"Diffuse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a narrow and obscure Entry. A Glare of Light suddenly breaks upon you, beyond what the Avenue at first promis'd: and a thousand Beauties of Genius and Character, like so many gaudy Apartments pouring at once upon the Eye, diffuse and throw themselves out to the Mind. The Prospect is too wide to come within the Compass of a single View: 'tis a gay Confusion of pleasing Objects, too various to be enjoyed but in a general Admiration; and they ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... the head up and inserting the fingers through the interdental space in such a way as to cause the mouth to open. The mucous membrane should be clean and of a light-pink color, excepting on the back of the tongue, where the color is a yellowish gray. As abnormalities of this region, the chief are diffuse inflammation, characterized by redness and catarrhal discharge; local inflammation, as from eruptions, ulcers, or wounds; necrosis of the lower jawbone in front of the first back tooth; and swellings. Foreign bodies are sometimes found embedded in the mucous membrane lining ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... should be, and could easily be the spiritual teacher—or example—of the world. He must not only prove his spirituality but he must diffuse it, that others may realize its power even if they may not ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... Hunt, as we observed in a former number, aspires to be the hierophant.... This author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt, but he is more unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and absurd, than his prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat himself in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his own standard, yet generally had a meaning. ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... ye inclined these things to disavow? Or will my statements be by you denied? If not they stand for truth both far and wide, And your example may be found of use In leading others quickly to decide That they for ignorance have no excuse In this enlightened age, when Knowledge is diffuse. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... of each a flake of fire, all raining at the same slight slope from hair-fine stems. Against the turf they looked for all the world like Chinese lanterns swung for some miniature revel of the fairies—they seemed literally to diffuse light upon the air. Ishmael stood staring, stung to excitement by that suddenly-glimpsed beauty; but Phoebe darted forward, and the next moment had withdrawn a foot whose stout country shoe and ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... he was quite happy. I am very glad of it; for it would rejoice me to be an humble means of making all mankind so: And oh! what returns ought I not to make to the divine goodness! and how ought I to strive to diffuse the blessings I experience, to all in my knowledge!—For else, what is it for such a worm as I to be exalted! What is my single happiness, if I suffer it, niggard-like, to extend no farther than to myself?—But then, indeed, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... or perhaps she had overheard Lynch's report to the Old Man, for her words showed she knew me as one of the men who had shipped in the vessel of my own will. "Why—you are only a boy!" she said, in a surprised voice. Then her face seemed to diffuse a sweet sympathy and understanding. I can't explain it, but I knew that the lady knew just why I had shipped. She looked inside of me, and read my heart—and understood! "Oh, Boy, why did you do it?" she exclaimed softly. "It is not worth it—why did you come! Listen!—do not give offense; ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... educational and social development of other countries and continents. That program must stimulate and take more effectively into account the contributions of our allies, and provide central policy direction for all our own programs that now so often overlap, conflict or diffuse our energies and resources. Such a program, compared ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... he. He is not an awkward boy who cuts his own face with his whip; and neither his flesh nor his fur hints the weapon with which he is armed. The most silent creature known to me, he makes no sound, so far as I have observed, save a diffuse, impatient noise, like that produced by beating your hand with a whisk-broom, when the farm-dog has discovered his retreat in the stone fence. He renders himself obnoxious to the farmer by his partiality for hens' eggs and young poultry. He is a confirmed ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... word. But they understood each other perfectly. Women's instincts comprehend and respond to each other more quickly than the intelligences of men. An enemy had just arrived; all felt it—all rallied together. One drop of wine is sufficient to tinge a glass of water red; to diffuse a certain degree of ill temper throughout a whole assembly of pretty women, the arrival of a prettier woman suffices, especially when there is ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... an historian, an historian so diffuse, and so little selective, it would obviously be difficult to give any suitably brief specimen that should seem to present a considerable historic action in full. We go to Froissart's account of the celebrated battle of Poitiers (France). This ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... wood of the walnut is diffuse porous, brittle, straight grained, and easily split. The wood must be cut diagonally to get sufficient tension to hold the scion in grafting. The branch grows rapidly in a short season, May 15th to July 1st in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... earnestly, and intelligently, they pleaded for the adoption of the highest educational standard, avowed their readiness to submit themselves to the most rigid conditions, and exerted a powerful influence to diffuse right views among the more intelligent of their fellow-students. It soon became evident that here was the vital nucleus for the future college; and around that nucleus the elements gathered with decisive rapidity. Before the close of the year, the Faculty found themselves supported in their ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... Khus-Khus, or Vetiver grass of India. The fibrous roots yield a most peculiar but pleasing perfume. In India the leaves are manufactured into awnings, blinds, and sunshades; but principally for screens, used in hot weather for doors and windows, which, when wetted, diffuse a peculiar and refreshing perfume, while ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... is at length accomplished. The Vice-Chancellor has fled on horseback. The Proctors have resigned their usurped authority. The Scouts have fraternised with the friends of liberty. The University is no more. A Republican Lyceum will henceforth diffuse light and civilisation. The hebdomadal board is abolished. The Legislative Powers will be entrusted to a General Convention of the whole Lyceum. A Provisional Government has been established. The undersigned citizens have nobly devoted themselves ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... and finally by the addition of the most powerful nitro body, the hexa-nitro compound, is completely abolished. Connective tissue and bone substance, however, behave differently with the picro-carmine mixture, in as much as here the diffuse stain depends exclusively on the concentration of the carmine, and is quite uninfluenced by the addition of a chemical antidote. This staining can only be limited by dilution, but not by the addition of opposed dyes. We ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... Often they sheltered themselves from that tropical sun beneath the trees. Think of living on a world where from the vertical heat of the hottest noon of the equator to the twilight of the poles is a walk of only fifty paces! What atmosphere they had, to temper and diffuse those rays, ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... Racine and Shakespeare, to come to the one after the other is like passing to a portrait by Ingres from a decoration by Rubens. At first, 'comme on a l'oeil rempli de l'eclatante verite pittoresque du grand maitre flamand, on ne voit dans l'artiste francais qu'un ton assez uniforme, une teinte diffuse de pale et douce lumiere. Mais qu'on approche de plus pres et qu'on observe avec soin: mille nuances fines vont eclore sous le regard; mille intentions savantes vont sortir de ce tissu profond et serre; on ne peut plus en detacher ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... before the war Russell showed that our old methods of classifying the stars according to their spectra must be radically changed. Stars in an early stage of their life history may be regarded as diffuse gaseous masses, enormously larger than our sun, and at a much lower temperature. Their density must be very low, and their state that of a perfect gas. These are the "giants." In the slow process of time they contract through constant loss of heat by radiation. But, despite this loss, ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... inflammation of the cornea proper, although the sclerotic at the corneal border becomes involved to some extent. It may be divided into diffuse and suppurative. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... such means that the young general, as profound a politician as he was a great captain, contrived to ingratiate himself with the people. While he flattered their prejudices for the moment, he laboured to diffuse among them the light of science by the creation of the celebrated Institute of Egypt. He collected the men of science and the artists whom he had brought with him, and, associating with them some of the best educated of his officers, established the institute, to which he appropriated ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... of readers, or, at least, its payers. The same is in the main true of 'Le Monde,' by La Croix, 'Le Journal du Peuple,' by Dubose, 'Le Courier Francais,' by Chatelain, 'La Commerce,' by Bert, 'La Minerve,' by Lemaine, 'La Presse,' by Girardin, and all the journals in Paris which diffuse true ideas upon labor and the rights of the people, be they in other respects what they may. Even the 'Charivari,' which views the old King and his Ministers as fair butts of ridicule, perceives ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... differences, Payne's translation is invariably the clearer, finer and more stately of the two. Payne is concise, Burton diffuse. [466] ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... chintz curtains, and the two chairs drawn so cosily towards the fire, the kettle puffing on the hearth, and Albinia's choice little bed-room set of tea-china ready on the small table. The cheerfulness seemed visibly to diffuse itself over his face, but he still struggled to cherish his gloom, 'Thank you, but I would not have had you take all this ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the windows and glare a moment upon the walls, and then leave the room in deeper darkness than ever. The little night lamp, whose feeble beam had been for the moment entirely overpowered, would then gradually come out to view again, to diffuse once more its faint illumination, until another flash of lightning came to ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... interest in public confusions. They will always suffer much and long, before they are effectually roused; nothing, therefore, can kindle the flame but such oppressions of some classes or order in society as give able men the opportunity of seconding the general mass; discontent will diffuse itself around; and if the Government take not warning in time, it is alone answerable for all the burnings and all the plunderings and all the devastation and all the ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... light seemed to diffuse itself over his countenance, and his eyes suddenly beamed with pleasure—"Eva! no! I believe so too. To see her dance is to see living harmony. Ah! it enlivens my mind if I only see her figure, her gait, her slightest movement; and then to know that all this ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... paced the icy platform Faxon began to see why it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to accede to his new acquaintance's suggestion. It was because Frank Rainer was one of the privileged beings who simplify human intercourse by the atmosphere of confidence and good humour they diffuse. He produced this effect, Faxon noted, by the exercise of no gift but his youth, and of no art but his sincerity; and these qualities were revealed in a smile of such sweetness that Faxon felt, as never before, what Nature can achieve when she deigns to match the face ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... orders were sent to all the colonies to desist from acts of hostility. Governor Craven, deeply interested in the prosperity of Carolina, now turned his attention to improve the precious blessings of peace, and to diffuse a spirit of industry and agriculture throughout the settlement. The lands in Granville county were found upon trial rich and fertile, and the planters were encouraged to improve them. Accordingly a number of plantations were settled in the neighbourhood ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... alternately rhyming verse, as was then the fashion. It was a foreign subject of which I availed myself; but if verses are music, I at least endeavored to adapt my music to the text, and to let the poetry of another diffuse itself through my spiritual blood; so that people should not be heard to say, as they had done before, regarding the romance of Walter Scott, that the composition was cut down ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... the fault of being diffuse; Boker's style is prosaically plain. Were it not for over-elaboration, D'Annunzio's play might supplant all others because of its spirit. Could we take from Phillips his simplicity, from D'Annunzio his Italian ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... advance with them. Notwithstanding the zeal and public spirit of the staff and managers of the hospitals, this want of system has naturally resulted in a multiplication of inefficient institutions and a number of makeshift arrangements. Huxley repeatedly urged the concentration of all this diffuse effort into a few centres, but this inevitable reform has not yet ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... you please, sir.' Throughout the day she went so tranquilly about her domestic duties, that Godwin seldom heard anything except the voice of the cuckoo-clock, a pleasant sound to him. Her son, employed at a nurseryman's, was a great sinewy fellow with a face of such ruddiness that it seemed to diffuse warmth; on Sunday afternoon, whatever the state of the sky, he sat behind the house in his shirt-sleeves, and smoked a pipe as he contemplated the hart's-tongue which grew there upon ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... praised Alice Cary's Pictures of Memory, and Phoebe's Nearer Home has become a favorite hymn. There is nothing peculiarly Western about the verse of the Cary sisters. It is the poetry of sentiment, memory, and domestic affection, entirely feminine, rather tame and diffuse as a whole, but tender and sweet, cherished by many good women and dear to ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... embracing the whole subject has lately appeared in Paris, and, as it is to form a volume of the valuable International Scientific series, published in English, French, German, and Italian, it can hardly fail to diffuse a correct popular understanding of the results thus far attained. The book is called "Le Magnetism Animal" (Animal Magnetism), and its authors are Messrs. Alfred Binet and Charles Fere of the medical staff of the Salpetriere Hospital for Nervous ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... vous vient de tous les cotes a la fois, des lieux decrits, des sujets, de la maniere de raconter, de l'esprit qui anime, de l'intelligence qui ordonne, mais, d'une facon encore plus immediate et plus diffuse, de la difference des deux langues. On reconnait sans doute generalement a nos vieux ecrivains ce merite d'etre clairs, mais on est trop habitue a ne voir dans ce don que ce qui decoule des tendances analytiques et des aptitudes logiques de leurs esprit. Aussi plusieurs critiques, ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... retarding their drift to leeward; but it was none the worse for this, since, with their drift scarcely retarded, they rode all the more easily; and presently, when the oil began to exude from the can and diffuse itself over the surface of the water, there was a narrow space just ahead of us where the seas ceased to break, with the result that in the course of ten minutes we were riding quite dry and comfortable, except for the scud-water that came driving ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... employed in printing the New Testament and other portions of the Bible, and school-books in the Cherokee language, and such other books in Cherokee or English as will tend to diffuse knowledge through the nation. A prospectus has also been issued for a newspaper, entitled the Cherokee Phoenix, to be printed partly in Cherokee, and partly in English; the first number of which is expected to appear early ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... Herault, a mere abridgment; a series of facts selected with judgment, that may serve as a clue to lead the mind along in the midst of those ruins and scattered monuments of art that time has spared. This would be sufficient, and better than Montfaucon's more diffuse narrative." Works, vol. iii. p. 293. Before Walpole had received Gray's letter, he had already adopted the proposed method; a large memorandum book of his being extant, with this title page, Collections ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... in Wordsworth the very highest powers of the poetic mind were associated with a certain tendency to the diffuse and commonplace. It is in the understanding (always prosaic) that the great golden veins of his imagination are imbedded. He wrote too much to write always well; for it is not a great Xerxes-army of words, but a compact Greek ten thousand, that march safely down to posterity. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the tired old woman's grave. Since then, for three days, she had been writing letters, narrating, describing to those who hadn't come; there were some, she thought, who might have managed to do so, instead of despatching her pages of diffuse reminiscence and asking her for all particulars in return. Selah Tarrant and his wife had come, obtrusively, as she thought, for they never had had very much intercourse with Miss Birdseye; and if it was for Verena's sake, Verena was there to ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... dramatic story in our days; but we must remember that the time embraced in the plot of the old playwright extends from the Creation to the Flood, and must be astonished and thankful that he has not been more diffuse. ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... secured good yeast, it is necessary in some way to diffuse it through the bread material so that it will set up an active fermentation, which, by the evolution of gas, will render the whole mass light and porous. As fermentation is more sure, more rapid, and requires less yeast to start ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... the crime of deceit. His heart need not, according to the reviewer, be "stripped bare" by the scalpel of any literary anatomist; but he may be left to that quiet and oblivion which a sepulchre in general bestows. Before I conclude these remarks (which I fear are too diffuse), I will venture to add a few words in regard to the signature of Thomas Lord Lyttelton. In the Chatham Correspondence, a letter from him to Earl Temple is printed, vol. iv. p. 348., the signature ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... I'm concentrated, that's all. You diffuse yourself, dear; and though all Simla knows your skill in managing ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... the mirth, and seemed to recognize no one present, though he regarded all that was passing with a peculiar air of still and earnest attention; and wherever he moved, his calm, penetrating gaze seemed to diffuse a singular uneasiness about him. Now his eye was fixed with a quiet scrutiny on the idolatrous statues, with their votive adornments—now it followed earnestly the young forms that were wreathing in ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... even now, in her black dress and with her gravity, remind one of a flower, submerged, momentarily, in deep water, its color hardly blurred, its petals delicately crisp, its fragrance only needing air and sunlight to diffuse itself. For all the youthfulness, a quality of indolent magic was about her, a soft haze, as it were, woven of matured experience, of detachment from youth's self-absorption, of the observer's kindly, yet ironic, insight. Her figure was supple; her nut-brown hair, splendidly folded at the ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... question of the time; the least informed with true knowledge—the least efficient in virtuous action—the least conscious of that Christian and republican freedom which, as the native atmosphere of piety and holiness, it is their prime duty to cherish and diffuse,"—Miss Martineau. I quote this paragraph to contradict it. The American clergy are, in the mass, equal, if not superior, to any in the world: they have to struggle with difficulties almost insurmountable, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the true character of saints as "strangers and pilgrims on earth." Religion, that flower of paradise, was never intended to "waste its sweetness on the desert air;" but to flourish in society, and to diffuse its sacred perfumes in every ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... helpless child, and restore him a helpful man,—to enlist the sympathies of birth, and secure for themselves the eloquence of natural affection,—to overleap the barriers of race and elude the sensitiveness of national pride by putting the doctrines they sought to diffuse into mouths which, untainted by repulsive accents, could enforce new truths by well-known images and familiar illustrations,—was like laying anew the foundations of the Capitol, and consecrating ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... nucleated discs about 12 mu by 6 mu, the nucleus being relatively small (about 4 mu long), irregularly elongated or oval; round, more deeply stained cells with round or diffuse nuclei, also free nuclei and degenerated forms of red cells are often present. The granules of the cells corresponding to the polymorphonuclear leucocytes are rod-shaped, often beaded or with clubbed ends. The nucleus is not ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... present time and times past, frames his work now with a parade as absurd as that of a country fair, and now with a fairy scene more magnificent than all those of the opera. To amuse and be amused, "to diffuse his spirit in every imaginable mode, like a glowing furnace into which all substances are thrown by turns to evolve every species of flame, sparkle and odor," is his first instinct. "Life," he says again, "is an infant to be rocked until it goes to sleep." Never was a mortal more excited and more ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... stories children tell of the events that have occurred before their eyes; learned, she reminds us of a museum organized with all the modern improvements. Instead of making you see nature with its external covering, its diffuse life, its mysterious echoes in your own heart, they offer you ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... angle, being in the spring from 60 to 70 degrees. The base of the wedge, which has a breadth generally of from 10 to 12 degrees, is below, and the sides rise in a line, curving outwards, to the apex, but so vague and diffuse as to be frequently indefinable. In our latitudes, it is best seen at or just after the equinoxes; before sunrise in autumn, and after sunset in spring; and becomes invisible as twilight increases, or if the moon shines; the light even of Venus and Jupiter is sufficient to render its discovery ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... Harold Smith! Renovated in a Medea's cauldron of such potency, all his effete limbs—and it must be acknowledged that some of them had become very effete—would come forth young and round and robust. A new energy would diffuse itself through every department; India would be saved and quieted; the ambition of France would be tamed; even-handed reform would remodel our courts of law and parliamentary elections; and Utopia would be realized. Such, it seems, is ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... obtruded, no question of probability considered, no agony of the sin-tortured spirit subjected to analysis, no controversy promoted and no moral lesson enforced. For once the public is favoured with a serious poetical play, which aims simply to diffuse happiness by arousing sympathy with pleasurable scenes and picturesque persons, with virtue that is piquant and humour that is refined, with the cheerful fortitude that takes adversity with a smile, and with ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... them. We are satisfied that all of them would answer that a power was thereby given to Congress to fix on the towns, court-houses, and other places throughout our Union at which there should be post-offices, the routes by which the mails should be carried from one post-office to another, so as to diffuse intelligence as extensively and to make the institution as useful as possible, to fix the postage to be paid on every letter and packet thus carried, to support the establishment, and to protect ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... rather by example than by precept. We are so familiar with the attacks and satires on monastic life that were current at the Reformation period, that it may seem almost a paradox to say that the chief claim of the monks to our gratitude lies in this, that they helped to diffuse a better appreciation of the duty and dignity ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... cheerful manner, and a desire to create a pleasant feeling and diffuse good cheer among those who work for him, have had a great deal to do with the great merchant's remarkable success. On the other hand, a man who easily finds fault, and is never generous-spirited, who never commends the work of subordinates ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... of Bird Day is to diffuse knowledge concerning our native birds and to arouse a more general interest in bird protection. As such it should appeal not only to ornithologists, sportsmen, and farmers, who have a practical interest in the preservation of birds, but also to the general public, who would soon appreciate ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... his power. Thus he may be said to have chosen the prophets, that men, in after ages, seeing their prophecies accomplished, might believe that Christianity was of divine origin. Thus also he may be said to have chosen Paul,([95] and indeed Paul is described as a chosen vessel) to diffuse the Gospel among the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... as I wrote in this book that I was getting too diffuse. But now I am glad that I went into detail from the first, for there is something so strange about this place and all in it that I cannot but feel uneasy. I wish I were safe out of it, or that I had never come. It may be that this ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... These receipts were printed in red and gold and had a big seal and ribbon attached. The size of the receipt and seal was proportioned according to the amount paid—if you had a son or a daughter in Purgatory, it was wise to pay a large amount. The certificates were in Latin and certified in diffuse and mystical language many things, and they gave great ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the Christian religion, which is plain and simple, with old women's superstitions; in investigating which he preferred perplexing himself to settling its questions with dignity, so that he excited much dissension; which he further encouraged by diffuse wordy explanations: he ruined the establishment of public conveyances by devoting them to the service of crowds of priests, who went to and fro to different synods, as they call the meetings at which they endeavour to settle everything according ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... one or two amendments, the constitution prepared by the committee was adopted. This constitution, with slight modifications, is still in force. The object of the Association was declared to be "to diffuse the knowledge and promote the interests of pure Christianity." A committee to nominate officers selected Dr. Channing for president; Joseph Story, of Salem, Joseph Lyman, of Northampton, Stephen Longfellow, of Portland, Charles H. Atherton, of Amherst, ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... its object, if it send the reader to the book itself. The appearance of the volume is timely. Events and circumstances have prepared the minds of our countrymen to understand and to appreciate the argument. The book cannot fail to diffuse sounder views of the great topics which it discusses, and will exert, we trust, a beneficial influence on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... ministers, and to get as much as they can out of them. They are, with rare exceptions, birds of passage, and don't trouble themselves much about changing cabinets. However, they were all very civil, not too diffuse, and one had the impression that they would be just as civil to our successor and to his successor. It must be so; there is no profession so absolutely banal as diplomacy. All diplomatists, from the ambassador to the ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... shot through it, I was aware of a faint taste of oil upon my lips, and there was a greasy scum upon the woodwork of the machine. Some infinitely fine organic matter appeared to be suspended in the atmosphere. There was no life there. It was inchoate and diffuse, extending for many square acres and then fringing off into the void. No, it was not life. But might it not be the remains of life? Above all, might it not be the food of life, of monstrous life, even as the humble grease of the ocean is the food ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... structure the story would be full of life, character, and the most exuberant fun, but it is altogether too diffuse in its present condition for dramatic representation, and I confess I do not feel sufficient confidence in my own experience (even if I had the time, which on reflection I find I have not) to undertake what, under different circumstances, would ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... mingled with the vital heat That bids my throbbing pulses beat; Soon shall that vital heat be o'er, Those throbbing pulses beat no more! No—I will breathe the spicy gale; Plunge the clear stream, new health exhale; O'er my pale cheek diffuse the rose, And drink oblivion to ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... work of a dramatic kind, comes last. Just put the terms of the problem the other way round. Give descriptions, to which our language lends itself so admirably, instead of diffuse dialogue, magnificent in Scott's work, but colorless in your own. Lead naturally up to your dialogue. Plunge straight into the action. Treat your subject from different points of view, sometimes in a side-light, sometimes retrospectively; vary your methods, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... their melody and their images, are in prose, cold and dry, while their vivacity of style renders them more fatiguing. The language of the greater part of the prose-writers of the present day is so declamatory, so diffuse, and so abundant in superlatives, that their work seems written to order, in hackneyed phraseology, and for conventional natures; it does not once enter into their heads that to write well is to express one's thoughts ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... Solanum, Tribulus, a Mimosa, lime trees, Carissa, Mimusops, Stemodia ruderalis now appear. The most interesting is a small diffuse Caryoplylleous-looking plant, with white Campanulate flowers; it is probably a Frankeniacea. On the pagodas an Aristella grows. Certain features prevail in the vegetation similar to those of the Coromandel coast. Fig trees often surrounded at base ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... this gifted actor, in Sir Christopher Curry—in Old Dornton—diffuse a glow of sentiment which has made the pulse of a crowded theatre beat like that of one man; when he has come in aid of the pulpit, doing good to the moral heart of a people. I have seen some faint approaches to this ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... mood and every peculiarity of mind or character are reflected in the style. It may be gay, humorous, serious, sad, melancholy, according to the state of the writer's feelings. It may be colloquial or stately, concise or diffuse, plain or florid, flowing or abrupt, feeble or energetic, natural or affected, commonplace or epigrammatic,—as varied, in fact, as the character and mental constitution of the writers. But every writer has ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... Kindersley, in his specimens of Hindu Literature. The third book of the poem of Sriharsha, containing 135 slokas, is entirely occupied with the conversation between Damayanti and the swans (the geese), in which the birds to excite her love, dwell with diffuse eloquence ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... is ineffective,—devoid of carrying power,—is diffuse and unfocused; while a resonant tone, no matter how soft dynamically, has carrying power and is ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... meaning of the halo with which artists have surrounded the heads of their pictured saints, of the aureoles which wraps them like a luminous cloud? Is it not a recognition of the fact that these holy personages diffuse their personality in the form of a visible emanation, which reminds us of Milton's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... leafless trees against the sky, How they diffuse themselves into the air, And, ever subdividing, separate Limbs into branches, branches into twigs. As if they loved the element, and hasted To dissipate ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... fiction spun out by indefatigable French manufacturers into interminable series, through which, at twelve hours a-day, the most insatiable devourer of the romantic needs a month to toil. Following the fashion of the times, and encouraged by the example of his successfully diffuse brethren, M. de Bernard, weary of launching trim corvettes and dashing frigates, has taken to build line-of-battle ships. He had better have kept to the small craft, which he found to float so well. Two of his recent works, "Le Beaupere," and "Le Gentilhomme Campagnard," have lost in merit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... place cast their street and house foulness; heaps of dust and slime, and broken shreds of old metal, and rags of putrid clothes; which, having neither energy to cart away, nor decency enough to dig into the ground, they thus shed into the stream, to diffuse what venom of it will float and melt, far away, in all places where God meant those waters to bring joy and health. And, in a little pool behind some houses farther in the village, where another spring rises, the shattered stones of the well, and of the little ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... few years. Iniquities in classifications and rates are constantly pointed out by the commission and corrected by the companies. Moreover, the annual reports of the commission, not to mention its very excellent statistical data, diffuse much useful information and dispel many delusions. Thus the fourth annual ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant? Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has no right to a sight? Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts, For you only, and not for ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... attention and a wider acquaintance with good literature. Most of our reading is done in this way. It would be impossible otherwise to get a wide range, as time does not permit of minute analysis, and many of our longer works are so diffuse that they would not repay such ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... understood to speak of a deficiency in the warmth and vehemence merely of religious affections. Are the service and worship of God pleasant to these persons? it is not asked whether they are delightful. Do they diffuse over the soul any thing of that calm complacency, that mild and grateful composure, which bespeaks a mind in good humour with itself and all around it, and engaged in a service suited to its taste, and congenial ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... poisonous, bristling stings. The atmosphere of the city is changed; in lieu of the friendly perfume of honey, the acrid odour of poison prevails; thousands of tiny drops glisten at the end of the stings, and diffuse rancour and hatred. Before the bewildered parasites are able to realise that the happy laws of the city have crumbled, dragging down in most inconceivable fashion their own plentiful destiny, each one is assailed ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Glaring o'er the Western sky Hurl'd his ruddy lightnings fly; Clouds, no more to fall in rain, Northward roll their deep'ning train; Libyan Ammon's thirsty seat, Wither'd with the scorching heat, Feels nor show'rs nor heavenly dews Grateful moisture round diffuse. ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... whether he will find the way to heaven who desires to go there alone: all heavenly hearts are charitable: enlightened souls cannot but diffuse their rays. I will, if I can, do something for others and for heaven, not to merit by it, but to express my gratitude. Though I cannot do what I would, I will labor to do ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... their dear hearts' content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain. ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... things as they are. The elephant stands first as a soothing influence, and then the giraffe, the latter having special powers, due to its beautiful eyes and agreeable perfume. Sometimes the hippopotamus may diffuse a charm of his own, an aura of rotund obesity, especially when he is bathing or sleeping; but there are moments when one has to flee from his presence. I never could get on very well with rhinoceroses, but the large deer, bison, and wild cattle have the quality detected by Mr. Butler. ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... These islands have fortunately been discovered at a period when religion no longer serves as a pretext for violence and rapine. Modern navigators have no other object in describing the manners of remote nations than that of completing the history of man; and the knowledge they endeavour to diffuse has for its sole aim to render the people they visit more happy, and to augment their ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... bestow No spicy fragrance while they grow; But crushed or trodden to the ground, Diffuse their balmy sweets around. The Captivity, Act ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... as future years thro time descend, What wide creations on thy voice depend; And, like the Sun, whose all-delighting ray To those mild regions gives his purest day, Diffuse thy bounties, let me instant fly; In three short moons the generous task I'll try; Then swift returning, I'll conduct my fair Where realms submissive ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... studies, published in four volumes between 1775-78 under the title "Physiognomical Fragments for the Advancement of Human Knowledge and Human Life" ("Physiognomische Fragmente zur Befoerderung des Menschenkenntniss und Menschenliebe"). The book is diffuse and inconsequent, but it contains many shrewd observations with respect to physiognomy and has had no little influence on popular opinion in this matter. Lavater died on January ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... energy of nuclear weapons is dwarfed by many natural phenomena. A large hurricane may have the power of a million hydrogen bombs. But the energy release of even the most severe weather is diffuse; it occurs over wide areas, and the difference in temperature between the storm system and the surrounding atmosphere is relatively small. Nuclear detonations are just the opposite—highly concentrated with reaction temperatures up to tens of millions of degrees Fahrenheit. ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
... the party very modest in their fear of being too diffuse, there were some tokens of separation; when Sergeant Dornton, the soldierly-looking man, said, looking ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... aloud, and offers you a piece of Bologna sausage. As in real life, so in his writings,—the serious and the comic, the sublime and the grotesque, the pathetic and the ludicrous are mingled together. At times he is sententious, energetic, simple; then again, obscure and diffuse. His thoughts are like mummies embalmed in spices, and wrapped about with curious envelopements; but within these the thoughts themselves are kings. At times glad, beautiful images, airy forms, move by you, graceful, harmonious;—at times the glaring, wild-looking fancies, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... many of the parables of our Saviour. Take, for instance, the parable of the sower. Here we are expressly told that the seed is the word of God, and, of course, the sowers are all ministers and Christian workers who are trying in any right way, to diffuse a knowledge and acceptance of gospel truth. They are devoting themselves to the salvation of human souls. Now, mark the difference as to the ground upon which the good seed falls. (1) The wayside hearers are not concerted ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... Edward So-and-so, and the Reverend John Such-an-one, fraternising with the profane Ariels and Imogenes, the Giaours and Me-doras of the old catalogue. So much the better. Floriculture is amongst the most innocent and humanising of all pleasures, and everything which tends to diffuse such pursuits amongst those who have too few amusements, is a point gained for happiness and ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... and ornaments as to be ridiculous and disgusting. It is like a circus clown dressed up in gold tinsel Dickens gives a fine example of it in Sergeant Buzfuz' speech in the "Pickwick Papers." Among other varieties of style may be mentioned the colloquial, the laconic, the concise, the diffuse, the abrupt the flowing, the quaint, the epigrammatic, the flowery, the feeble, the nervous, the vehement, and the affected. The manner of these is sufficiently indicated by the adjective used ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... told me that his composition cost him a vast amount of labour, that his first draughts were diffuse and crude, and that he wrote his productions several times before he had condensed and polished them to his mind. There is nothing choicer in the English language than some of his narratives, descriptions, and sketches ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... laurel from beds of emerald turf and blooming hyacinths. In the centre a fountain showers over fern-covered rocks, and the gravel-walks around the border are shaded by tall camellia-trees in white and crimson bloom. Lamps of frosted glass hang among the foliage, and diffuse a mellow golden moonlight over the enchanted ground. The corridor adjoining the garden resembles a bosky alley, so completely are the walls hidden ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... useful purpose whatever. Indeed they are such perfect blanks in the creation, that were they transported to some other place, the community would never miss them, except by the diminution of follies and vices. Like poisonous plants, they merely vegetate, diffuse their contagious effluvia around, then sink into corruption, and are forgotten ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... in front of the idol, and the secretaries, with pens in their hands, seemed to put on a strained look of attention as the young fellow produced a roll of paper and began to read the statement he had drawn up. It was diffuse and wordy, as most of such documents are, but the ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... world. It is the creature's indigence and limited condition which maketh it needful to go without its own compass, for the happiness of its own being. Man cannot be happy in loving himself. He is not satisfied with his own intrinsic perfections, but he must diffuse himself by his affections and desires and endeavours, and, as it were, walks abroad upon these legs, to fetch in some supply from the creature or Creator. The creature is constrained out of some necessity thus to go out of itself, which speaks much ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... to yourself. Most people won't notice it." And he walked on, stopping to chat with an acquaintance here and there, and doing his unofficial part to diffuse confidence. ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... study of it becomes, of course, an object of importance; it is commenced, and prosecuted with increasing diligence. These premises seem to warrant a conclusion which might at first appear paradoxical, that, by cultivating the Gaelic, you effectually, though indirectly, promote the study and diffuse the knowledge ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... world was bursting into life; if the fifteenth century was an age of death it was an age of birth as well, of that new birth, that Renascence, from which the after life of Europe was to flow. The force which till now concentrated itself in privileged classes was beginning to diffuse itself through nations. The tendency of the time was to expansion, to diffusion. The smaller gentry and the merchant class rose in importance as the nobles fell. Religion and morality passed out of the hands of the priesthood ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... itself in an idea or image that gives it body and systematizes it, without which it remains diffuse; and all affective states can take on this permanent form which makes a unified principle of them. The simple emotions (fear, love, joy, sorrow, etc.), the complex or derived emotions (religious, esthetic, intellectual ideas) may equally monopolize consciousness ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... friends assailed the Anabaptists with every weapon they could wield. The Catholics formed powerful combinations to arrest the spread of evangelical views. The reformers organized combinations equally powerful to diffuse those opinions, which they were sure involved the ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... salt, working concealed; and the dew, visible like the former, but yet unobtrusive and operating silently like the latter. Some of us had rather be light than salt; prefer to be conspicuous rather than to diffuse a wholesome silent influence around us. But these three types must all be blended, both in regard to the manner of working, and in regard to the effects produced. We shall refresh and beautify the world only in proportion as we save it from its rottenness and corruption, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... observed by at least one student long ago. Schumacher, Enum. Pl. Sell. 2, p. 215, describes Arcyria atra with the characters of an enerthenema, and says "the capillitial threads are some of them diffuse and bear spermatic globules"! Did he anticipate E. berkleyanum? See the text under that ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... has two functions, one to receive the impressions from the eyes, the other to impress them. The eyes study the species and propose them to the heart; the heart desires them, and presents his desire to the eyes; these conceive the light, diffuse it, and kindle the fire in the heart, which heated and kindled, sends its waters (umore) to them, so that they may dispose of them[AA] (digeriscano). Thus, firstly, cognition moves the affection, and soon the affection moves the cognition. ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... the more diffuse in detailing the particulars of this meeting; because, when the reader shall have perused an account of two subsequent public meetings, which I attended in this county (at both of which the propositions that I supported were carried by overwhelming ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... have their type in the albumen of an egg; and muscle substance and the less modified living "protoplasm" of plants, a considerable proportion of the substance of seeds, bulbs, and so on, are albuminous bodies, or proteids. These also are insoluble bodies, or when soluble, will not diffuse easily ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... but 'time is the only mediator.'[467] The law may help to accumulate inequalities; but in a prosperous state there is a 'continual progress towards equality.' The law has to stand aside; not to maintain monopolies; not to restrain trade; not to permit entails; and then property will diffuse itself by a natural process, already exemplified in the growth of Europe. The 'pyramids' heaped up in feudal times have been lowered, and their 'debris spread abroad' among the industrious. Here again we see how Bentham virtually diverges ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... an architect, whose publications illustrative of Tudor architecture and domestic English antiquities have materially tended to diffuse a feeling of respect for the works of our ancestors, and to forward the growing desire to preserve and restore edifices which time and circumstances have spared to the country, has resided at No. 22 Brompton Crescent. At No. 28 in this crescent, Mrs. ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... distress of the soldiers, who were injuriously deprived of their legal and scanty subsistence, provoked them to frequent desertion; the nerves of discipline were relaxed, and the highways were infested with robbers. The oppression of the good, and the impunity of the wicked, equally contributed to diffuse through the island a spirit of discontent and revolt; and every ambitious subject, every desperate exile, might entertain a reasonable hope of subverting the weak and distracted government of Britain. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... louder and louder, whistling through the open hall where the servants had gathered. Most of the lamps and torches had been blown out, the pitch-pans only sent forth still blacker clouds of smoke, lit by red and yellow flames, and the closed lanterns alone continued to diffuse a flickering light. So the wide space, dim with smoke, was illumined only by ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not be told, that the Roman Poet who had the advantage of improving upon so many originals, takes in a greater variety of subjects than any of his predecessors, and runs into more diffuse and diversified measure. I have said, my Lord, that his subjects are more diversified, because in the character of a Lyric Poet we must consider him as a professed imitator both of Anacreon and of Pindar. In the former point of view he falls under our immediate ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... a cup of tea strong enough for ten men. On the contrary, tea is to me a wonderful refresher and reviver. After long-continued exertion, as in the great pedestrian journeys that I formerly made, tea would always, in a manner almost miraculous, banish all my fatigue, and diffuse through my whole frame comfort and exhilaration, ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... Heine, which is, after all, only sentimentalism soured. His jealousy for maintaining the just boundaries whether of art or speculation may warn them to check with timely dikes the tendency of their thought to diffuse inundation. Their fondness in aesthetic discussion for a nomenclature subtile enough to split a hair at which even a Thomist would have despaired, is rebuked by the clear simplicity of his style.[163] ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Raymond, in his library, as he turned page after page of diffuse discourse. "How long is she going to run on? How many more things is ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... hitherto been balmy and beautiful, with a bright array of stars, and a golden harvest moon, which seemed to diffuse even warmth with its radiance; but now Turpin was approaching the region of fog and fen, and he began to feel the influence of that dank atmosphere. The intersecting dykes, yawners, gullies, or whatever they are called, began to send forth their steaming vapors, and chilled ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Lord's garden, we are honoured indeed. We should watch against envy and ambition, contempt of our brethren and contention. We ought to be satisfied in our places, doing 'nothing through strife or vain glory, or with murmurings and disputings'; but endeavour, in the meekness of wisdom, to diffuse a heavenly fragrance around us, and to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... lower artifices and management on the occasion than I thought him capable of.... If Mr. Innes has shown you a speech of Mr. Henry to his constituents, which I sent him, you will see something of the method he has taken to diffuse his poison.... It grieves me to see such great natural ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... grown to be very broad too, and short of breath; but that was not much. Flora, whom he had left a lily, had become a peony; but that was not much. Flora, who had seemed enchanting in all she said and thought, was diffuse and silly. That was much. Flora, who had been spoiled and artless long ago, was determined to be spoiled and artless now. That ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... England is willing to permit the mean jealousies of trade, or the rancorous animosities of politics, to deprave the integrity of her press, and poison the fountain of public opinion, let us beware of her example. She may deem it her interest to diffuse error, and engender antipathy, for the purpose of checking emigration: we have no purpose of the kind to serve. Neither have we any spirit of national jealousy to gratify; for as yet, in all our rivalships with England, we are the rising and the gaining party. There can be no end to answer, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... ever to be lamented and never to be forgotten, were a single blot, from any cause whatever, suffered to fall on a revolution, which to the end of time must be an honor to the age that accomplished it: and which has contributed more to enlighten the world, and diffuse a spirit of freedom and liberality among mankind, than any human event (if this may be called one) ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... later books are filled with narratives of what he saw with his own eyes, or gathered from the lips of men who had themselves been part of what they told. This fact, along with his mastery of a style which is always vivacious if sometimes diffuse, accounts for the vividness and picturesqueness of his work. The pageant of medieval life in court and camp dazzled and delighted him, and it is as a pageant that we see the Middle Ages ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... shame? Why can not we rise to noble conceptions of our destiny? Why do we not feel that our work as a nation is to carry freedom, religion, science, and a nobler form of human nature over this continent? And why do we not remember that to diffuse these blessings we must first cherish them in our own borders, and that whatever deeply and permanently corrupts us will make our spreading influence a curse, not a blessing, to this New World? It is a common idea ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... aloof from the fires, to harden, as Stimson had called it That which was thus enforced by example was additionally enjoined by precept. Several large, hulking, idle fellows, who greatly loved the fire, were driven away from it by shame; and the heat was allowed to diffuse itself more equally through ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... man,—all for his theme and his purpose, nothing for himself. Crude in style, full of the superficial errors of carelessness and haste, rarely diffuse, often brief to a fault, they bear on every page ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... and vernacular, from (Professor Antoine) Galland's delightful abbreviation and adaptation (A.D. 1704), in no wise represent the eastern original. The best and latest, the Rev. Mr. Foster's, which is diffuse and verbose, and Mr. G. Moir Bussey's, which is a re- correction, abound in gallicisms of style and idiom; and one and all degrade a chef d'oeuvre of the highest anthropological and ethnographical interest and importance to a mere fairy book, a nice present ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... which, therefore, is such a beautiful emblem of constancy. This beautiful plant has a peculiar property. If one of its compact shining leaves be planted in the earth it takes root and grows into a shrub whose fragrant wax-like flowers diffuse an enchanting perfume. Three years before at a jurists' ball, when Henrietta and Szilard met for the first time, he had given her a bouquet, among the flowers of which was one of these green-gold leaves, and when she ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... about her qualities. She wrote a little piece which Comte rated so preposterously as to talk about George Sand in the same sentence; it is in truth a flimsy performance, though it contains one or two gracious thoughts. There is true beauty in the saying—'It is unworthy of a noble nature to diffuse its pain.' Madame de Vaux's letters speak well for her good sense and good feeling, and it would have been better for Comte's later work if she had survived to exert a wholesome restraint on his exaltation. Their friendship had only lasted a year when she died (1846), but the period was ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... milk-food, and with a pleasant habitation in the country and by gradual exercise. Unclean diseases cannot be prevalent with them because they often clean their bodies by bathing in wine, and soothe them with aromatic oil, and by the sweat of exercise they diffuse the poisonous vapor which corrupts the blood and the marrow. They do suffer a little from consumption, because they cannot perspire at the breast, but they never have asthma, for the humid nature of which a heavy man is required. They cure hot fevers with cold potations ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... bear up under the oppressive system which weighs upon them in a manner the most heroic. It is to opinions from such sources as these we point, with every degree of confidence, as they cannot be charged with being prejudiced in our favor; and were we inclined to be more diffuse upon the subject, we might quote author after author, and all of English proclivities too, who bear evidence to the suggestive character of the elements of material wealth which we possess in every relation, and which, through ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... granting your corollary, that the power of a class is therefore proportioned to its knowledge—pray, do you suppose that while your order, the operatives, are instructing themselves, all the rest of the community are to be at a stand-still? Diffuse knowledge as you may, you will never produce equality of knowledge. Those who have most leisure, application, and aptitude for learning, will still know the most. Nay, by a very natural law, the more general the appetite for knowledge, the more the increased competition ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... evidence of it in the style of his books. Lawyers, from the necessity they are under of exerting persuasion, of planting an unfamiliar argument in the minds of hearers of whose favour they are doubtful, but whose sympathy they must gain, are usually of purpose diffuse. They cultivate the gift, possessed by Edmund Burke above all other English authors, of putting the same thing freshly and in different forms a great many times in succession. They value copiousness and fertility of illustration. ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... task an attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease: he will labour on a barren topick, till it is too late to change it; or, in the ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine or reduce." Of this excellent production, the number sold on each day did not amount to five hundred: of course, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... expressions of a genuine humility. He was conscious that personally he came short in many things, but he toiled after the character, which he saw, or fancied that he saw, in the ancient sages whom he acknowledged; and the lessons of government and morals which he labored to diffuse were those which had already been inculcated and exhibited by them. Emphatically he was 'a transmitter and not a maker.' It is not to be understood that he was not fully satisfied of the truth of the principles which he had ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... refined enjoyments of life. They are obliged to work hard, at times, for the means of subsistence; but their leisure hours are spent in indolence, without those little recreations which contribute so much to the happiness of mankind, and diffuse a spirit of chearfulness and vivacity throughout the Society and Friendly Islands. Besides a sort of whistle, made of wood, about two inches long, and shaped like a bell, having two holes at its base ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... The priests, the lazy monks, and turbulent persons living in forced celibacy, could no longer calculate on the future, and, aliens in the state which nourished them, they would visibly diminish. The government, more rich and powerful, would be in a better situation to diffuse its benefits; and enlightened, virtuous, and beneficent men would constitute the support, the glory, and the grandeur of ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... chemically, namely, by the decomposition of permanganate of potassa with strong sulphuric acid. He placed the permanganate in glass vessels, moistened it gradually with the acid, and then allowed the ozone, which is formed, to diffuse into the air. In this way he endeavored, as I had done, to purify the air of rooms, especially those vitiated by the breaths of many people. When he visited me, not very long before his death, he was enthusiastic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... his own family, and a son who loved his mother could have little affection for a father who had ever been that mother's worst persecutor. From his sixth to his ninth year Alexius was educated by the diffuse and pedantic Vyazemsky, but after the removal of his mother to the Suzdal Prokovsky Monastery he was confided to the care of learned foreigners, who taught him history, geography, mathematics and French. In 1703 Alexius was ordered to follow the army to the field ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... inharmonical with the divine, and the beautiful harmonious. Beauty, then, is the destiny or goddess of parturition who presides a birth, and therefore, when approaching beauty the conceiving power is propitious, and diffuse, and benign, and begets and bears fruit; on the appearance of foulness she frowns and contracts in pain, and is averted and morose, and shrinks up, and not without a pang refrains from conception. And this is the reason why, when the hour of conception arrives, and the teeming ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... falsity. For these felicities are the happinesses of the affections of good and truth, the opposites of the lusts of the love of evil and falsity. Those happinesses begin from the Lord, thus from the inmost, diffuse themselves thence into things lower even to lowermost things, and thus fill the angel, making him a body of delight. Such happinesses are to be found in infinite variety in every affection of good and truth, and eminently in the affection ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... second to receive the crude Herbs in, upon which they are to be pour'd; and then with a Fork and a Spoon kept continually stirr'd, 'till all the Furniture be equally moisten'd: Some, who are husbands of their Oyl, pour at first the Oyl alone, as more apt to communicate and diffuse its Slipperiness, than when it is mingled and beaten with the Acids; which they pour on last of all; and 'tis incredible how small a quantity of Oyl (in this quality, like the gilding of Wyer) is sufficient, to imbue a ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... that made their celebrity and value. The Prince Borghese certainly demeans himself like a kind and liberal gentleman, in throwing open this invaluable collection to the public to see, and for artists to carry away with them, and diffuse all over the world, so far as their own power and skill will permit. It is open every day of the week, except Saturday and Sunday, without any irksome restriction or supervision; and the fee, which custom requires the visitor to pay to the custode, has the good effect of making ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the honors which he received—and he was one of the most honored men of his day—he was always modest, unassuming, and even diffident. He was the most cheerful of men, and seemed to diffuse sunshine wherever he went. He was essentially lovable, and could hardly be said to have made an enemy during his life. Indeed, one of his lacks was that of aggressiveness; it would have given a deeper force to his character and ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... runs away to go hunting, and is killed by a wild boar. Venus mourns over his dead body, and causes a flower (the anemone or wind flower) to spring from his blood. Shakespeare's handling of the story shows both the virtues and the defects of a young writer. It is more diffuse, more wordy, than his later work, and written for the taste of another time than ours; but, on the other hand, it is full of vivid, picturesque language of melodious rhythm, and of charming little ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... assist, or to show gratitude. It is not charity when gifts are given from other considerations, as when animals are fed that they may be used, or presents given by lovers to bind affection, or to slaves to stimulate labour. It is found where man, seeking to diffuse happiness among all men—those he loves, and those he loves not—digs canals and pools, makes roads, bridges, and seats, and plants trees for shade. It is found where, from compassion for the miserable and the poor, who have none to help them, a man erects resting-places ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... outspoken and diffuse in his expressions of regret. He repeated over and over again that his failure as a soldier wounded his pride and disappointed his hopes, but that his separation from Zulma would prove the most terrible of pangs. ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... science of education, and acquired profound misgivings as to the nature of the intellectual process known by the name of secondary education. More and more I began to perceive that it is conducted on diffuse, detailed, unbusiness-like lines. I tried my best, as far as it was consistent with loyalty to an established system, to correct the faulty bias. But it was with a profound relief that I found myself suddenly provided with a literary task of deep interest, and enabled to quit ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... writer Marvell has many merits and one great fault. He has fire and fancy and was the owner and master of a precise vocabulary well fitted to clothe and set forth a well-reasoned and lofty argument. He knew how to be both terse and diffuse, and can compress himself into a line or expand over a paragraph. He has touches of a grave irony as well as of a boisterous humour. He can tell an anecdote and elaborate a parable. Swift, we know, had not only Butler's ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... the cavity is cut into, cleaned and properly drained death will take place in a very short time. I say death is inevitable without surgical treatment. In this I appear to be more radical than the most radical, for the best authors have much to say about perforation, diffuse peritonitis, and of patients who live after perforation, as though it were a common occurrence; I say ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... however, the lightning grew paler and more diffuse, and the thunderclaps lost some of their terror amid the monotonous rattling of the downpour. Then the rain also abated, and the clouds began to disperse. In the region of the sun, a lightness appeared, and between the white-grey clouds could be caught glimpses of ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... deadened?—and why, when one would have set up a bronze Alexander for a frontispiece to a stage at Pella, did the architect advise to the contrary, because it would spoil the actors' voices? and why, of the several kinds of music, will the chromatic diffuse and the harmonic compose the mind? But now the several humors of poets, their differing turns and forms of style, and the solutions of their difficult places, have conjoined with a sort of dignity and ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... their going to Pontystrad and surprising the Vicar and Vicaress and puzzling them by purposely-diffuse stories of Vivie's cousin the late David Vavasour Williams, intended to convey the idea, without telling unnecessary fibs, that David died abroad during the War, but that Vivie in his memory and that of his dear old father intends to continue a strong personal interest in ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... from heaven, she confessed her errors in matters of faith, and renounced them humbly. At the bottom of the document she made the mark of a cross. Doubts have arisen as to the genuineness of this long and diffuse deed in the form in which it has been published in the trial-papers. Twenty-four years later, in 1455, during the trial undertaken for the rehabilitation of Joan, several of those who had been present at the trial at which she was condemned, amongst others the usher Massieu ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... with brownish red flowers and hoary leaves; varying from an erect straight-branched bush to a diffuse entangled shrub.* ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... on dimpling ocean tread, Wafting the moist air from his oozy bed, AQUATIC NYMPHS!—YOU lead with viewless march The winged vapours up the aerial arch, 15 On each broad cloud a thousand sails expand, And steer the shadowy treasure o'er the land, Through vernal skies the gathering drops diffuse, Plunge in soft rains, or sink in silver dews.— YOUR lucid bands condense with fingers chill 20 The blue mist hovering round the gelid hill; In clay-form'd beds the trickling streams collect, Strain through white sands, through ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... be in India; not only of real practical value, in affording a good and cheap supply of the best culinary and other vegetables that the climate can produce, but as showing to what departments efforts are best directed. Such gardens diffuse a taste for the most healthy employments, and offer an elegant resource for the many unoccupied hours which the Englishman in India finds upon his hands. They are also schools of gardening; and a simple inspection of what has been done at Bhagulpore is a valuable ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... was now sitting back in his chair with his eyes shut, dozing away with the confidence of a stage director who is sure the show will go off without a hitch. The panes of the glass dome were glowing under the rays of the sun, but they allowed only a diffuse, green light, a discreet, soft, crypt-like clarity to seep through into the Chamber that lay below in monastic calm. Through the windows over the president's chair, Rafael glimpsed patches of the blue sky, drenched in the gentle light of an afternoon of Springtime. ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... have an influence on the passions and imagination, proportioned to that degree of force and vivacity, which they communicate to the ideas. It is by habit we make the transition from cause to effect; and it is from some present impression we borrow that vivacity, which we diffuse over the correlative idea. But when we have not observed a sufficient number of instances, to produce a strong habit; or when these instances are contrary to each other; or when the resemblance is not exact; or the present impression is faint and obscure; or the experience in some measure ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... better be a little more diffuse about what was known all over the British Isles as the Edenburn Outrage, but the bulk of this chapter will be drawn from observations by members of my family and newspaper accounts, for the episode left considerably less impression ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey |
