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Diffusion   /dɪfjˈuʒən/   Listen
Diffusion

noun
1.
(physics) the process in which there is movement of a substance from an area of high concentration of that substance to an area of lower concentration.
2.
The spread of social institutions (and myths and skills) from one society to another.
3.
The property of being diffused or dispersed.  Synonym: dissemination.
4.
The act of dispersing or diffusing something.  Synonyms: dispersal, dispersion, dissemination.  "The diffusion of knowledge"



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"Diffusion" Quotes from Famous Books



... lay down, in a minute or two again got up and went on, his fear growing until, mainly through consciousness of itself, it ripened into abject terror. Loneliness seemed to have taken the shape of a watching omnipresent enemy, out of whose diffusion death might at any moment break in ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... with deep reflections and striking allusions, a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The wild diffusion of the sentiments and the digressive sallies of imagination would have been compressed and restrained by confinement to rhyme. The excellence of this work is not exactness but copiousness; particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... 1832 is only sixty years ago in time, yet since then there has been a striking development of conveniences, rapidity of travel, and arrangements for the diffusion of intelligence. People then still travelled in great part by aid of horses, the railroad having just begun its marvellous career. News, which now fly over continents and under oceans at lightning speed, then jogged on at stage-coach ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... girls, were taught to read and write. Where there were no schools, fathers and mothers of the better kind gave their children the rudiments of learning. Though illiteracy was widespread, there is evidence to show that the diffusion of knowledge among the masses was making steady progress ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... light. But he soon found in Saxony that this was only one of the numerous German topics on which little publicity was shed in his homeland in spite of the general emphasis laid on German preeminence. This emphasis was mainly a diffusion, through mere books of information, about achievements and an extraordinary condition of learned mentality. Of the actual inhabitants beyond the Rhine, ignorance was kept widespread. German femininity was assumed to ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... at length appear there also; and under curious phasis; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear of the others as to fancy itself the van. Our European Mechanisers are a sect of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit: has not Utilitarianism flourished in high places of Thought, here among ourselves, and in every European country, at some time or other, within the last fifty years? If now in all countries, except perhaps England, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... the several planets with their secondaries, were all moulded into one mass, and then dilated so as to fill the vast sphere of which the orbit of Uranus forms a circumference, the substance would evidently be in a state of extreme tenuity and diffusion. Immense as the mass of the sun now is, it is but a mere nut at the centre of the grand globe which we are now considering. Expanded to such vast dimensions, we cannot conceive of it as a solid spheroid turning upon its axis, but only as a mass of fluid ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... who strive to follow. May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty— Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense. So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... the South American republics have the American Constitution, more or less, but are not shining examples of republican success. No one can question that monarchies like the United Kingdom and Germany enjoy a larger diffusion ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... Europe are composed almost entirely of starch, along with a few fibres of the ligneous matter. It may be purified by diffusion in warm water, passing the milky mixture through a linen cloth, evaporating the straining liquid over the fire, with constant agitation. The starch, dissolved by the heat, thickens as the water evaporates, but on being stirred it becomes granulated, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... v. 92) ascribes the final extinction of Celtic in northern Gaul to the influence of the Church. But the Church was not in itself averse to native dialects, and its insistence on Latin in the west may well be due rather to the previous diffusion of ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield

... the historians do that great men lead humanity to the attainment of certain ends—the greatness of Russia or of France, the balance of power in Europe, the diffusion of the ideas of the Revolution, general progress, or anything else—then it is impossible to explain the facts of history without introducing the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... principle, or as the skilful gardener lops the branch that it may throw out more vigorous shoots. It is true, we do not expect to see the tail itself sprouting out anew; but then we look to the increase of its reason, and to its more general diffusion in society. The extremities of our cauda, as fast as they are lopped, are sent to a great intellectual mill, where the mind is extracted from the matter, and the former is sold, on public account, to the editors of the daily journals. This is the reason our Leaplow journalists ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... time goes on because there is no reason to doubt that the white women of South Africa, as a whole, will refrain in the future as they have refrained in the past from cohabiting with black men, so that the observed tendency towards the diffusion of the coloured element back into the parent streams will ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... threatened the very groundwork of the older dogmatism with ruin. Nor were these daring denials confined to the small circle of scholars who still clung to him. The "Simple Priests" were active in the diffusion of their master's doctrines, and how rapid their progress must have been we may see from the panic-struck exaggerations of their opponents. A few years later they complained that the followers of Wyclif abounded ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... how imperfectly it exists, at this day, in the Swiss cantons; and the many violences of the French Revolution illustrate, amongst various other lessons, the fatal effects arising from its absence, even among a people high in the scale of intelligence. Yet the diffusion of such constitutional morality, not merely among the majority of any community, but throughout the whole, is the indispensable condition of a government at once free and peaceable; since even any powerful and obstinate minority may render the working of free ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... that the Smithsonian Institute here, one of the most important scientific institutions in the world, was founded by an Englishman, who, so far as is known, never even visited the United States, but left his large fortune for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men," to the care of that country with whose generous and popular principles he ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... Verhandlungen, etc., u.s. p. 36.) On the continued existence of the use of salt currency in regions of the same frontier, I have been favoured with the following note by M. Francis Garnier, the distinguished leader of the expedition of the great Kamboja River in its latter part: "Salt currency has a very wide diffusion from Muang Yong [in the Burman-Shan country, about lat. 21 deg. 43'] to Sheu-pin [in Yun-nan, about lat. 23 deg. 43']. In the Shan markets, especially within the limits named, all purchases are made with salt. At Sse-mao and Pou-erl [Esmok and Puer of some of our ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... to lend the light of my countenance in that illustrious sphere to some miserable plume-plucked scarecrow. All these considerations made me devise a pleasant trick, for the increase of merriment and the diffusion of mirth ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... must be tired with such levities: the spirit of the age is no longer frivolous; and I dare say as the march of gravity proceeds, we shall get rid of galas altogether." The queen said this with an air of inconceivable wisdom, for the "Society for the Diffusion of General Stupefaction" had been recently established among the fairies, and its tracts had driven all the light reading out of the market. "The Penny Proser" had contributed greatly to the increase of knowledge ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... sentiments and feelings of the people within their respective circles of jurisdiction; their powers are adequate to meet all the economic exigencies of each municipality, whether of schools or roads, of the diffusion of knowledge, or the development of wealth.' [Footnote: Hon. Adam Crooks, Minister of Education, Report on Educational Institutions of Ontario, for Philadelphia Exhibition, p. 45.] As a result of such public spirit, we find in Ontario the finest specimens of school architecture, ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot

... Glyndon, "if possessed of these great secrets, why so churlish in withholding their diffusion? Does not the false or charlatanic science differ in this from the true and indisputable,—that the last communicates to the world the process by which it attains its discoveries; the first boasts of marvellous results, and refuses to explain ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... opinion that neither in the time of Plato nor of Cicero nor of Papinian were there such facilities for study as one sees now." It is indeed the study of the ancient languages and literatures that Gargantua considers in a liberal education, but the satisfaction at the present diffusion of learning, with the suggestion that here at least contemporaries have an advantage over the ancients, is the significant point. [Footnote: Rabelais, Book ii. chap. 8.] This satisfaction shines through the observation of Ramus that "in one century we have seen a greater progress in men and works ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... for a philanthropic and progressive journal is to assist in the diffusion of liberal literature, and to keep an eye upon the prolific press of to-day, for the benefit of its readers, calling their attention to the meritorious works, which are often neglected, and warning against pretentious folly and sciolism. But it is not ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... entirely new world, clean, intelligent, and full of amenity. The baby has become the new man who has conquered his own right to live, and thus has caused a sphere to be created for him. And in direct proportion to the diffusion of the laws of infantile hygiene, infant mortality ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... the modern American public does not go hungry. American life is crowded with facts, to which the newspaper gives daily record and diffusion. Ideas, motives, thoughts, these are always in demand. Men wish for nothing more than to know how to classify their facts, what to do with them, how to govern them, and how far to be governed by them; and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... finished my business as quickly as possible, and we set out for Starkfield with a good chance of getting there for supper. But at sunset the clouds gathered again, bringing an earlier night, and the snow began to fall straight and steadily from a sky without wind, in a soft universal diffusion more confusing than the gusts and eddies of the morning. It seemed to be a part of the thickening darkness, to be the winter night itself descending on us ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton

... On the contrary, it is an excellent means of getting anything known and of spreading the knowledge of it abroad; it is in reality a force. Saint-Simonism is at the root of many of the humanitarian doctrines which were to spring up from its ashes. One of its essential doctrines was the diffusion of the soul throughout all humanity, and another that of being born anew. Enfantin said: "I can feel St. Paul within me. He lives within me." Still another of its doctrines was that of the rehabilitation of the flesh. Saint-Simonism ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic

... systematic plan of colonization would partially relieve those districts of the country where the deficiency of employment Iras been most injurious to the labourers in husbandry. That the improvements made of late years in the education of the people, as well as its more general diffusion, have been seen with satisfaction by this house. That this house will be ready to give its support to measures founded on liberal and comprehensive principles, which may be conducive to the further extension of religious and moral instruction. That a humble address ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... seen the plant at Oak Ridge where uranium was extracted by the gas diffusion method. The plant covered acres. Only a government could ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... excursions for the performance of any of my operas took place, for the simple reason that no such performances were given. As I saw it was quite clear that the diffusion of my works through the theatrical world would be a very slow business, I concluded that this was probably due to the fact that no adaptations of them for the piano existed. I therefore thought that I should do well to press forward such an issue ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... them and disintegrated them. The Jew contributed the morality and monotheism of the Old Testament; the Greek, culture and the perfected language that should contain the treasure, the fresh wine-skin for the new wine; the Roman made the diffusion of the kingdom possible by the pax Romana, and at first sheltered the young plant. All three, no doubt, marred as well as helped the development of Christianity, and infused into it deleterious elements, which cling to it to-day, but the prophecy of the Title was fulfilled ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... phenomena of diffusion is exhibited in lecture courses by placing a bell glass filled with hydrogen over a porous vessel at whose base is fixed a glass tube that dips into water. The hydrogen, in diffusing, enters the porous vessel, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various

... subservient and preparatory? All things being now ready, there began to spring up in the bosom of the British churches, a wide and simultaneous sense of the solemn responsibility under which they had been laid by the events of Providence, to avail themselves of so favorable an opening for the diffusion of the gospel throughout the eastern world. Men, qualified to undertake the high commission, must be sent across the ocean—and have not the toils, and perils, and successes, of Vasco de Gama, and other navigators, opened up a safe and ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various

... gratifying, not only to those who consider the commercial interests of nations, but also to all who favor the progress of knowledge and the diffusion of religion, to see a community emerge from a savage state and attain such a degree of civilization ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson

... say, that the law ought not to favour, artificially, the power of borrowing, but I do not say that it ought not to restrain them artificially. If, in our system of mortgage, or in any other, there be obstacles to the diffusion of the application of credit, let them be got rid of; nothing can be better or more just than this. But this is all which is consistent with liberty, and it is all that any who are worthy of the name ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... proportions—a small family of two or three children is all the man of moderate income can allow himself. Four is an outside number, but it is worth making some sacrifices to attain it. Professor E. A. Ross has recently stated in The American Journal of Sociology that although restriction 'results in diffusion of economic well-being; lessens infant mortality; ceases population pressure, which is the principal cause of war, mass poverty, wolfish competition and class conflict,' yet there are 'disquieting effects, and in one-child or two-child families both parents and children miss ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... are more segregated into a class by themselves, and are therefore more conspicuous and obtrusive than ever before. Licentiousness may have been more prevalent formerly than now, as I believe it was; but less prominent and less noticed, because of its greater diffusion. It was not so concentrated into relief. The unstainedly honorable and virtuous are the vast majority, and will, when a few evil conditions of society are outgrown, rapidly become an ever larger majority. Especially do I believe it to be a truth, which none but the ignorant or the vicious can ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... water, he will find that it dissolves, though more slowly. You should then show him some fine sand, some clay, and chalk, thrown into water; and he will perceive the difference between mechanical mixture and diffusion, or chemical mixture. Chemical mixture, as that of sugar in water, depends upon the attraction that subsists between the parts of the solid and fluid which are combined. Mechanical mixture is only the suspension of the parts of a solid in a fluid. When fine sand, chalk, ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... reference to man. In his youth people were once more turning to religion, and in Venice poetry was making its way more than it had previously done, not only because Venice had become the refuge of men of letters, but also because of the diffusion of printed books. Tintoretto took to the new feeling for religion and poetry as to his birthright. Yet whether classic fable or biblical episode were the subject of his art, Tintoretto coloured it with his feeling for ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson

... education. Her uncle had always had more pride in being a Briton than a North Briton, and never had fired up with indignation at Scotland being included or merged in England. She did not think Scotchmen intrinsically more capable than English; there was a greater diffusion of elementary knowledge in the northern part of the island, but she thought that in society Englishmen were more agreeable than Scotch, as a general rule, because they were more certain of their own position. Scotch and Irish people are apt to be afraid ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... his prayer for 'gentle' readers has been fully heard. It will be forgiven him, he hopes, when he says that he has not seen good ground to change or even to modify any of the opinions as to the origin and diffusion of popular tales put forth in the first edition. Much indeed has been said by others for those views; what has been urged against them, with all kindness and good humour, in one or two cases, has not availed at all to weigh down mature ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... lived from hand to mouth, and had very little wealth but what was confined among themselves, a simple system of laws might be proper, and capital punishments might in a great measure be avoided; but when by the acquisition, diffusion, and general intercourse of wealth, the temptations to fraud are abundantly increased, the terrors of it must be also proportionably enlarged; otherwise if, through a false tenderness for wicked men, the laws should not be sufficient to protect the property of ...
— The Trial and Execution, for Petit Treason, of Mark and Phillis, Slaves of Capt. John Codman • Abner Cheney Goodell, Jr.

... spring uv '47—the year that Cy Watson's oldest boy wuz drownded in West River—there come along a book-agent sellin' volyumes 'nd tracks f'r the diffusion uv knowledge, 'nd havin' got the recommend of the minister 'nd uv the selectmen, he done an all-fired big business in our part uv the county. His name wuz Lemuel Higgins, 'nd he wuz ez likely a talker ez I ever heerd, ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field

... guarded secrets" and who would thus lead to the establishment of a great Indian School of Science and to the "building of the greater India yet to be." There would be no academic limitation here to the widest possible diffusion of knowledge. The facilities of the Institute would be available to workers from all countries and there would be no desecration of knowledge here by its utilisation for personal gain—no patent would be taken ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... girl-friend whose taste runs to this sort of literary bubble-gum. She told him it was all in a book she'd just read, and showed him. We descended in force on the bookshop and grabbed every copy in stock. We are now running a sort of gaseous-diffusion process, to separate the nuclear physics from the pornography. I must say, Hildegarde has her biological data very well in ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper

... The diffusion of knowledge is greater than in any other part of the globe of equal dimensions. Such are the excellent provisions of our laws, and the virtuous habits of our citizens, that schools of instruction in ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast

... of Boston, and was to include Miss Winthrop's niece, Miss Grace Winthrop, also of Boston. These ladies, as she knew, belonged to clubs which, while modestly named after the days of the week, were devoted wholly to the diffusion of the most exalted mental culture. Moreover, they both were on terms of intimacy with Mr. Henry James. On the other hand, it was her desire that the dinner should be perfect materially, because among her ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... of the origin, collection, preservation, transmission, diffusion, and present influence of the Bible involves so much that is surprising and unique, as to amount to at least a strong presumption of a divine care. Among all the remarkable things about the Book, nothing is more remarkable than that there it is, after all that has happened. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... and Romans had reached maturity within ere they directed their energies outwards. The Germans, on the contrary, began with self-diffusion, deluging the world, and breaking down in their course the hollow political fabrics of the civilised nations. Only then did their development begin, kindled by a foreign culture, a foreign religion, polity, and legislation. The process of culture they underwent consisted ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... nightfall, yet the interminable forest through which he journeyed was lit with a wan glimmer having no point of diffusion, for in its mysterious lumination nothing cast a shadow. A shallow pool in the guttered depression of an old wheel rut, as from a recent rain, met his eye with a crimson gleam. He stooped and plunged his hand ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... weakness. It is scarcely necessary to remark that every country which has been long subjected to the sway of popery is in a state of great and deplorable ignorance. Spain, as might have been expected, has not escaped this common fate, and the greatest obstacle to the diffusion of the Gospel light amongst the Spaniards would proceed from the great want of education amongst them. Perhaps there are no people in the world to whom nature has been, as far as regards mental endowments, more bounteously ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... mortality a corresponding improvement is to be seen in the physical development of children; they are physically finer and more vigorous. It has been the diffusion, the popularization of science, which has brought about such notable advantages. Mothers have learned to welcome the dictates of modern hygiene and to put them into practice in bringing up their ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori

... half, whereas a folio probably cost about twenty francs. These two innovations on type and on format constituted a veritable revolution in the printing press and in the book trade, which now began to reach a far more extensive market than it had ever touched before. With this wide diffusion of books came the popularization of knowledge at which Aldus aimed. Scholarship began to lose its exclusive and aristocratic character when the classics were placed within the reach of any student who chose to study, meditate, ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... that this was not in accordance with the laws of optics as he had known them in his younger days. He could understand the rays being refracted by the crystal and coming to a focus in its interior, but this diffusion jarred with his physical conceptions. He approached the crystal nearly, peering into it and round it, with a transient revival of the scientific curiosity that in his youth had determined his choice of a calling. He was surprised to find the light not ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... two of those three ideas or conceptions which, though not necessarily connected with the specific doctrines of socialism, owe much of their present diffusion to the activity of socialistic preachers—that is to say, the idea, purely statistical, that labour, as contrasted with the directive ability of it, actually produces much more than it gets, and the ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... Menageries, &c., published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, vol. i. p. 68: "The Elephant," ch. iii. It will be seen that I have quoted repeatedly from this volume, because it is the most compendious and careful compilation with which I am acquainted of the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... sunshine is reflected from the houses and fills the streets. The walls of the houses are clean and less discoloured by the deposit of carbon than usual in most towns, so that the reflection is stronger from these white surfaces. Shadow there is none in summer, for the shadows are lit up by diffusion. Something in the atmosphere throws light down into shaded places as if from a mirror. Waves beat ceaselessly on the beach, and the undulations of light flow continuously forwards into the remotest corners. Pure air, free from suspended matter, lets the light pass freely, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... printed page, and yearning to behold their thoughts and ideals permanently crystallized in the magic medium of type. But while a few persons of exceptional talent manage eventually to gain a foothold in the professional world of letters rising to celebrity through the wide diffusion of their art, ideals, or opinions; the vast majority, unless aided in their education by certain especial advantages, are doomed to confine their expression to the necessarily restricted sphere of ordinary conversation. To supply these especial educational ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... The benevolent man, says Epicurus, is like a river, which, if it had a rational soul, must have the highest delight to see so many corn fields and pastures flourish and smile, as it were, with plenty and verdure, and all by the overflowing of its bounty and diffusion of its ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... parishes of England; for, (with a very few exceptions in favor of poor benefices, Welch or Cumbrian,) every parish priest must unavoidably have spent his three years at one or other of the English universities. And by this mode of diffusion it is, that we can explain the strength with which Shakspeare's thoughts and diction impressed themselves from a very early period upon the national literature, and even more generally upon the national thinking ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... the volumes will appear from time to time in sufficient variety to extend simultaneously, and in due proportion, the various branches of Popular Literature. The whole will be prepared with an especial view to the diffusion of sound opinions—to the promulgation of valuable facts and correct principles—and to the due indulgence of general ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton

... were sentenced to hard labor in Siberia. When prosecutions were instituted, large numbers emigrated to Roumania and there took the name of "Lipovans." Women, especially one of the name of Anna Romanovna, have had a great share in the invention and diffusion of the doctrine. Not infrequently it is the women who, with their own hands, transform the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... possible device to the sole legitimate aim, and watched at every turn by the all-seeing eye of public opinion. Every one must admit that this is an application of a sound principle, and that one condition of good government is the diffusion of universal responsibility. It must be admitted, too, that Bentham's theory represents a vigorous embodiment and unflinching application of doctrines which since his time have spread and gained more general authority. Mill says that granting one assumption, the Constitutional Code ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... known among his admiring followers, by the sounding title of "Sir Dan Dann'ly, the Irish haroe." Of course if you know any thing of the glorious science of self-defence, a necessary accomplishment which I hope you have not neglected amidst the general diffusion of knowledge which distinguishes this happy age, of course if you have cultivated that noble art which teaches us the superiority of practical demonstration over theoretical induction, the recollection of that celebrated champion must fill your mind with reverence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various

... to be poured down, and in all directions indeed it is diffused, yet it is not effused. For this diffusion is extension: Accordingly its rays are called Extensions because they are extended. But one may judge what kind of a thing a ray is, if he looks at the sun's light passing through a narrow opening ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius

... Pacific, by a loyal and industrious population.' The aspiration, so strikingly expressed, found a fervent echo in the national heart, and it continues to engage the earnest attention of England; for it speaks of a great outspread of solid prosperity and of rational liberty, of the diffusion of our civilization, and of the extension ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... affirm that toleration has its origin in the weakening of faith; and, drawing the consequence of their affirmation, they recommend the diffusion of the spirit of doubt as the best means of promoting liberty of conscience. We have here the old argument which would suppress the use to get rid of the abuse. Persecutions are made in the name of religion; let us get rid of faith, and we shall ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... among the tobacco-fields and the slave-pens of Virginia. The war passion burned like scattered coals of fire in the households of Revolutionary times; now it rushes all through the land like a flame over the prairie. And this instant diffusion of every fact and feeling produces another singular effect in the equalizing and steadying of public opinion. We may not be able to see a month ahead of us; but as to what has passed a week afterwards it is as thoroughly talked out and judged as it would have been in a whole season before ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... that Shakspere was indebted for that profound knowledge of the Bible which is so evident in his writings? A good many copies of the Scriptures must have been by this time, in one translation or another, scattered over the country. [Footnote: And it seems to us probable that this diffusion of the Bible, did more to rouse the slumbering literary power of England, than any influences of foreign literature whatever.] No doubt the word was precious in those days, and hard to buy; but there might have been a copy, notwithstanding, in the house of John Shakspere, and ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... the whole prospect was covered with brightness and glory. The land smiled, the waters sparkled, the birds sang, and men arose from their resting places and rejoiced: for it was day, and the sun was gone forth on the errand of its Creator, the diffusion of light and gladness, and the dispelling of ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... system has opposed the march of civilization and liberty throughout the world, by denouncing the circulation of the Bible, and the general diffusion of knowledge. Turn to every land where popery predominates, and you will find an ignorant and debased peasantry, a profligate nobility, and a priesthood, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... unnecessarily vast stores of vital energy, even when we contemplate it in its immature manifestations which are infinitely more wholesome than the dumb swamping process. Every high school boy and girl knows the difference between the concentration and the diffusion of this impulse, although they would be hopelessly bewildered by the use of the terms. They will declare one of their companions to be "in love" if his fancy is occupied by the image of a single person about whom all the newly found ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... if such were left, cases of that nature seldom or never occur. And, as between the two provinces, not only is that of Canterbury much more important and extensive, but since the introduction of the funding system, and the extensive diffusion of such property, nearly all wills of importance belonging even to the Province of York are also proved in Doctors' Commons, on account of the rule of the Bank of England to acknowledge no probate of wills but from thence. To this cause, amongst others, may be attributed the striking ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... beaten into a plough-share, and the partisan spear turned into a pruning hook, the inventive genius and talent of our countrymen shall be more aided and better rewarded by Government, in its praiseworthy efforts "for the diffusion of knowledge among men," in all that really ennobles the mind, and benefits the whole human family. Such, at least, is the earnest ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various

... the names of Peter Brown, George Brown, and Oliver Mowat are found on the committee. The object of the society was "the extinction of slavery all over the world by means exclusively lawful and peaceable, moral and religious, such as the diffusion of useful information and argument by tracts, newspapers, lectures, and correspondence, and by manifesting sympathy with the houseless and homeless victims of slavery flying to our soil." Concerts were given, and the proceeds applied in aid ...
— George Brown • John Lewis

... How is it consistent with the universal diffusion of these blessings that vast sums of money should be in single hands? The reply is, as I see it, that, while men of wealth control great sums of money, they do not and cannot use them for themselves. They ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller

... of propaganda of the Government of Dalmatia, whose object is the rapid diffusion of Italianity in this noble region which gives at last to Italy the complete dominion over the most bitter Adriatic, has set before itself a vast programme of truly Italian action ... it is therefore necessary to give these latter ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... borrowing. A predilection for one or the other explanation has lain at the bottom of much ethnological discussion in the past; and at present influential schools both in England and in continental Europe clamorously insist that all cultural parallels are due to diffusion from a single center. It is inevitable to envisage this moot-problem at the start, since uncompromising championship of either alternative has far-reaching practical consequences. For if every parallel is due to borrowing, then sociological laws, which can ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... Does the diffusion of intelligence promote general morality? Is ignorance productive of crime? Matson, p. ...
— Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Debate Index - Second Edition • Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

... hasten the time when body and mind will both be adequately cared for, as a diffusion of the belief that the preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... from New York, containing books, letters, etc.; all very acceptable. We also received a number of old newspapers by post, for which we had to pay eighteen dollars! Each sheet costs a real and a half—a mistaken source of profit in a republic, where the general diffusion of knowledge is of so much importance, for this not only applies to the introduction of French and English, but also of Spanish newspapers. Senors Gutierrez Estrada and Canedo used every effort to reduce this duty on newspapers, but in vain. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... accomplished its end, for, during the war, our armies came into military possession of every State in rebellion. Then, too, was called forth the new power that comes from the simultaneous diffusion of thought and feeling among the nations of mankind. The mysterious sympathy of the millions throughout the world was given spontaneously. The best writers of Europe waked the conscience of the thoughtful, till the intelligent moral sentiment of the Old World was drawn to the side of the unlettered ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft

... Mr. Wilson has not only struggled, but struggled successfully, till now these two Institutions, over which he has watched with all the jealous vigilance of a mother watching her first-born child, stand on a basis of acknowledged success, as two centres for the diffusion of Gospel light and blessing among the children of a people who have been long 'sitting in darkness, and the shadow of death.' During the past year sundry improvements have been made in the Shingwauk Home, which will largely increase the comfort of the occupants. The most notable event, ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... is, that slavery is the corner-stone of republican institutions, and essential for a manly development of character upon the part of the white population. Formerly slavery was looked upon as peculiarly pernicious to the diffusion of wealth and the progress of national greatness; now the South is intoxicated with ideas of the profitableness of slave labor, and the power of King Cotton in controlling the exchanges of the world. And the same change has ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... twelve miles broad, is a very remarkable diffusion of water without islands. It fills a large hollow between two ridges of high rocks, being supplied partly by the torrents which fall into it on either side, and partly, as is supposed, by springs at the bottom. Its water is remarkably clear and pleasant, ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... practically all igneous and most sedimentary rocks. It occurs in sea-water, and quite frequently in beach-sands. Traces of it are also usually to be found in alluvial deposits and in the soils of most mountain-folds. In spite of its wide diffusion, however, all the gold that has been mined could be stored readily in the vaults of ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... one-shilling gallery. It is always the ornament of virtue, and oftentimes a support; but it is a wretched substitute for it. Its worth, as a moral good, is by no means in proportion to its value as a social advantage. These observations are not irrelevant: for to the want of reflection that this diffusion of gentlemanly feeling among us is not the growth of our moral excellence, but the effect of various accidental advantages peculiar to England; to our not considering that it is unreasonable and uncharitable to expect the same consequences, where the ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... of Addison's felicity in choice of motto for a paper, but was so bold and well-timed that it must have given a wholesome shock to the minds of many of the Spectators readers. Addison was not before Steele in appreciation of Milton and diffusion of a true sense of his genius. Milton was the subject of the first piece of poetical criticism in the Tatler; where, in his sixth number, Steele, having said that all Milton's thoughts are wonderfully just and natural, dwelt on the passage in which Adam tells his thoughts ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... diffusion of Christianity throughout the world had rendered it very difficult to supply all the faithful with the consecrated wine. Such inconvenience is scarcely felt by Protestant communicants, whose numbers are limited and who ordinarily communicate only on certain Sundays of each month. The Catholics ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... article, the investigation has been based on the assumption that the temperatures produced by radiant heat at given distances from its source are inversely as the diffusion of the rays at those distances. In other words, the temperature produced by solar radiation is as the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... which before they were deprived, and are more and more taking the position of citizens, with the same kinds of duties, privileges, and responsibilities as men. In part, also, it may be added, there is a growing diffusion among educated people of a knowledge of the primary facts of life in the two sexes, slowly dissipating and dissolving many foolish and often mischievous superstitions. The result is that, as many competent observers have noted, ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis

... initiations. Link between Phrygian, Mithraic, and Christian, Mysteries to be found in their higher, esoteric, teaching. Women not admitted to Mithraic initiation. Possible survival in Grail text. Joint diffusion through the Roman Empire. Cumont's evidence. Traces of cult in British Isles. Possible explanation of unorthodox character of Grail legend. Evidence of survival of cult in fifth century. The Elucidation a possible record of historic ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... the race. Religion and civilization have diffused themselves, from little centres—from Athens and Jerusalem and Rome—until people after people, whole continents, have been brought under their influence. And in our day this diffusion is so rapid that it spreads farther in a decade than formerly in centuries. For ages, mountains and rivers and oceans were barriers behind which tribes and nations entrenched themselves against the human foe. But we have tunneled the mountains; we have bridged the rivers; we have tamed ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... solutions are kept apart by their specific gravities, yet mingle by slow diffusion. Figure 15 illustrates this common type of cell, where Z is the zinc plate in a solution of sulphate of zinc, and C is the copper plate in a solution of sulphate of copper, fed by crystals of the "blue vitriol." The ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro

... comfort is the wide diffusion of that peculiar language, "trade English"; it is not only used as a means of intercommunication between whites and blacks, but between natives using two distinct languages. On the south-west Coast you find ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... It should be noted that the distance of the ground-glass from the negative has its influence in the strength of the light, and it is better to have this distance not over two inches. If less than one inch, however, the diffusion of light is not so good. When the light is weak the ground-glass can be removed entirely; the negative will thus be viewed directly against the white reflector. Very strong negatives giving undue contrasts may also be dealt with in this way. Or, if the light ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant

... extreme distance no motion is perceptible among its component stars. The laws by which those stellar aggregations are produced and governed are wrapped in obscurity, and the nature of the motions of their stars, whether towards concentration or diffusion, cannot at present be ascertained. If those globular clusters could be observed sufficiently near, they would most probably expand into vast systems of suns occupying immense regions ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... crew of slaveholders, countenanced by a large body of passengers, is smothering four millions under the hatches, and yet the politician asserts that the only proper way by which deliverance is to be obtained, is by "the quiet diffusion of the sentiments of humanity," without any "outbreak." As if the sentiments of humanity were ever found unaccompanied by its deeds, and you could disperse them, all finished to order, the pure article, as easily as water with a watering-pot, ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau

... whether, as some philologists think, they have grown from two or more stocks, it is clear that since large groups of languages, as the Indo-European, are of one parentage, they have become distinct through a process of continuous divergence. The same diffusion over the Earth's surface which has led to differentiations of race, has simultaneously led to differentiations of speech: a truth which we see further illustrated in each nation by the distinct dialects found in separate districts. ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is said that knowledge is power, and the like. Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau

... Debating Societies. They were at least, to say the lowest of them, far better amusements than drunkenness, gambling, or fighting. They were no useless Schools to some of our very celebrated Speakers at the Bar and in Parliament: and, what is of infinitely more importance, they contributed to the diffusion of Political Knowledge and Public Sentiment. L.] at Coachmaker's-hall, but not often; and a few times to Covent-garden Theatre. These are all the opportunities he ever had to learn from Public Speakers. As to Books, he had to wade through two ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield

... as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit: one method ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... from movement. For if light were a body, its diffusion would be the local movement of a body. Now no local movement of a body can be instantaneous, as everything that moves from one place to another must pass through the intervening space before reaching the end: whereas the diffusion of light is instantaneous. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... superabundance, good for nobody, of all other advantages; and that thus, instead of being the preservers of a beautiful and genial flame, good for all, and in due season partakeable by all, they would hoard and make an idolatrous treasure of it, sacred to one class alone, and such as the diffusion of knowledge renders it alike useless and ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt

... brilliant flowers burst forth as the spring brings them on the walls of a ruin; even in the caverns there droop from the vaulted roof faintly colored tufts of green vegetation. The sun of education permeates all. Since this vast development of thought, this even and fruitful diffusion of light, we have scarcely any men of superiority, because every single man represents the whole education of his age. We are surrounded by living encyclopaedias who walk about, think, act and wish to be immortalized. Hence the frightful catastrophes ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... cat, did nothing to it, indeed, beyond occasionally coaxing it from the stool to his knee, and there letting it purr, climb to his shoulder, and rub its head against his cheek; though there was no ear-splitting cracking off of firearms, no diffusion of sulphurous gunpowder perfume, no noise, no boasting during his stay—that still Caroline sat in the room, and seemed to find wondrous content in the stitching of Jew-basket pin-cushions and the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... Reviews" and the over-curious Bishop of Natal? Where are the men whose voices ought to ring like clarions among the hosts of their brethren in the Free States of the North? Where is Lord Brougham, ex-apostle of the Diffusion of Knowledge, while the question is of enforced perpetual ignorance as the cement of that unhallowed structure with which this nineteenth century is to be outraged, if treason has its way? Where is Dickens, the hater of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... deliberately ignoring those with whom it is not shared. If generosity and kindliness are to be common, there must be more care than there is at present for the elementary wants of human nature, and more realization that the diffusion of happiness among all who are not the victims of some peculiar misfortune is both possible and imperative. A world full of happiness would not wish to plunge into war, and would not be filled with that grudging hostility which our cramped and narrow ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... deprived of this property by a division or disintegration of their particles. Pure silica in the state of hard, rock crystal is a better conductor than bismuth or lead; but if the rock crystal be pulverized, the diffusion of heat through its powder is very slow and feeble. Heat is conducted swiftly and copiously through transparent rock salt, but pulverization converts the solid mass into a good non-conductor. Caloric has for the same reason a stronger affinity ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... intrigues, and debased by brutal sensuality. The ineradicable spirit of hatred against every thing British, vented itself harmlessly in the bravadoes of the tyrant; but was more dangerously inflamed among many of the native powers of India, by the secret diffusion of a project for a general and simultaneous insurrection. A double mystery of villany saved us, probably, at that time from the shocks and horrors of war in which we have been recently involved. The deposed Kurruck Singh suddenly expired—a victim, it was whispered, to the insidious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... by someone at another company. Fabbing chips based on the designs of others is the activity of a {silicon foundry}. To a hacker, 'fab' is practically never short for 'fabulous'. 2. 'fab line': the production system (lithography, diffusion, etching, etc.) for chips at a chip manufacturer. Different 'fab lines' are run with different process parameters, die sizes, or technologies, or simply to ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... degree that tempts one to believe the island has a special atmosphere of its own.... A friend tells me the phenomenon is probably due to inorganic substances floating in the air—each substance in diffusion having its own index of refraction. Substances so held in suspension by vapors would vary according to the nature of soil in different islands, and might thus produce special ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... memorials of the rule of the Pharaohs are still engraved on the rocks of Libya and Arabia. Alexander, again, in a later age, crossed from Macedonia to Asia with the disciples of Aristotle in his train. His march was the diffusion of the arts and commerce, and the acquisition of scientific knowledge; the countries he passed through were accurately described, as he proceeded, and the intervals between halt and halt regularly measured.[72] His naval armaments explored ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... or that the well-being of a country depends more on the standard of social duty and the willingness of citizens to conform to it, than on the standard of intellectual culture and the extent of its diffusion. In other words, we ought to be less concerned about the speculative or scientific curiousness of our people than about the height of their notion of civic virtue and their firmness and persistency in realising it. It is a moralist's way of putting the ancient preacher's monition, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... that ratified air not only contains less oxygen in a given volume, as I have already said, but also appears to admit more readily of the admixture and thorough diffusion of bad gases. The carbonic acid gas which is formed by breathing, settles the more readily towards the floor, in proportion to the general density of the atmosphere of the room; and if the bed-room be large, so that it does not accumulate in such ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... Mother-Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scotch Rite. What Signor Margiotta terms Universal Freemasonry is not the Palladium at all, but simply the Scotch Rite; one of his own diplomas, reproduced at page 120 of "Adriano Lemmi," is proof positive of this; and in view of the universal diffusion of this rite, no one would deny it the name. In the third place, the documents of Signor Margiotta as regards the Palladium are not to be trusted, because in one instance a gross imposition has been practised provably ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite



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