making love to Famusoff's only child, an heiress, Sophia, an extremely sentimental young person. Famusoff rails against foreign books and fashions, "destroyers of our pockets and our hearth," ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... the Reindeer was running blindly through the damp obscurity. Charley, who was steering, seemed to have an instinct for that kind of work. How he did it, he himself confessed that he did not know; but he had a way of calculating winds, currents, distance, time, drift, and sailing speed ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... central offices and his central bakeries, hunting up cheaper and cheaper supplies of eggs and flour, and milk and ham, devising advertisements and agency developments. He had something of an artist's passion in these things; he went about, a little bent and peaky, calculating and planning and hissing through his teeth, and feeling not only that he was getting on, but that he was getting on in the most exemplary way. Manifestly, anybody in his line of business who wanted to ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... speed of the vessel, its style of rigging, upon the trade winds, the force of the currents, and especially upon the composition of the crew. You have this advantage over the mariner, that he has but one method of calculating his position, while husbands have at least a thousand ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... was, Wayland knew that this was not a well-marked trail; but his confidence in his guide was too great to permit of any worry over the pass, and he amused himself by watching the water-robins as they flitted from stone to stone in the torrent, and in calculating just where he would drop a line for trout if he had time to do so, and in recovered serenity enjoyed his ride. Gradually he put aside his perplexities concerning the future, permitting his mind to prefigure nothing but his duties with ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... she said remorsefully, "I cannot love him as he loves me. I am selfish, cold, calculating, worldly, and have doubted until now whether such a thing as love really existed. If I could only love him recklessly and wholly, as ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... COTTON, it will be best for him not to rely upon his imagination, but to look at the facts. He should be able at least, when quoting a writer, to discriminate between evils resulting from insurrections, and evils growing out of common immoralities. Experience has taught, that it is unsafe, when calculating the results of the means of elevation employed, to reason from a civilized to a half civilized ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... probable, but possible; and the possible was quite enough to stir deep down in Arkwright's soul the all but universal deference before power. It never occurred to him to suspect there might be design in Craig's sweeping assertions and assumptions of superiority, that he might be shrewdly calculating that, underneath the ridicule those obstreperous vanities would create, there would gradually form and steadily grow a conviction of solid truth, a conviction that Joshua Craig was indeed the personage he professed ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips |
