"Construct" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... acts as a bait. It is a summons to recollection, challenging us to extract from our previous experience, and construct with our acquired wealth a system of images which permits us to read the experience of ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... architecture adopted among all the tribes of Central Africa, and also among the Arabs of Upper Egypt; and that, although these differ more or less in the form of the roof, no tribe has ever yet sufficiently advanced to construct a window. The town of Tarrangolle is arranged with several entrances, in the shape of low archways through the palisades; these are closed at night by large branches of the hooked thorn of the kittur bush (a species of mimosa). The main street is broad, but all others ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... verbs, &c., make my English pupils construct sentences; then give them a vocabulary and genuine native stories, not translations at all, least of all of religious books, which contain very few native ideas, but stories of sharks, cocoa- nuts, canoes, fights, &c. This is the apparatus. This gives but little idea of ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... taken to secure this important object. Detachments from the King's ships at Quebec, with volunteers from the transports, and a corps of artillery, in all, nearly 700 men, were sent across to the Lake, there to construct, with timber felled by themselves, and in the presence of a superior enemy, the vessels in which they were to meet him. A party joined from the Blonde, under Lieutenant Dacres, with Mr. Brown, one of the midshipmen. Mr. Pellew was to have ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... creative work, his history of the world. To them he gave that side of him which refused to find its full expression in summarising law, playing golf, or reading the reviews; that side of a man which aches, he knows not wherefore, to construct something ere he die. From Rameses to George IV. the coins lay within those drawers—links of the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... absolutely lacking in screen quality. If the idea were a good one and the writer were to submit it to the producing company under his own name, the chance is that the company would accept it, and, after using his idea to construct the photoplay in proper form, produce and even feature it—on account of the big name won in the field of fiction writing. If, on the other hand, he should submit it under a pen name it is possible ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... roundelay. "Corporal Try is a little fellow, but he has helped do all the great things that have ever been done. There is nothing good or great which he cannot do. He will help a little girl learn to darn her own stocking, or make a quilt for her old uncle; and he will help men build big steamships, construct railroads over the desert, or lay a telegraph wire under the waters of the ocean. Oh, a great little man is ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... newspaper has made all arrangements with an important English firm to construct several air vessels. The materials and the workmanship will be British throughout, and the vessels will be placed at the disposal of the authorities. The source of the Gleaner's fund thus becomes immaterial. But, in recognition ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... and very conspicuous at a distance, it is fixed upon one of the topmost branches quite out of reach of the hand of the adventurous urchin who longs to secure its contents. It is loosely made and saucer shaped. Sticks and softer substances are used to construct it, and it is lined with hair and fibrous roots. Very recently a thrifty and intelligent Crow built for itself a summer residence in an airy tree near Bombay, the material used being gold, silver, and steel spectacle frames, which the bird had stolen ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... of architecture may be said to be typical throughout the Tarahumare country, there are many variations. Generally attempts are made to construct a more solid wall, boards or poles being laid lengthwise, one on top of the other, and kept in place by sliding the ends between double uprights at the corners. Or they may be placed ends up along the side of the house; or regular stone walls may be built, with or without mud ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... work to construct "bull boats," as they are technically called; a light, fragile kind of bark, characteristic of the expedients and inventions of the wilderness; being formed of buffalo skins, stretched on frames. They are sometimes, also, called skin boats. Wyeth was the first ready; and, with ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... outline is this wonderful poem. With the material of which it is woven we have not here been concerned, although it is so rich and pregnant, that we might with little difficulty construct out of it a complete picture of the world as then it was: its life, knowledge, arts, habits, superstitions, hopes, and fears. The subject is the problem of all mankind, and the composition embraces no less wide a range. But what we are here ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... xenogenesis1[obs3]; authorship, publication; works, opus, oeuvre. biogeny[obs3], dissogeny[obs3], xenogeny[obs3]; tocogony[obs3], vacuolization. edifice, building, structure, fabric, erection, pile, tower, flower, fruit. V. produce, perform, operate, do, make, gar, form, construct, fabricate, frame, contrive, manufacture; weave, forge, coin, carve, chisel; build, raise, edify, rear, erect, put together, set up, run up; establish, constitute, compose, organize, institute; achieve, accomplish &c. (complete) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... forward the waving rings of hair which shaded her forehead, but did not hide her laughing eyes, or the dimples in her pink cheeks. The fair, slender girl, the dark, stalwart young fellow so close to her, the rain, the half-sheltered horses,—it was easy enough to construct a ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... disapproved of parentheses; and I believe in all his voluminous writings, not half a dozen of them will be found. He never used the phrases the former and the latter, having observed, that they often occasioned obscurity; he therefore contrived to construct his sentences so as not to have occasion for them, and would even rather repeat the same words, in order to avoid them. Nothing is more common than to mistake surnames when we hear them carelessly uttered for the first time. To prevent this, he used not only to pronounce ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... where there were no mills or factories, the government would construct both mills and villages, to the intent that idleness and ignorance might be without excuse. To this end Owen would ask all landowners, or holders of estates of a thousand acres or more, to set apart one-tenth of their land ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... of this case, it was cited as one of the most convincing proofs upon record of the prevalence of witchcraft. When men wish to construct or support a theory, how they torture facts into their service! The lying whimsies of a few sick children, encouraged by foolish parents, and drawn out by superstitious neighbours, were sufficient to set a country in a flame. If, instead of commissioners ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... that it would be peculiarly interesting if, at this day, that authority to construct post-roads should thus be invoked to give the General Government new powers of wide scope, when we remember that it was this same provision of the Constitution which stood sponsor for the very earliest steps which, in the construction of the Cumberland Road and ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... day of November last an Executive order was made upon this subject and delivered to the vice-president of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, which fixed the point on the western boundary of the State of Iowa from which the company should construct their branch road to the one hundredth degree of west longitude, and declared it to be within the limits of the township in Iowa opposite the town of Omaha, in Nebraska. Since then the company has represented to me that upon actual surveys made it has determined upon ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... in the panelling one of the old-fashioned concealed modes of exit known as jib-doors, which it was once the custom to construct without architraves in the walls of large apartments, so as not to interfere with the general design of the room. Sol found himself in a narrow passage, running down the whole length of the ball-room, and at the same time he heard ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... another little silence; and the listener was able to construct a picture (possibly in part from an active memory) of Cora's delicate hands uplifted to the gentleman's lapel and Cora's eyes ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... scientific gentleman, seeing it lying on my hearth, might construct a very pretty theory about its owner. A bayonet is made to stab with. It evidently implies a stabber. To this I could only answer, "My dear sir, do not look at the bayonet, look at me. Do I strike you as a person who would be likely to run you through, just because I happen ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... seen those trolley-like boxes that run on wires in department stores, with which the clerk sends your money to the cashier's desk, and the cashier returns the change? Well, I'm going to construct something on the same principle, only I want to make it strong enough ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... mine nearly had serious consequences. I had been reading about volcanoes, so was filled with ambition to construct one. I unearthed a large powder-horn, belonging to my father, which must have contained nearly a pound of gunpowder. This I poured into a tin, which I punctured at the side. Into the puncture I inserted a fuse of rolled brown paper which had been soaked in a solution of saltpeter. The tin was placed ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... with his woolens "combine" as a basis he would build an enormous corporation to control the sheep industry of the world—to buy millions of acres of sheep-ranges; to raise scores of millions of sheep; to acquire and to construct hundreds of plants for utilizing every part of the raw product of the ranges; to sell wherever the human race had or ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... using the scientific terms of a few decades ago I should say that a musical fluid might yet be discovered and its laws correlated with those of heat, light, and electricity. Like them, when reduced to its lowest terms, music is a form of motion, and it should not be difficult on this analogy to construct a theory which would account for the physical phenomena which accompany the hearing of music in some persons, such as the recession of blood from the face, or an equally sudden suffusion of the same veins, a contraction of ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... he had learned over and over in his mind, trying to construct part of it to fit into a sermon that would be different from any the Indians had ever heard. He did not want to preach far over their heads. If possible, he desired to keep to their ideals—for he deemed them more beautiful than his own—and to conduct his teaching along ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... amount of the different forms of diet which is needed by people at rest, and by those who are active, is valuable only to enable us to construct dietaries with care for masses of men and where economy is an object. In dealing with cases such as I shall describe, it is needful usually to give and to have digested a surplus of food, so that we are more concerned now to know the forms of food ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... being for use, and not show. Mr. Gladstone knew what books he had and was familiar with their contents. Some books were in frequent use, but others were not forgotten. He could put his hand on any one he wanted to refer to. At the end of a volume read he would construct an index of his own by which he could find passages to which ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... indifference. "You don't appreciate our position in this matter. We are not judges, but guessers. We sit in the stalls of a theater, watching people on the stage of real life playing four acts of a tragedy, and it is our business to construct the fifth, which is produced in court. Let me give you a wildly supposititious version of that fifth act now. Suppose some neurotic fool was in love with Miss Manning, or her money, and Mr. Mortimer Fenley opposed the project. That ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... that his father, Etienne Pascal, did not wish him to study geometry until he was thoroughly grounded in Latin and Greek. Having heard the nature of the subject, however, he began at the age of twelve to construct figures by himself, drawing them on the floor with a piece of charcoal. When his father discovered what he was doing he was attempting to demonstrate that the sum of the angles of a triangle equals two right angles. The story is given by ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Alexandrina, is to construct a platform [Note 80 at end of para.], or bier upon high poles of pine, put upright in the ground upon which the body is placed, bandages being first put round the forehead, and over the eyes, and tied behind. A bone is stuck through the nose, the fingers are folded in the palm of the hand, and the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... been summoned to construct New Heavens and a brand-new Earth, To cope with Cosmos and conduct The business of its second birth, He would have finished months and months ago; Why, the Creation only took a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... the kindred of the bees either construct the nests for their young in the manner of our wasps or hornets, building them entirely in the open air, or excavate underground chambers in the fashion of our bumble-bees, our domesticated form at some time in the remote ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... the folly of attempting to construct a system of ecclesiastical polity from such a highly-figurative portion of Scripture as the Apocalypse. In the angel of the Church some have believed they have discovered the moderator of a presbytery; others, the bishop of a diocese; ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... The history of one religion is substantially the history of all religions. In embryo man lives all lives. The man of genius knows within himself the history of the human race; he knows the history of all religions. The man of imagination, genius, having seen a leaf and a drop of water, can construct the forests, the rivers, and the seas. In his presence all the cataracts fall and foam, the mists rise, and the clouds form and float. To really know one fact is known its kindred and its neighbors. Shakespeare, looking ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... springs of thought and will," with the conscious aim that He should so warm and enrich them with His presence that they shall overflow for blessing around us, in the life of Christian love. I do not mean for a moment that we should set ourselves to construct a spiritual mannerism of speech or of habit. The matter is one not of manufacture but of culture; it is a call to "nourish and cherish" the gift of God which is in us, and to give to it the humble co-operation of our definite ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... life. The spider is dark grey in colour, bloated of body, slothful, and of most retiring disposition. Huddled up into almost spherical form, it lurks in dark places, which it soon makes insanitary. In the open it crouches among dead leaves which have gathered in the fork of a tree, and will construct a web which spans the coconut avenue with its stays. From one aspect its rotund body invites a good-humoured smile, for the marking exactly simulates the features of a tabby cat, well fed, sleepy, and in placid mood. Venom of virulence to kill a bat almost instantly would ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Accordingly, Mr. Wu set to work on the Tongshan Railway. He built first ten miles, then twenty more. Then as the road was working well, and its usefulness demonstrated, he and Li Hung Chang thought they might get permission from the Throne to construct a line from Tientsin to Peking. Successful in this effort, they went ahead with the survey and {140} imported from America the materials for building the line—and then came a new edict forbidding them to proceed! The matter had been ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... energy of his will and his passion for posthumous fame, was the true son of the Renaissance, asked Michael Angelo to construct a monument worthy of a pontiff who should surpass all his predecessors in glory. When the design proved too gigantic for any existing Church, he commanded Bramante to pull down the Basilica of Constantine, which for a thousand years had witnessed the dramatic scenes of ecclesiastical ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... combustion and evolution into gas. These experiments have proved that strength is principally required near the breech, and that a cannon need not be of so great length as was formerly supposed to be necessary. We are thus able to construct guns which can be handled, throwing balls of several hundred pounds' weight. Another splendid result of scientific investigation is the method adopted for casting such monster guns. In order that the mass ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... with the wit of the pure intellect, as when he condemns certain work for being "as trivial in thought and yet enigmatic in expression, as if Echo and the Sphinx had laid their heads together to construct it." But for the most part it is a kind of thinking aloud, and the form is wholly lost in the pursuit of ideas. With his love for the absolute, why is it that he does not seek after an absolute in words considered as style, as well as in words ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... 1756, Newcastle and Carlisle were only connected by a bridle way. In that year, Marshal Wade employed his army to construct a road by way of Harlaw and Cholterford, following for thirty miles the line of the old Roman Wall, the materials of which he used to construct his "agger" and culverts. This was long after ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... head boy a third time, and licked him; how, when head boy himself, he had roused the whole school into a civil war, dividing the boys into Cavaliers and Roundheads; how clay was rolled out into cannon-balls and pistol-shots, sticks shaped into swords, the playground disturbed to construct fortifications; how a slovenly stout boy enacted Cromwell; how he himself was elevated into Prince Rupert; and how, reversing all history, and infamously degrading Cromwell, Rupert would not consent to be beaten; and Cromwell at the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... side-wheel for all purposes, excepting perhaps those of mail carriage, and that iron screw steamers are, in all commercial respects, preferable to wood steamers, the argument was adduced that England, being able to construct this class of vessels more economically than we can, must of necessity have the monopoly of building them. Her monopoly, in this respect, we cannot prevent; but it depends upon ourselves and our government whether she shall share with us ...
— Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade • John Codman
... all possible forms, to meet all possible exigencies; while the other, which also abounded in prints, treated of the noble science of fortification according to the system of Vauban. I poured over both works with much perseverance; and, regarding them as admirable toy-books, set myself to construct, on a very small scale, some of the toys with which they specially dealt. The sea-shore in the immediate neighbourhood of the town appeared to my inexperienced eye an excellent field for the carrying on of a campaign. The sea-sand ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... under contract dated July 21st, 1906, with Henry Steers, Incorporated, of New York City, of cellar earth from New York City, and with rock and earth excavated from the Pennsylvania Station and cross-town tunnels. It was necessary to construct 1,000 ft. of stone and crib bulkhead along the bank of the Passaic River. The plan of the yard was prepared by a committee of operating, electrical, and engineering officers, consisting of Mr. F. L. Sheppard, General Superintendent, New Jersey Division, Pennsylvania Railroad Company; ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • E. B. Temple
... there was any chance of their being rescued. A dwelling which would be a protection from cold and snow and the biting blasts of a Canadian winter, must be erected. But how? And with what materials? Tools he had in plenty, but how to construct a dwelling out of the stunted and wind-twisted trees, which were all the timber the island afforded, was a conundrum he saw no ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... pelvic brains, denoting thereby sympathetic nerve-centres in those parts which are strongly affected by any psychical action. This view of mental physiology once admitted, the syllogism of seppuku is easy to construct. "I will open the seat of my soul and show you how it fares with it. See for yourself whether it is polluted ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... illustrated by a series of twenty-six folio copper plates, with the following title; "Le Jardin De Wilton, construct par le trs noble et trs p. seigneur Philip Comte Pembroke et Montgomeri. Isaac de Caux invt." The above description is copied from one of these plates. Solomon de Caus was architect and engineer to the Elector Palatine, and constructed the gardens at Heidelberg in 1619. Walpole ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... hitherto, by virtue of the Concordat, been merely a training school for the clergy of Paris, quite sufficient for its purpose, but strictly confined to the object prescribed by the law. The new superior chosen by the archbishop had far higher aims. He set to work to re-construct the whole fabric, from the buildings themselves, of which only the old walls were left standing, to the course of teaching, which he re-cast entirely. There were two essential points which he kept before him. In the first place he saw that a petty seminary which was altogether ecclesiastical ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... international experts and local populations over the Okavango Delta ecology in Botswana and human displacement scuttled Namibian plans to construct a hydroelectric dam on Popa Falls along the Angola-Namibia border; managed dispute with South Africa over the location of the boundary in the Orange River; Namibia has supported, and in 2004 Zimbabwe dropped objections to, plans between Botswana and Zambia to build a bridge ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... The hopelessness of the attempt has been expressly admitted by Owen in his most interesting work on the 'Nature of Limbs.' On the ordinary view of the independent creation of each being, we can only say that so it is;—that it has so pleased the Creator to construct each animal ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... sheet iron, rested a large cast-iron box with many peculiarly shaped apertures resembling as far as possible the incomprehensible design of a lady's lace mouchoir. The fire-box was supported by four cast-iron "whirly-gigs," the artistic effort of a mechanic detailed to construct legs for the support of the aforesaid fire-box. Above this box a large hollow pyramid, the apex of which connected with a pipe, which in turn after divers wanderings led through a hole in the roof, offered an exit for the smoke. Needless to say, this offer ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... Tangrams at the same time we may construct more ambitious pictures. I was advised by a friend not to send my picture, "A Game of Billiards" (9), to the Academy. He assured me that it would not be accepted because the "judges are so hide-bound by convention." Perhaps he was ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... [11:2] Again, when he devotes more than forty pages to the discussion of Papias [11:3], why does he not even mention the view maintained by Dr Westcott and others (and certainly suggested by a strict interpretation of Papias' own words), that this father's object in his 'Exposition' was not to construct a new evangelical narrative, but to interpret and illustrate by oral tradition one already lying before him in written documents? [11:4] This view, if correct, entirely alters the relation of Papias to the written Gospels; and its discussion was a matter of essential importance ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... views, free from bias, and always ready to strike out a fresh path in engineering works. He was building a large new iron steamer at Bristol, the Great Britain, for passenger traffic between England and America. He had intended to construct her as a paddle steamer; but hearing of the success of the Archimedes, he inspected the vessel, and was so satisfied with the performance of the screw that he recommended his directors to adopt this method for propelling the Great Britain. His advice ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... destroys the sense of moral responsibility. He says: "The Greek and Roman theism left the human will free and responsible, and thus the doctrine of sin could be taught. But the pantheistic systems of the East destroy free will, by identifying God and man; and hence it is impossible to construct the doctrine of sin and atonement except by first refuting the pantheistic ethics. The missionary can get no help from conscience in his preaching, when this theory of God and the world has the ground. But St. Paul appealed confidently ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... them. He was clearly oblivious of his surroundings; whereupon Hirst, perceiving that Hewet's mind was a complete blank, fixed his attention more closely upon his fellow-creatures. He was too far from them, however, to hear what they were saying, but it pleased him to construct little theories about them ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... his palace at Hatfield, two pair of vestments, a silver cup, a missal, and the other needful books (missale cum aliis libris necessariis). Having thus presented to him the first volumes produced by his liberality, he proceeded to construct a scriptorium, which was set apart (praeelectos) for the transcription of books; Lanfranc supplied the copies. They thus procured for the monastery twenty-eight notable volumes (volumina notabilia), also eight psalters, a book of collects, ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... construct them, and Tom ingeniously made them out of some empty tins that had contained meat and other foods. The tins were converted into tanks, and from each one rose a short piece of pipe that ended in a gas tip. On board the dirigible were plenty of tools and materials. Into the cans were put ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... hold, therefore, that Khufu did suddenly conceive a design without a parallel—did require his architect to construct him a tomb, which should put to shame all previous monuments, and should with difficulty be surpassed, or even equalled. He must have possessed much elevation of thought, and an intense ambition, together with inordinate selfishness, an overweening ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... studio with a certain curiosity; he wondered vaguely what his friends were 'up to.' He pushed aside the curtain that hung in the door of communication—the door opening upon the gallery which it had been found convenient to construct at the time the studio was added to the house. When I say he pushed it aside I should amend my phrase; he laid his hand upon it, but at that moment he was arrested by a very singular sound. It came from the floor ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... more to say of it if we read the book differently in the first place. I scarcely think we could any of us claim that in reading a novel we deliberately watch the book itself, rather than the scenes and figures it suggests, or that we seek to construct an image of the book, page by page, while its form is gradually exposed to us. We are much more inclined to forget, if we can, that the book is an object of art, and to treat it as a piece of the life around us; we fashion for ourselves, we objectify, the ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... that Christ, if he had really appeared to Constantine either in person (according to Eusebius) or through angels (as Rufinus and Sozomen modify it), would have exhorted him to repent and be baptized rather than to construct a military ensign for a bloody battle. In no case can we ascribe to this occurrence, with Eusebius, Theodoret, and older writers, the character of a sudden and genuine conversion, as to Paul's vision ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... commission made surveys and investigations on the Isthmus which terminated in the efforts of De Lesseps, who undertook to construct a canal, and, in 1879, called an international scientific congress to consider the project in all its aspects and determine upon a practical solution. The United States was invited to be represented by two official delegates, and accordingly President ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... will be one or two ingenious or ambitious women who do something which is not general, and which they would gladly turn to account. One woman may be a skilled knitter of tidies, or laces, or rag mats; another may pull rags through burlap, and so construct a thick and rather luxurious-looking door-mat; another may have an old-fashioned loom and weave carpets for all the neighbourhood; and each one of these simple arts is a foundation upon which an industry may be built, important ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... of these, in many eyes, Too near to be a glory for thy sheen, Thou hadst been scorned; and to the best hadst been A setter forth of strange divinities; But to the few construct of harmonies, A sudden sun, uplighting the serene High heaven of love; and, through the cloudy screen That 'twixt our souls and truth all wretched lies, Dawning at length, hadst been a love and fear, Worshipped on high from Magian's mountain-crest, And all ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... turned to Lilama, and asked if there was beneath the house a cellar. Fortunately there was—the house was one of the few in Hili-li beneath a portion of which a cellar was constructed as a depository, and as a protection against heat for certain articles of food, most of the residents not caring to construct cellars; articles of food easily destructible by heat being twice daily brought to the city and distributed to the houses, and ice costing only the expense of shipping it by water some six ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... productive work and making vagabonds and talkers of them too; and if I had been Pilate I should have recognized as plainly as he the necessity for suppressing attacks on the existing social order, however corrupt that order might be, by people with no knowledge of government and no power to construct political machinery to carry out their views, acting on the very dangerous delusion that the end of the world was at hand. I make no defence of such Christians as Savonarola and John of Leyden: they were scuttling the ship ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... or two acetylene flares illuminated the scene. It was raining fitfully, but not enough to dampen the spirits of the Y. M. C. A. workers who wrestled with canvas tarpaulins and foraged materials to construct a make-shift shelter for a free coffee and ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... the Harris boys, good hunters who had been engaged by the majordomo to do up Old Pinto. Two of the Harris boys and another man went up to the scene of the raid, carrying their rifles, blankets and some boards with which to construct a platform. They selected a pine tree and built a platform across the lower limbs about twenty feet from the ground. When the platform was nearly completed, two of the men left the tree and went to where they had dropped their blankets and guns, about a hundred yards away. One picked up the ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... fields with hedges along the southern borders, so that the snow should not lie under them; to divide them up into six fields of arable and three of pasture and hay; to build a cattle yard at the further end of the estate, and to dig a pond and to construct movable pens for the cattle as a means of manuring the land. And then eight hundred acres of wheat, three hundred of potatoes, and four hundred of clover, and ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... poor powers of generalization. But this is to mistake the facts. A tenacious memory is characteristic of women and children, and of all persons unskilled in the manipulation of varied experiences in thought. But when the mind is able at any moment to construct a result from the raw materials of experience, the memory loses something of its tenacity and absoluteness. In this sense it may even be said that a good memory for details is a sign of an untrained or imitative mind. As the mind becomes more inventive, ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... have been hence induced to construct the apparatus for manufacturing soda water wholly either of earthenware or of glass. Mr. Johnston, of Greek Street, Soho, was the first who pointed out to the public the ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... is with moral philosophy, I limit the question suggested to this: Whether it is not of the utmost necessity to construct a pure moral philosophy, perfectly cleared of everything which is only empirical, and which belongs to anthropology? for that such a philosophy must be possible is evident from the common idea of duty and of the moral laws. Every one must admit that if a law is to have moral force, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... surrounding the execution of Jeffrey Blackmore's will intruded into all my cogitations on the subject with hopeless persistency. That scene in the porter's lodge was to me what King Charles's head was to poor Mr. Dick. In the midst of my praiseworthy efforts to construct some intelligible scheme of the case, it would make its appearance and reduce my mind ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... though you are entreated not to have recourse to the notes of others, you are as strongly advised to make brief memoranda of your own: and the briefer the better. Construct your own table of the Patriarchs,—your own analysis of the Law,—your own descent of the Kings,—your own enumeration of the Miracles. A pedigree full of faults, made by yourself, will do you ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... arduous devotion to the study of physics and astronomy, I, Hans Pfaal of Rotterdam, at length determined to construct a balloon of my own along original lines and to try a flight in it. Accordingly I had made an enormous bag out of cambric muslin, varnished with caoutchouc for protection against the weather. I procured all the instruments ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... still lacking; and all the Legionaries, as well as the old Sheik who would have died in the flames before asking for drink, were beginning to suffer extremely. The Master detailed Simonds, L'Heureux, and Seres to construct a still, which they did in only a little more than ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... seagulls, and snare the pigeons at Liberty Point. But all these proved impracticable, and with blank faces they watched their bag of flour grow smaller and smaller daily. Then the notion of escape was broached. Could they construct a raft? Impossible without nails or ropes. Could they build a boat? Equally impossible for the same reason. Could they raise a fire sufficient to signal a ship? Easily; but what ship would come within reach of that ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... head and neck with the complete ribbon of black and white stripes encircling the lower neck and the narrower one which crosses the throat. The back is spotted with white. In some sections Loons build no nest, simply scooping a hollow out in the sand, while in other places they construct quite a large nest of sticks, moss and grasses. It is usually placed but a few feet from the waters edge, so that at the least suspicion the bird can slide off its eggs into the water, where it can cope with any enemy. The nests are nearly always ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... standing on the brink of a precipice. His eyes were opened to truths that he never dreamt of. He saw that for years there had been a deliberate plot to conquer England, that the Kaiser had not only made Germany an armed camp, and had strained every nerve to construct the greatest and most powerful and complete fighting machine the world had ever known, but he had sent an army of spies to the country to learn her secrets and fasten upon her weaknesses. He realised that the Kaiser had been our enemy during all the years he ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... indicated and classed according to their prerogatives and relations. Nor have we there a mere empty nomenclature, a phantom of theory; things go on actually as they are described—the book is the reflex of the reality. It were easy to construct, for the empire of Charlemagne, a similar list of officers; there might be set down in it dukes, counts, vicars, centeniers, and sheriffs (seabini), and they might be distributed, in regular gradation, over the whole territory; but it would be one huge lie; for most frequently, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... them all to Eveley in great detail, drawing plans in the gravel path. It took the two of them nearly an hour to make a selection, and then it seemed the style they had chosen was the most difficult of the entire assortment, and was practically impossible for any one to construct alone. So Eveley perforce assisted, holding the rustic boughs while he hammered, carrying the saw, and carefully picking out the proper size of ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... South American plants, the cactaceae, which unite the most exquisite flowers to the most grotesque and repulsive forms, covered with great spear-like spines, and which thrive only in barren lands, and on the poorest soil. I have taken advantage of the presence of these plants to construct the hiding-place about which I spoke to you. Here are some which are fifteen feet high. They touch the ceiling of the room. Around them I have arranged a perfect hedge or breast-work of smaller plants of the same family, growing ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... through the want of a head to that great body with a hundred hands, that tears itself to pieces, for not knowing what to attack. So far the struggles make only dust and noise. We have not yet come to the era that will construct new societies, and ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... "Let Mr Rimmer construct a boat if he likes. It will keep him busy, and take I daresay a couple of years. During that time we can collect a cargo of specimens, and thank our stars that we have ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... paused a moment. "Yes; yes," he said. "In writing a novel it is necessary to construct ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... of the state banana company, and tax increases - to address Dominica's economic crisis and to meet IMF targets. In order to diversify the island's production base the government is attempting to develop an offshore financial sector and is planning to construct an oil refinery on the ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... millionaire, who made his fortune out of the great public works of Paris, running up whole boulevards on his own account. He was a man of remarkable activity, with a great gift of administration, and an instinctive knowledge of the streets to construct and the buildings to buy. Moved by the success of Dubuche at the School of Art, and by the recommendations of his masters there, Margaillan took the young architect into partnership, and agreed to his marriage with his daughter Regine. Unfortunately, Dubuche ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... the destination of a kettle of fish, although in later days there is no doubt that the earls' motives were to increase the income of their own port of Topsham at the expense of Exeter. On the receipt of Queen Elizabeth's charter in 1560 the citizens at length decided to construct a canal to Topsham. This was begun in 1564 and completed in 1697, and it is one of the earliest examples of canal navigation in the country. Topsham is now a little port, whose shipping trade is confined to small coasting schooners ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath
... we must seek is a world in which the creative spirit is alive, in which life is an adventure full of joy and hope, based rather upon the impulse to construct than upon the desire to retain what we possess or to seize what is possessed by others. It must be a world in which affection has free play, in which love is purged of the instinct for domination, in which cruelty and envy have been ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... harbor root-aphids and root-coccids in their nests. Not only are these insects kept in confinement by the ants, but they are placed by them on the roots. In order to do this the ants remove the earth from the surfaces of the roots and construct galleries and chambers around them so that the Homoptera may have easy access to their food and even move ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... beneath us lay the abandoned line of Austrian trenches, separated from ours by a small stream, where since daylight the heroic engineers were laboring under heavy shell fire to construct a bridge to enable our cavalry and guns to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... we imagine in our day-dreams; there are lights in which we are willing to contemplate even the idea of our own death; ways in which it seems as if it would amuse us to be cheated, wounded, or calumniated. It is thus possible to construct a story, even of tragic import, in which every incident, detail, and trick of circumstance shall be welcome to the reader's thoughts. Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... civil engineer. tuta : all, whole. fervojo : railroad. grava : important. pregxo : prayer. ora : golden. pasero : sparrow. volonte : willingly. aglo : eagle. sekve : consequently. invit- : invite. laux : according to. konstru- : construct. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... that, like "blacks and mulattoes," he "has no constitutional right to present his petition to the General Assembly for any purpose whatever." Again—the State of Ohio is deeply indebted to the citizens of other States, and also to the subjects of Great Britain for money borrowed to construct her canals. Should any of these creditors lose their certificates of debt, and ask for their renewal; or should their interest be withheld, or paid in depreciated currency, and were they to ask for justice at the hands ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... King of Heaven and earth, who was born there. There are few people so poor that they have to live in a cave. What wonderful humility, then, on the part of Our Lord. He could have been born, if He wished, in the grandest palace man could construct and have had thousands of angels to bring Him whatever He needed, for they are His servants in Heaven. But Our Lord became so humble to teach us. What impression should this make on those who are too fond of dress and ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... Plots and actions the episodic are the worst. I call a Plot episodic when there is neither probability nor necessity in the sequence of episodes. Actions of this sort bad poets construct through their own fault, and good ones on account of the players. His work being for public performance, a good poet often stretches out a Plot beyond its capabilities, and is thus obliged to twist the ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... engravings; taking views from nature or art, for portraits the double should always be used. The extensive manufacture of the most approved cameras, both in Europe and in this country, obviates all necessity for any one attempting to construct one for their own use. Lenses are now made so perfect by some artisans that, what is called the "quick working camera" will take a picture in one second, while the ordinary cameras require from ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... next day the cripple came to the sick man, and received his first lesson; and every day, at an appointed hour, he was in Mr. Croft's room, eager for the instruction he received. Quickly he mastered the alphabet, and as quickly learned to construct small words, preparatory to combining them ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... very differently; old hearts and young hearts, beating to very different tunes, and informing the whole being with very different aspirations. There was a love—there was a dislike—and there was a certain amount of parental solicitude and determination—excellent materials from which to construct a serious disagreement and an eventual family row. Not Hecate, when she threw "eye of newt and tail of frog" into the infernal brew on the blasted heath, could have been more certain of the final nature of her compound, than may the presiding genius of any "well regulated ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... easy to criticise Marryat, for his grammar is reckless, he could not construct a plot, he wrote too much and too rapidly in order to earn money. But then he was an altogether admirable raconteur, and for the purposes of narration his style was peculiarly appropriate—simple, rapid, lucid, and vigorous. ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... the roof of which we are in fact now standing. It is through these holes that the natives lower themselves into the caves, by means of rattan ladders and, in a most marvellous manner, gain a footing on the ceiling and construct cane stages, by means of which they can reach any part of the roof and, either by hand or by a suitable pole to the end of which is attached a lighted candle, secure the wealth-giving luxury for the epicures of China. There are two principal seasons for collecting ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... overwhelming numbers; but, after reaching the northern end of Lake Champlain, he found that body of water commanded by a small squadron of gunboats under Benedict Arnold, and, deeming it impossible to advance, delayed all summer in order to construct a rival fleet. Meanwhile, all operations came to a standstill in that region. Eleven thousand men, chiefly regular troops, were thus kept ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... up some of the loose bits and piling them along on one side of the top of the frame, "if the better to shelter your crew in an engagement, you construct your rail in the manner proposed—as thus—then, by the excessive weight of the timber, you will too much interfere with the ship's centre of gravity. You will have ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... bridge of iron was an entirely new idea. An attempt had indeed been made at Lyons, in France, to construct such a bridge more than twenty years before; but it had entirely failed, and a bridge of timber was erected instead. It is not known whether the Coalbrookdale masters had heard of that attempt; but, even if they had, it could have been of ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... "The English Government and Constitution," tells us all what was the central idea in his mind when he set himself to construct the groundwork of a Reform Bill. He tells us, alluding to the task assigned to him, "It was not my duty to cut the body of our old parent into pieces, and to throw it into a Medea's caldron, with the hope of reviving the vigor of youth." He thought ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... atmosphere, or for the absence of an atmosphere. This vast accumulation of ice and snow upon the moon's surface may be explained, the writer conjectures, by the nature of the moon's revolutions. He offers to construct instruments of the above description, by which these phenomena may be observed, at prices from 50 to 100 dollars; and at the same rate to furnish solar microscopes, on a new principle, with a magnifying power at 12 feet distance, of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... campers' stores, proceeded to construct his chowder; while Tim busied himself about the camp, ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... bear a very striking resemblance to those of the ant-eaters—especially the large tamanoir of South America—are used for the same purpose: that of breaking up the glutinous compost with which the termites construct their curious dwellings. ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... attributed it to man, but as Jubal is mentioned as "the father of all such as handle the harp and organ" only, and as instruments of percussion were almost invariably in use long before people were led to construct stringed and wind instruments, we may suppose that, in the Biblical records, Jubal is not intended to be represented as the original inventor of all the Hebrew instruments, but rather as a great promoter ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... hundred miles to construct, while the California company's distance from the objective point was only four hundred and fifty; yet the indefatigable Mr. Creighton reached Salt Lake City with his completed line on the 17th of October, one week ahead of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... We get a base-line in organization, always; then we get an angle by sighting some distant object to which the passions or aspirations of the subject of our observation are tending; then another;—and so we construct our first triangle. Once fix a man's ideals, and for the most part the rest is easy. A wants to die worth half a million. Good. B (female) wants to catch him,—and outlive him. All right. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... proceeded to construct a plausible theory. He reminded the jury that at that very time, the summer of 1688, messages and invitations were being despatched to his present Gracious Majesty to redress the wrongs of the Protestant Church, and protect the liberties of the ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and wish they were more comfortable. So, for example, the farmers have been doing. But, so long as they go no further, there is no definite "cause" either to uphold or oppose. But, when they call a national convention and construct a platform, announcing definite aims and methods, then there is something to talk about. Now, a man is either for or against "The Farmers' Alliance." Of course, he may be profoundly interested in the farmers' welfare, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... enough to be copied at the bench, and suggesting, each set after its kind, a host of supplementary toys, limited in variety and in numbers only by the experience of the child concerned and by his ability to construct them. ...
— A Catalogue of Play Equipment • Jean Lee Hunt
... philosopher who in our generation has acquired the European vogue most comparable to that of Spencer is Bergson. Now Bergson has dealt some of the shrewdest blows at Spencer's system, but he does not set out to construct a rival system of his own. He is most careful to say that he is not doing this, that any such work must be done by later workers, that he is only making suggestions for a new point of view. It is interesting to note in general terms what that point of view ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... City, and directly across the North River to the terminal of the Central Railroad of New Jersey. Surveys, borings, and thorough investigations were made, and the Metropolitan Underground Railroad Company was incorporated in the State of New York to construct this railroad. Mr. Corbin, however, was aware that, in the transportation problem he had in hand, the Central Railroad of New Jersey and the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad were not as important factors as the Pennsylvania Railroad, and, in consequence, he ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • Charles M. Jacobs
... band of hostile Indians was at his heels, and he had to plan some way of crossing the Alleghany. He decided to build a raft, but had only one poor hatchet with which to construct it. The men set to work with this, and labored all day, but night came before the raft was finished. As soon as they could they launched it and tried to steer it across with long poles. When they reached the main channel ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... impulse is to gather, to put together, to construct; the basic masculine impulse to scatter, to disseminate, to destroy. It seems to give pleasure to a man to bang something and drive it from him; the harder he hits it and the farther it goes the better pleased ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... extensive works constructed by Beauregard when he held that position against Halleck's army. Rosecrans had too few troops to man these works but had taken the precaution to hastily construct an inner line of fortifications, which was traced about a mile west from the center ...
— A Battery at Close Quarters - A Paper Read before the Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion, - October 6, 1909 • Henry M. Neil
... cloth and for tanning leather; secondly, and by far the greatest benefit, it turned the wheels of at least a dozen important mills. As mills were always a monopoly, as much opposition was raised to the making of a new one as would now be evoked by the proposal to construct ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... you will likely have no more trouble; they will be at hand, anxious for employment, and you may use them according to your need. But some of your words will still stubbornly withhold themselves from memory. Weed these out from your lists, make a special list of them, copy it frequently, construct short sentences into which the troublesome words fit. By dint of writing the words so often you will soon make ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... life, a more powerful existence now. Secondly, I desired to be able to do something for the flesh, to make a discovery or perfect a method by which the fleshly body might enjoy more pleasure, longer life, and suffer less pain. Thirdly, to construct a more flexible engine with which to carry into execution the design of the will. I called this the Lyra prayer, to distinguish it from the far deeper emotion in which the soul ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... persons whom he met and the friends whom he knew, and he treated them as the writers of short stories in France twenty years ago treated their own Parisian environment. He made an incident the means of illustrating a portrayal of character. Later he was to construct elaborate plots for dramas and ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... approval House bill No. 3289, entitled "An act to authorize the New York and New Jersey Bridge Companies to construct and maintain a bridge across the Hudson River between New York City and ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... hagiology that a saint's desire for God was merely a desire for God. And this kind of vagueness in the primary phenomena of the study is an absolutely final blow to anything in the nature of a science. Men can construct a science with very few instruments, or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could construct a science with unreliable instruments. A man might work out the whole of mathematics with a handful of pebbles, but not ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... education. The mind cannot operate without means or construct without materials. Theology opposes education: Freethought supports it. The poor as well as the rich should share in its blessings. Education is a social capital which should be supplied to all. It enriches and expands. It not only furnishes the mind, but strengthens its faculties. ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote |
