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Disquisition

noun
1.
An elaborate analytical or explanatory essay or discussion.






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"Disquisition" Quotes from Famous Books



... more learned disquisition on the origin of these evidently congenerous words under the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various

... by supper!" But it was not: not a bit of it. Of course we searched in those delusive cookery books, but they only told us what sauces to serve with a roasted pig, or how to garnish it, entering minutely into a disquisition upon whether a lemon or an orange had better be stuck into its mouth. We wanted to know how to cook it, and why it would not get itself baked. About an hour before supper-time I grew desperate at the anticipation of the "chaff" Alice and I would certainly have to undergo if this detestable animal ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... "I have seen a white, black, red, and yellow fog," and went off into a disquisition about optics, mediums, reflections, refractions, and all sorts ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... swelling her doughty old heart, so that even these considerations did not damp her exultation over her artist neighbor the next time he came to see her. He listened to her boasting with his pleasant, philosophic smile, and, when she finished, delivered himself of a quiet little disquisition or the nature of things which was like ice-water in the face of ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... this question of physics to arguing with the licentiate as to the morality of his action. Brandolaccio, who did not find their scientific disquisition entertaining, interrupted it with the remark that the sun was just going ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee

... philosophers. Sense, perception, judgment, desire, volition, memory, imagination, are found to be separated by such delicate shades and minute gradations that their boundaries have eluded the most subtle investigations, and remain a pregnant source of ingenious disquisition and controversy. The boundaries between the great kingdom of nature, and, still more, between the various provinces, and lesser portions, into which they are subdivided, afford another illustration of the same important truth. The ...
— The Federalist Papers

... they can only be expelled by all-powerful Necessity. Life is, indeed, too brief, and success too precarious, to trust, in any case where happiness is concerned, the extirpation of deep-rooted and darling opinions, to the slow-working influence of argument and disquisition. ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... ponchos and horse-rugs we formed luxurious couches, though the mosquitoes were somewhat troublesome. The doctor was entering into a learned disquisition as to their species. ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... said Mr. Peebles; 'a Multiplepoinding is the safest REMEDIUM JURIS in the whole; form of process. I have known it conjoined with a declarator of marriage.—Your beef is excellent,' he said to my father, who in vain endeavoured to resume his legal disquisition; 'but something highly powdered—and the twopenny is undeniable; but it is small swipes—small swipes—more of hop than malt-with your leave, I'll ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... was no time for disquisition, the second bee being now ready for a start. Like his companion, this insect rose and encircled the stump several times, ere it darted away toward its hive, in an air-line. So small was the object, and so rapid its movement, that no one but the bee-hunter saw the animal ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... which looked over the Forth to Fife, and the walls of which were so temptingly covered with books, his real life work had begun. No treat was greater, no honour more esteemed, than a visit to that study and a learned disquisition there on its owner's favourite books or ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black

... Discourse requires, that we should now enquire into the Original of the Franks, and trace them from their first Habitations, or (as it were) their very Cradles: In which Disquisition 'tis very much to be admired, that no mention has been made of them by Ptolomy, Strabo, or even by Tacitus himself, who of all Writers was most accurate in describing the Names and Situations of all the German Nations: and 'tis plain, ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman

... you about horses," he reiterated to Saxon; and, assisted by his hostess, he gave a very creditable disquisition on horseflesh and its management from a business ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... as a rule, may be spoken of in two classes. Either the preacher would read a passage of Scripture in Latin, and throw in here and there a few remarks by way of commentary, or else the sermon was a long and dry disquisition upon some of the (frequently very absurd) dogmas of the schoolmen; such as, whether angels were synonymous with spirits, which of the seven principal angels was the chief, how long it took Gabriel to fly from heaven to earth at the Annunciation, ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt

... disquisition on myself above cited, you will be prepared to understand the changes through which this wonderful ego et me ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... disquisition in which a man reasons at once for and against himself upon authority which he knows not to be ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... treat his assertions as an impudent fiction. I come directly to this point, because the intervening articles of the executions of Rivers, Gray, Vaughan, and Hastings will naturally find their place in that disquisition. ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole

... three weeks before the unhappy business was finally disposed of. A Treasury solicitor was given the chance of his career by the medico-legal disquisition which cleared up an extraordinary record. The annals of the disease which predisposed Theodore Siddle to crime went back many years. He was a fairly wealthy man by inheritance, and adopted the profession of chemistry as a hobby. One fact stood out boldly. He was aware of his ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy

... blush, in the midst of a disquisition which Miss Dallas was delivering upon a new poem of Francois Coppee. He saw the clear, warm color rise and subside like the throbbing of an auroral light in a starry night. He thought he had never seen anything so lovely, but he wondered "what that oaf could have said to make her blush like that. ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... of his religious suggestions, he goes on to descant upon slavery in the [210] fashion which we have elsewhere noticed, but it may still be proper to add a word or two here regarding this particular disquisition of his. This we are happy in being able to do under the guidance of an anterior and more reliable exponent of ecclesiastical as well as secular obedience on the part of all free and enlightened men in the present epoch of the ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... "On the Determination of the Relative Weight of Single Molecules," by E. Vogel, of San Francisco. This paper, which was taken as read, consists of a lengthy theoretical disquisition, in which the author maintains the following propositions: That the combining weights of all elements are one third of their present values; the assumption that equal volumes of gases contain equal numbers of molecules does not hold good; that the present theory of valency is not ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... open and the New Jerusalem to appear this moment before you," retorted Judith, with the relevant irrelevance of her sex, "you would begin an unconcerned disquisition ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... witchcraft had ceased; and therefore an Act of Parliament was passed to prevent persecution for what was not witchcraft. Why it ceased, we cannot tell, as we cannot tell the reason of many other things.' Dr Cullen, to keep up the gratification of mysterious disquisition, with the grave address for which he is remarkable in his companionable as in his professional hours, talked, in a very entertaining manner, of people walking and conversing in their sleep. I am very sorry I have ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... multiplying of the thoughts to which expression is given, by Dryden. With old Geoffrey, the weight of death seems actually to lie upon the tongue that speaks in few interrupted accents. Dryden's Moribund runs on, quite at his ease, in eloquent disquisition. Another unsatisfactory difference is the disappearing of that distinct, commanding purpose or plan, and the due proportion observed upon in the original. That mere cleaving desire to Emelie, felt through the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... a useless physiological disquisition; it is of the greatest use in directing our practice; and teaches us that, in passive inflammation, which has all the symptoms of active, and therefore shows in a striking point of view the fallacy of symptoms, we shall not succeed by applying leeches, and other debilitating ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... read an extremely interesting disquisition on the Oyster, which was divided into sections and literally devoured by the audience. He also exhibited some Specimens of Conchs, which were regular Sneezers ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various

... professor I had at the university," ejaculated DeLong contemptuously as Craig finished his disquisition on the practical fallibility of theoretically infallible systems. Again DeLong carefully avoided the "17," as ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... adventure of losing my way to Glen Rushen, but my little sketch may perhaps get you close to that side of Manx life whereon I wish to speak to-day. I want to tell the history of religion in Man, so far as we know it; and better, to my thinking, than a grave or solid disquisition on the ways and doings of Bishops or Spiritual Barons, are any peeps into the hearts and home lives of the Manx, which will show what is called the "innate religiosity" of the humblest of the people. To this end also, when I ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine

... launched into a disquisition on germs and their natures, using words and phrases of such extraordinary length and meaninglessness, that the boys grinned at one another and looked out over the deserted ocean till they forgot the old man ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London

... consideration of the effects that may result from the great principle which the legislature has now for the first time recognised and established we do not enter, because we would avoid disquisition of a speculative nature. But there is one practical lesson which, often as we have on former occasions inculcated it on you, the present subject suggests to us once more to enforce. While, on the one hand, it may be anticipated ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... transpired centuries before, and in many instances the entire absence of a written language, by which, either to perpetuate events, or enable the philosopher by analogy of language to ascertain their affinity with other nations. Conjectural then as must be every disquisition as to the manner in which this continent was first peopled, still however, as many men eminent for learning and piety have devoted much labor and time to the investigation of the subject, it may afford satisfaction to the curious ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... may be presented in yet another light. The only use of terms, whether in daily talk or in philosophical disquisition, is that of designating certain things or attributes to which by general custom we agree to affix them; so that if anyone applies a term to some thing or attribute which general custom does not warrant him in so applying, he is merely laying himself open to the charge of ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... not start out to write a disquisition on women as golfers, but only to offer some hints on ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... obey. Some of these doctrines are specious enough; whilst, as to others, how they could ever have been entertained arouses a wonder that can only be allayed by a lengthy historical and psychological disquisition. ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... Gilbert a Beckett, he produced, nevertheless, an enormous amount of "copy" that was always readable, even when it was not his best. He wrote from Paris to his friend, Mrs. Brookfield (September 2nd, 1849): "I won't give you an historical disquisition in the Titmarsh manner upon this, but reserve it for Punch—for whom, on Thursday [I have written] an article that I think is quite unexampled for dulness, even in that Journal, and that beats the dullest Jerrold. What a jaunty, offhand, satiric rogue I am, to be sure—and ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... that ever were born and came to anything. The advertised story is a kind of mother-hen who gathers under her wings a numerous brood of biographical chicks. Quantities of recondite erudition are poured out on the slightest provocation. Nat's unquestioned superiority to his schoolmates evokes a disquisition for the encouragement of dull boys, in which we are told that "the great philosopher, Newton, was one of the dullest scholars in school when he was twelve years old. Doctor Isaac Barrow was such a dull, pugnacious, stupid fellow, etc., etc. The father of Doctor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... that I thought Nothing more cruel, than the Lenity of Juries, and the Frequencies of Pardons, and not forget to tell him, that my Book contained several Essays on Politicks; that the greatest Part of it was a Philosophical Disquisition into the Force of the Passions, and the Nature of Society, and that they were silly People, who made ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville

... I borrow from the Rev. Thomas Hunter, Vicar of Wrexham in the middle of the last century, and author of a book on Tacitus, from which I take the idea in the text. Hunter meant his work to be at once a philological and historical disquisition and a psychological and ethical analysis: he wrote it evidently from being thoroughly disgusted by what he had read in the Annals—(as well he might be);—and he laboured hard but in vain to show that the same faults which he found in that work he detected ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... a promising topic that they got out the encyclopaedia and found to their joy that there was quite a lengthy and learned disquisition on the subject. So they read it again and again, even learning the more abstruse sentences by heart. Next day they were observed to chuckle whenever they caught each other's eye, and at lunch they were unusually cheerful and more than ordinarily ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... seem desirous, by the futile process of analytical dialectics, to subvert the pyramidal structure of synthetically deduced opinions, which have withstood the secular revolutions of physiological disquisition, and which I maintain to be transcendentally self-evident, categorically certain, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... trouble you with an account of the speculations of these latter, and the state of the parties which they represent? The complication is not a little curious, and may form, perhaps, a subject of graver disquisition. The July fetes occupy, as you may imagine, a considerable part of their columns just now, and it is amusing to follow them one by one; to read Tweedledum's praise, and Tweedledee's indignation—to read, in the Debats how the King was received with ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... said Judge Asher Carruth, of London, "Southern people have been lavish in bestowing titles. I think there is something in the Southern temperament which explains this. I didn't start out on this, however, for a philosophical disquisition, but rather to tell how a certain Kentucky gentleman established valid title to the rank of Colonel. He went to Cincinnati once with a friend, who enjoyed many acquaintances there; and who introduced him to every one as Colonel Brown. Everything ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... historian of Rome has left us, as an episode of his great work, a disquisition on the probable effects that would have followed, if Alexander the Great had invaded Italy. Posterity has generally regarded that disquisition as proving Livy's patriotism more strongly than his impartiality or acuteness. Yet, right or wrong, the speculations of the Roman writer were directed ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... style. Popanilla, therefore, spoke of man in a savage state, the origin of society, and the elements of the social compact, in sentences which would not have disgraced the mellifluous pen of Bentham. From these he naturally digressed into an agreeable disquisition on the Anglo-Saxons; and, after a little badinage on the Bill of Rights, flew off to an airy aper u of the French Revolution. When he had arrived at the Isle of Fantaisie he begged to inform his Majesty that man was born for something ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... under the miscellaneous writer's star who purposed to write on, say, bums he had known would quite likely begin with a disquisition upon the importance of a good shape of human ear, and very naturally would conclude, with some warmth, with a denunciation of tight trowsers. And he would, of course, wander by the way into pleasant reminiscences of his childhood—how, for instance, the child gets his idea of what a native ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... They talked in a friendly, bantering tone of the concerts they gave together, Christophe with his piano, the Commandant with his flute. Christophe tried to go, but the old man would not let him: and he plunged blindly into a disquisition on music. Suddenly he stopped ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... ambitious allegorical poem of the age of chivalry, entitled "Hermin and Gunilde," which was not only exceedingly well reviewed, but received the honour of a parody entitled "Harlequin and Columbine." He also wrote translations of several of the poems of Ossian, and a disquisition upon their genuineness; and then with better inspiration he wrote a considerable treatise on "Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry," with metrical translations, being thus the first to call the attention of Germany to these admirable poems, which were afterwards so successfully ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... consider merely the subtlety of disquisition, the force of imagination, the perfect energy and elegance of expression, which characterize the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce them intrinsically most valuable; but what shall we say when we reflect that from hence have sprung, directly or indirectly, all the noblest creations ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... a philosophical disquisition on some such lines did Phineas McPhail seek to initiate Doggie into the weird mysteries of the new social life. Doggie heard with his ears, but thought in terms of Durdlebury tea-parties. Nowhere in the mass could he ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... still day, the road was deserted, and every sound came sharply through the air. Mr. Carstyle was in the midst of a disquisition on Diderot, when he raised his head ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... life is first-rate poetry; it is an illuminating figure of poetic speech. But the simplicity with which the theme is presented, to the exclusion of many material issues, puts the statement out of the plane of metaphysical disquisition, which involves subtle conflict of argument and measured resolution of doubt, rather than imaginative certainty or unconditional assertion. Nor is Hamlet's famous soliloquy on the merits and demerits ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... Autobiographia Literaria, sketches of my literary Life and Opinions. This in turn developed into "a full account (raisonne) of the controversy concerning Wordsworth's poems and theory," with a "disquisition on the powers of Association ... and on the generic difference between the Fancy and the Imagination." This ran to such a length that he decided not to use it as a preface, but to amplify it into a work ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... An interesting disquisition ensued. Miss Payne rejected Bournemouth, Weymouth, Worthing, Brighton, and Folkestone, for what seemed to Katherine sufficient reason, and finally recommended Sandbourne, a quiet and little-known nook on the Dorsetshire coast, as being mild but not relaxing, ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... am serious. I should have to give you quite a disquisition to explain my conclusions, and I doubt if it would be practicable for you to consider the subject now. And you would have to surrender to public opinion anyhow. If you do put in force a new system of taxation you'll have to treat the married man easily. I am ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... care to teach us; and thank God," concludes Najef-Kooli with heartfelt gratitude, "we never did dance. God protect the faithful from it!" Independent of the above recorded opinions on the singularity of quadrilles and waltzes, the khan takes this occasion to enter into a disquisition on the inconsistency (doubly incongruous to an Oriental eye) of the ladies having their necks, arms, and shoulders uncovered, while the men are clothed up to the chin, "and not even their hands are allowed to be seen bare," and returned from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... copies of the same to several gentlemen in North America, from the most of whom we have received answers, agreeing nearly in sentiments, with those you were pleased to communicate to us though no one has entered into a disquisition of the subject so fully and satisfactorily as you have." The original letter is ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... rest, Yet the light of analogy, afforded by the institutions of the Incas, seems to point, as far as it goes, towards the same direction; and as the investigation could present but little substantially to confirm, and still less to confute, the views taken in the former disquisition, I have not thought it best to fatigue the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... hundred miles. Physiographically it may be roughly divided into three zones," and so on for a considerable length until by an accident which Clarissa could attribute to nothing but inconceivable awkwardness, Judge Bording dropped a glass of water, crash! Having ceased his disquisition at this accident, so disconcerting to the judge, Miss Bording very prettily and promptly thanked him for his information and saying that she now had a clear understanding of the principal facts pertaining to Algeria, abruptly changed the subject by asking him if he had heard anything ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... dropping-fire, I promised, starry Heaven being my helper. 'Let's go to bed after that,' I pleaded. 'I've soared in an airy disquisition and I've come to earth in a gross sort ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... grown fond of) a big religious debate. Those who side with the national religion and tradition emphasize their opinion in every possible way—so do their opponents. You pick up two newspapers from Toulouse, for instance, and it is quite on the cards that the leading article of each will be a disquisition upon the philosophy of religion, the one, the "Depeche" of Toulouse, militantly, and often solently atheist; the ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... into a disquisition on whiskers, and Diana escaped from the task of describing her lover. She could not have ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... production. In the execution of it much may be objectionable. The verse (particularly in the introduction of the ode) may be accused of unwarrantable liberties, but they are liberties equally homogeneal with the exactness of Mathematical disquisition, and the boldness of Pindaric daring. I have three strong champions to defend me against the attacks of Criticism: the Novelty, the Difficulty, and the Utility of the work. I may justly plume myself that I ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... in our Boston newspapers quite so amusing as the very friendly and sympathetic report of Prof. Harris' most elaborate and laborious comments on the SYLLOGISMS, which reminds one of Hopkinson's metaphysical and elaborate disquisition on the nature, properties, relations, and essential entity of a salt-box. We do not laugh at the professor as we did at Daniel Pratt, the "Great American Traveller," whose travels are now ended; for, aside from his metaphysical ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various

... the sound of the angelus might catch him. His children before bedtime knelt all in a row to ask his blessing. If he had been to Asuncion, he probably remarked that the people under those accursed priests were naught but animals and slaves, and launched into some disquisition he had heard in the solitary cafe which Asuncion then boasted. In the latter case, after much of the rights of man and the duties of hospitality, he generally presented you with a heavy bill for Indian corn and 'pindo'* which your horse had eaten. In the former, usually ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... undertaken a disquisition on dreams, and attempted to cite instances where the future had been indicated in these hazy visions of our sleep. This had served to turn the Old Cattleman's train of ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis

... possibility of disproving it, and points out that the assumption that it has occurred is a necessary part of the doctrine of Evolution. The fourteenth lecture, on "Schoepfungs-Perioden und Schoepfungs-Urkunden," answers pretty much to the famous disquisition on the "Imperfection of the Geological Record" ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... which Sainte-Beuve detaches so lovingly from the mass of serious speculation in which they are embedded. What he, as a purely literary critic, passed over as comparatively uninteresting, gives the exposition of Cowper's intellectual position. The poem is in fact a political, moral, and religious disquisition interspersed with charming vignettes, which, though not obtrusively moralised, illustrate the general thesis. The poetical connoisseur may separate them from their environment, as a collector of engravings might cut ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... which it most concerns us to know, are familiar to us, even from childhood. Well for us if we do not abuse this privilege, and mistake the familiarity of words which convey these truths for a clear understanding of the truths themselves! If the preceding disquisition, with all its subtlety and all its obscurity, should answer no other purpose, it will still have been neither purposeless, nor devoid of utility, should it only lead us to sympathize with the strivings of the human intellect, awakened ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... 'of the Bye.' He described this latter, and tried to point out that the former was closely cognate to it. In order to mask the difficulty, nay, the impossibility, of doing this successfully on the evidence which he possessed, he wandered off into a long and wordy disquisition on treasonable plots in general, ending abruptly with that of Edmund de la Pole. Then, for the first time, Coke faced the chief difficulty of the Government, namely, that there was but one witness against ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... conclusions respecting the date of its erection, and "putting the colophon" to this disquisition respecting the principal public buildings at Caen, it is high time to assure you how ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... rudest peasant. We have observed several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain working-men, was sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we could so readily stake the fame of the old ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... lies at the basis of all other modes of reasoning, constitutes the prominent subject of these volumes. Nevertheless, the old topic of logic proper, or deductive reasoning, is not omitted, and the first passage to which we feel bound, on many accounts, to give our attention, is the disquisition on the syllogism. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... their oppositions, from mere caprice or accident; at another time, they suffer the most serious occasions to pass in silence. If a vein of literary genius be casually opened, or a new subject of disquisition be started, real or pretended discoveries suddenly multiply, and every conversation is inquisitive and animated. If a new source of wealth be found, or a prospect of conquest be offered, the imaginations of men are inflamed, and whole quarters of the globe are ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... Constitutionally timid, on taking the oath of office, he betrayed his own weakness, and foreshadowed the forthcoming decision of the Supreme Court. Under the wing of the Executive, Chief-Justice Taney gave his famed disquisition. The delivery of that opinion was an act of revolution. The truth of history was scorned; the voice of passion was put forward as the rule of law; doctrines were laid down which, if they are just, give a full sanction to the rebellion which ensued. The country was stung ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... 1280), the Holy Grail is to be removed from a sinful world and to be carried to the East to be given to Feirefiz, half brother to Parzifal.[34] The meeting of Feirefiz with the knights furnishes the poet an opportunity of bringing in a learned disquisition on Prester John and his dri India die witen, and finally this mythical monarch offers his crown to Parzifal, who henceforth is called Priester Johanni. In the poem of "Lohengrin", of unknown authorship, the knight when about to depart declares he has come from India where there is a house fairer ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy

... given the physical description of a single province, I could have treated separately everything relating to its geography, mineralogy, and botany; but how could I interrupt the narrative of a journey, a disquisition on the manners of a people, or the great phenomena of nature, by an enumeration of the productions of the country, the description of new species of animals and plants, or the detail of astronomical observations. Had I adopted a mode of composition ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... pleadings of Paul. He is a pure and lofty soul, but he writes as if in seclusion from the world. His favorite words are abstract and general. The parable and precept of the early gospels give place to polemic and metaphysic disquisition. The Christian communities for which he writes have left behind them the sharp antagonisms of the first generation, and have drawn together into a harmonious society, strong in their mutual affection, their inspiring faith, and their rule of life, and facing together ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... Dumas launched out into a disquisition on the history of the duello through the ages that was nearly as long as one of his own serials. In the middle of it, a member of the jury, anxious to be in the limelight, asked him ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... cultivated opponent with the conventional "Ladies and Gentlemen," but with the ominously intimate, "My Fellow Citizens,"—Lincoln is saying, "I am not master of language; I have not a fine education; I am not capable of entering into a disquisition upon dialectics, as I believe you call it; but I do not believe the language I employed bears any such construction as Judge Douglas puts upon it. But I don't care about a quibble in regard to words. I know what I meant, and I will ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... not going to be let in for a disquisition on the merits of various Pocket-books; but, if asked which he affectionates most as a genuine book of pockets, and for pockets, he puts his finger to the side of his nose, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various

... parallel, I take it for granted that we can stand for this short time very clear of our party distinctions. If it were enough, by the use of an odious and unpopular word, to determine the question, it would be no longer a subject of rational disquisition; since that very prejudice which gives these odious names, and which is the party charged for doing so, and for the consequences of it, would then become the judge also. But I flatter myself that not a few will be found who do not think that the names ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... will be litigious; pride and obstinacy are often the cause of law suits; the nature of our laws and governments may be another. As citizens it is easy to imagine, that they will carefully read the newspapers, enter into every political disquisition, freely blame or censure governors and others. As farmers they will be careful and anxious to get as much as they can, because what they get is their own. As northern men they will love the cheerful ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... He, in the succeeding winter, chose the same subject for an essay, submitted to Mr. Dugald Stewart, whose prelections on ethics he was then attending. Some time later he again illustrated the same opinions more at length in a disquisition before the Speculative Society; and, indeed, he always adhered to them. One of the last historical books he read, before leaving Abbotsford for Malta in 1831, was Colonel Tod's interesting account of Rajasthan; and I well remember the delight he expressed on finding his views ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... by his delicate critical perception that the true business of literature is with narrative; in reasoned narrative, and there alone, that art enjoys all its advantages, and suffers least from its defects. Dry precept and disembodied disquisition, as they can only be read with an effort of abstraction, can never convey a perfectly complete or a perfectly natural impression. Truth, even in literature, must be clothed with flesh and blood, or it cannot tell its whole story to the reader. Hence the effect ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... his emphasis of fact, Glanvill was as ready as any to enter into a theological disquisition. Into those rarefied regions of thought we shall not follow him. It will perhaps not be out of order, however, to note two or three points that were thoroughly typical of his reasoning. To the contention that, ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... thus far have seemed a long and discursive disquisition on the significance of the new opera; but the questions to which the production of "Boris Godounoff" give rise are many and grave, especially in the present state of our operatic activities. They have a strong bearing ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... for your mathematical knowledge is not sufficient to make you know in what the problem consists,' you don't say in what it does consist according to your ideas, oh! no nothing of the sort, you enter into no disquisition upon the subject in order to show where you think Mr. —— is wrong and why you have not is simply—because you cannot—you know that he has done it and what is if I am not wrongly informed you have been heard to say ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... metrical disquisition it is not easy to separate the poetry, which in places is very good, from the intellectual content, which is not so good from a modern point of view. By the joint aid of several sciences laboriously piecing ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... a scheme in all human affairs, and consequently in all church movements," the Major replied, and the impulse of a disquisition straightened him into a posture more dignified, for he was fond of talking and at times he strove to be logical and impressive; but at this moment Bill arrived with mint from the spring; and with lighter talk ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... face and neck had grown positively scarlet, and she could have kissed the well-disposed landlady for entering on a voluble disquisition as to the tricks played by the Wye on those unaware of its peculiarities, especially at night. A general conversation broke out, but Mrs. Devar, rapidly regaining her spirits after enduring long hours of the horrible obsession that Medenham had run off with her heiress, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... BURNOUF and LASSEN published their learned "Essai sur le Pali," but the most ample light was thrown upon its structure and history by the subsequent investigations of TURNOUR, who, in the introduction to his version of the Mahawanso, has embodied a disquisition on the antiquity of Pali as compared with Sanskrit ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... "bookworms," "jurists," "professors," or other "theorists," instead of, as is the fact, mainly by statesmen, diplomatists, prize courts, generals and admirals. This is, however, a wide field, into which I must not stray. I have even avoided the pleasant by-paths of disquisition on contraband, privateering, and the Declaration of Paris generally, into which some of your correspondents have courteously invited me. I fear we are as yet far from having disposed of the comparatively simple question as to the ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland

... disquisition, no argument is to be taken from contingent circumstances, (which, however, are often found here as well as in the case of marbles); such only are to be employed as are general to the subject, and arise necessarily from the nature of ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... essays have been chosen which bear directly on Sir Roger or the Spectator Club: several have been omitted which refer to him only en passant or as a peg on which to hang some disquisition, and also one other which is wholly out of ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others

... certain number of resemblances, so will any two wars in history, whether war itself be regarded as abstract or concrete,—a question that seems to have exercised some grammatical minds, and ought therefore to be settled before any further step is taken in this disquisition, which is the disquisition of a grammarian. Now most persons would pronounce war an abstract, but one excellent manual with which I am acquainted sets it down as a concrete, and I have often thought that the author must have known something practically about war. ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve

... divergence which was conveyed by these terms Arian and Catholic, or to speak more judicially (for the Arians averred that they were the true Catholics and that their opponents were heretics) Arian and Athanasian? As this is not the place for a disquisition on disputed points of theology, it is sufficient to say that, while the Athanasian held for truth the whole of the Nicene Creed, the Arian—at least that type of Arian with whom we are here concerned—would, in that part which relates to the Son of God, leave out the ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... the committee occupied with the Code, Napoleon entered upon a long disquisition in favour of the Roman law of adoption; urging with intrepid logic, that an heir so chosen ought to be even dearer than a son. The object of this harangue was not difficult of detection. Napoleon had no longer any hope of having children by Josephine; and ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... here listening to an old female reprobate's disquisition on religion?" passed through Antony Dart's mind. "Why am I listening? I am doing it because here is a creature who BELIEVES—knowing no doctrine, knowing no church. She BELIEVES—she thinks she KNOWS her Deity is by her side. She is not afraid. To her simpleness the awful ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... be pardoned for this disquisition on my own designs. When every means is employed to misrepresent, it becomes, perhaps, allowable to explain. And if I do not think that my faults as a dramatic author are to be found in the study and delineation of character, it is precisely because THAT is the point on which all my previous ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the Sarasvati, made her appearance at Pushkara for the sake of the Grandsire and for gratifying the Munis. (At another time), O king, many Munis, mustering together at Naimisha, took up their residence there. Delightful disquisition occurred among them, O king, about the Vedas. There where those Munis, conversant with diverse scriptures, took up their abode, there they thought of the Sarasvati. Thus thought of, O monarch, by those Rishis performing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... fellows up. I had to show 'em what damage the new deals and competition and our combination would do to 'em if they kept on sleeping on their stock certificates. Funny how hard it is to pry some folks loose from their par-value notions." Mr. Fogg delivered this little disquisition on the intractability of stockholders with reproachful vigor, staring blandly into the unwinking gaze of Mr. Marston. "I don't want to praise my own humble efforts too much," he went on, "but I truly believe that inside another thirty days the Sound crowd ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... mildly preached about being steadfast to the old faith, avoiding investigation in anything new, while from the gentle, spiritually minded Prof. Mill was heard an eloquent disquisition on the promises and the ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... any kind of prison-discipline disquisition in "H. W." that does not start with the first great principle I have laid down, and that does not protest against Prisons being considered per se. Whatever chance is given to a man in a prison must be given to a man in ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens

... it for his own ends. From the day when Mr. Chamberlain launched his scheme, or dream, of Tariff Reform, Mr. Balfour's authority steadily declined. Endless ingenuity in dialectic, nimble exchanges of posture, candid disquisition for the benefit of the well-informed, impressive phrase-making for the bewilderment of the ignorant—these and a dozen other arts were tried in vain. People began to laugh at the Tory leader, and likened him to Issachar crouching down ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... 1625,—he was chosen to be a Clerk of the Convocation for the Diocese of Lincoln; which I here mention, because about that time did arise many disputes about Predestination, and the many critical points that depend upon, or are interwoven in it; occasioned, as was said, by a disquisition of new principles of Mr. Calvin's, though others say they were before his time. But of these Dr. Sanderson then drew up, for his own satisfaction, such a scheme—he called it Pax Ecclesiae—as then gave himself, and hath since given others, such satisfaction, that it still remains ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... subjects of which he treats; that he had too great command of the plausible to be a patient investigator or a sound reasoner. Yet if he has less originality of thought than others, if he does not grapple with his subject, if he is unequal to a regular and lengthened disquisition, if he is frequently inconsistent in his opinions, we must remember that mere soundness of view, without talent for display, has few recommendations for those who have not yet imbibed a taste even for ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... as the two men sat discussing their cigars and coffee, Lightmark listened with wonderful patience to a disquisition on the subject of—he couldn't afterwards remember whether it was Strikes or the Sugar Bounty. He was rather afraid of the necessary interview with Charles. It would require some tact, and he was prepared to find him unpleasantly exacting as ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... without excursion into foreign literature. Many of the Roman authors were translated, and some of the Greek[15]; the Reformation had filled the kingdom with theological learning; most of the topicks of human disquisition had found English writers; and poetry had been cultivated, not only with diligence, but success. This was a stock of knowledge sufficient for a mind so capable of appropriating ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... without the objection of a tack, the grantees might possibly then have much harder conditions given them; and I do not see how they could prevent it. Whether the resuming of royal grants be consistent with good policy or justice, would be too long a disquisition: besides, the profusion of kings is not like to be a grievance for the future, because there have been laws since made to provide against that evil, or, indeed, rather because the crown has nothing left to give away. But the objection made against the date of the intended enquiry was invidious ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... of the people who make the six days of creation six geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it, he was a rather severe satire on modern scientific religionists. Such a man as I have been describing is rabidly fond of disquisition and argument; one knows that without ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... our paper, purporteth to be, in some wise, a disquisition on Beaux, and, by our faith, we had well-nigh forgotten it. Retournons a nos moutons, as the ancient lawyers used to say (and many a tyro, in the interim, hath said the same) when they grew so entangled in the mazes of Jack Shepherd cases that they lost sight of their original ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... be produced by a slight rarefaction of the hydrogen in the air, so that, though no spirit could be photographed as such, a code and language might be established by means of the effect produced on the air by the spirit's mind. I am so interested in the subject of my disquisition that I had almost forgotten that your spirits are still subject to the requirements of the body. Last time I dined with you; let me now play ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... but fair, at the outset, to observe that the writer does not seem to claim that his article is a disquisition on the game of chess; that it is not so may, at once, be granted; but, it is unfortunate that even as a record of what it purports to be, viz., "The Chess Masters of the Day," a few lines will suffice to show that it is not sufficiently connected, reliable, or complete ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird

... considering," he says, "the sonnets of Shakspeare as a sort of homage to the Genius of Christian Europe, necessarily exacted, although voluntarily paid, before he was allowed to take in hand the sceptre of his endless dominion." And he ends his charming disquisition in these words;—"An English mind that has drunk deep at the sources of Southern inspiration, and especially that is imbued with the spirit of the mighty Florentine, will be conscious of a perpetual freshness and quiet beauty resting on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... situation, by the greatness of his abilities, and his unrivalled genius. Never was distinction more nobly earned. Of every species of literary composition he is equally a master. He excels alike in the most abstruse metaphysical disquisition, and in the warmest and most spirited painting. His rhetoric is at once ornamented and sublime. His satire is polished and severe. His wit is truly Attic. Luxuriant in the extreme, his allusions are always striking, ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... my throat for a disquisition which would have been intolerable to the unprincipled reader, when a very curious thing arrested the attention both of Moriarty and myself—the strangest coincidence, perhaps, within the personal experience of either of us—a conjuncture, in fact, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... for his idols to an earlier one; and yet his remarks on taste and criticism are of a catholic nature, although his just application of their canons have this chronological boundary. We have no room, however, for his disquisition on these elegant subjects; neither can we follow our accomplished clergyman into his disquisitions on fiction, history, biography, philosophy, and its pleasures, nor the 'domestic interiors' of taste and learning. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various

... is assiduous in disclaiming anything of the kind. He begins by attempting an amende honorable, but before he has got well away from his exordium he insensibly and most characteristically diverges into the more congenial path of censure, and expands indeed into one of his most eloquent passages—a disquisition upon the French punctilio (conceived upon lines somewhat similar to Mercutio's address to Benvolio), to which is appended a satire on the duello as practised in France, which glows and burns with a radiation of good sense, racy of Smollett ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... was at Beddington Park when the King on his Progress visited Sir Francis Carew, Lady Ralegh's uncle. Ralegh previously had laid before James a Discourse touching a War with Spain, and of the Protecting of the Netherlands. It is a most forcible, and, from its own point of view, sagacious disquisition in favour of persistency in the war with Spain, and the alliance with Holland, as well for offensive purposes against the Spaniards, as for defence, whether against Spain or France. As a controversial pamphlet it evinces none of the want of judgment with which Hallam charges Ralegh, though ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... If I could only keep him engaged, he would forget the blow that had descended upon him, and would regain his usual equanimity. A question as to whether he thought Achilles liked sage with his pork, cunningly led him on to a long disquisition, till, in a quarter of an hour, he was quite a changed man, and set out ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various

... erudite disquisition, which endeavours to account for the smallness of the sum for which our blessed Lord was betrayed, and for which Alcedama was purchased, how would honest Andrew Favine stare, could he learn that modern commentators have, without comment, assigned something less than one-fifth of 18l. 7s. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various

... eager for your twopence, the acquisition or the loss of it may affect your peace of mind, and peace of mind is better than any amount of twopences. My friend, the old-clothes'-man, whose agonies over the hat have led to this rambling disquisition, has, I very much fear, by a too eager pursuit of small profits, disturbed the equanimity of a mind that ought to be easy and happy. "Had I stood out," he thinks, "I might have had the hat for threepence," and he doubts whether, having given fourpence for it, he will ever get ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... proportion, and never gives himself the freedom to manage his gloves or his watch in an irregular and arbitrary way, but is always ready to render an account of his demeanour to the most strict and severe disquisition. He sets his face as if it were cast in plaster, and never admits of any commotion in his countenance, nor so much as the innovation of a smile without serious and mature deliberation, but preserves his looks in a judicial way, according as they ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... heard of him as a highly intellectual man, from the faint indications of character which she had herself noticed in their conversation, Miss Rothesay expected that he would have dived deeply into theological disquisition. She had too much penetration to look to him for the Christianity of a St. John—it was evident that such was not his nature; but she thought he would surely employ his powerful mind in wrestling ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... English to such writings: it meant, as the French word shows, a little trial-sketch, a suggestion, a few loose thoughts—a brief of something to be filled in by the reader. Now it means something far more—a long composition, dissertation, disquisition. The subjects of the essays, which number sixty-eight, are such as are of universal interest—fame, studies, atheism, beauty, ambition, death, empire, sedition, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... The living fact about war so far is that Bloch has not come true—yet. I think in the end he will come true, but not so far as this war is concerned, and to make that clear it is necessary to trouble the reader with a little disquisition upon war—omitting as far as humanly possible all mention ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... signs herself Anna Ella Carroll. I commend her answer on the doctrine of the war power to those who have been following that phantom and misleading the people, and I recommend it to another individual, a friend of mine, who gave a most learned disquisition on the writ of habeas corpus and against the power of the President to imprison men. He will find that answered. I am not surprised at this. The French Revolution discovered great political minds in some of the French women, and I am happy to ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell

... fortnight after this magnificent fete, thousands of families wept over their banished fathers, forty-eight departments were deprived of their representatives, and forty editors of newspapers were forced to go and drink the waters of the Elbe, the Synamary or the Ohio! It would be a curious disquisition to seek to discover what really were at that time the Republic ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... gaiety, he published numerous pamphlets, threw himself impetuously into the Martin Marprelate controversy (in which another novelist, Lyly, was also taking part); sustained a rude warfare against Gabriel Harvey;[259] wrote a dissertation on social manners: the "Anatomie of absurditie," 1589; a disquisition with an autobiographical turn, which may be compared with those Greene has left; "Pierce Penilesse his supplication to the Divell," 1592 (it had great success, and was even translated into French, "maimedly translated," says Nash,[260] probably with great truth); ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... cruel fumes of chloral turned him against everything. And his sympathy was as wide as generous. It was only necessary to mention the name of Leighton or Millais or Madox Brown or Burne Jones or G. F. Watts, or, indeed, of any contemporary painter, to get from him a glowing disquisition upon the merits of each—a disquisition full of the subtlest distinctions, and illuminated by the brilliant lights of his matchless fancy. And it was the same ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... suddenly and softly, and went and walked softly to and fro in the low end of the hall, Mr. Henry's customary place. We were to suppose that he there struggled down the last of his emotion; for he presently returned and launched into a disquisition on the nature of the Irish (always so much miscalled, and whom he defended) in his natural voice; so that, before the lights were brought, we were in the usual course of talk. But even then, methought Mrs. Henry's face was a shade ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... crafty, cunning, subtle, wily, artful, politic, designing. Smile, smirk, grin. Solitary, lonely, lone, lonesome, desolate, deserted, uninhabited. Sour, acid, tart, acrid, acidulous, acetose, acerbitous, astringent. Speech, discourse, oration, address, sermon, declamation, dissertation, exhortation, disquisition, harangue, diatribe, tirade, screed, philippic, invective, rhapsody, plea. Spruce, natty, dapper, smart, chic. Stale, musty, frowzy, mildewed, fetid, rancid, rank. Steep, precipitous, abrupt. Stingy, close, miserly, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... of using Tobacco.—'A disquisition on the evils of using tobacco, and the necessity of an immediate and entire reform,' by Rev. Orin Fowler, of Fall River, Mass. This is a very valuable and instructive discourse. We have for two years or more been fully convinced that the use of tobacco, in its three common forms, ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler

... of Spain, and of Spaniards, in particular the Valencians and Catalonians. Signor IBANEZ' method is distinctly discursive; he gives, for instance, six-and-twenty consecutive pages to the description of the inmates of the Naples Aquarium and is always ready to suspend his story for a lengthy disquisition on any subject, person or place that interests him. This puts him peculiarly at the mercy of his transliterator, who has a positive genius for choosing the wrong word and depriving any comment of its subtlety, any well-made phrase of its distinction. Even plain narrative such as the following ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various

... Anacreontic philosophy. Among others, Gail very sapiently thinks that the poet uses the epithet [Greek: melainae], because black earth absorbs moisture more quickly than any other; and accordingly he indulges us with an experimental disquisition on ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... published by Mr. Pickering in 1846. Juncker's book is a very good repertory of the various representations of the great reformer, but the prints are generally but faithless copies. In 1750 Kirchmayer printed an especial disquisition upon the portrait by Lucas Cranach of 1523, under the following title:—"Disquisitio Historia de Martini Lutheri Oris et Vultus Habitu Hervieo ad vivum expresso in Imagine divine pencilli Lucae Cranachj patris in aere hic ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various

... and expressions, peculiar to the nation: Neither do I perceive that any person, either finds or acknowledges his wants upon this head, or in the least desires to have them supplied. Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style. But this would require too ample a disquisition to be now dwelt on: however, I shall venture to name one or two faults, which are easy to be remedied, with a very ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... Mueller of Greiffenhagen reprints the Latin of the Novus Orbis, with a collation of readings from the Pipino MS. at Berlin; and with it the book of Hayton, and a disquisition De Chataia. The Editor appears to have been an enthusiast in his subject, but he selected his text very ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... with a burning controversy in the abstract and logical manner suitable to the discussion of the problems of jurisprudence savours, it may be objected, of theoretic, academic, or pedantic disquisition more fit for a University class-room than for the ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey

... Jefferies suddenly break his method, introduce his own personality, intersperse abrupt disquisitions on food, illness, and Fleet Street? Is not that description of Iden's dinner a little—well, a little unusual? In short, is not the book a disquisition on life from the standpoint of Jefferies' personal experiences? And if this is so, how can the book be so fine an achievement?" Oh, candid reader, with the voice of authority sounding in your ears (and have we not Mr. Henley and Mr. Saintsbury bound in critical amity against us), a book may break ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... brought back to gravity through the alarm expressed by the minister, at the idea of his having taken cold through officiating that morning without his wig. This introduced, I cannot tell how, some remarks on the head, which led to a disquisition on craniology. On this subject the witty sheriff was very amusing. I said some tolerably lively things; but the ordinary beat us all hollow, when it was contended that the disposition and the mind might be known from the exterior of the skull, by remarking ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various

... wondered to find my self disappointed; the rather, because I think it a Subject every way agreeable to your Design, and by being left unattempted by others, seems reserved as a proper Employment for you; I mean a Disquisition, from whence it proceeds, that Men of the brightest Parts, and most comprehensive Genius, compleatly furnished with Talents for any Province in humane Affairs; such as by their wise Lessons of Oeconomy to others have made it evident, that they have the justest ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... With all the vulgar applause and critical abhorrence of puns, they have Aristotle on their side; who permits them to orators, and gives them consequence by a grave disquisition. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... the Laws" he takes the verse of the Bible not so much as a text to be amplified and interpreted, but as a pretext for a philosophical disquisition. The allegories indeed are only in form a commentary on the Bible; in one aspect they are a history of the human soul, which, if they had been completed, would have traced the upward progress from Adam to Moses. It is not to be expected, however, that Philo should adhere closely to ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... John [Footnote: I mean the piece with this title in the collection of his works. There is an older King John, in two parts, of which the former is a re-cast:—perhaps a juvenile work of Shakspeare, though not hitherto acknowledged as such by the English critics. See the disquisition appended to this Lecture.] and Henry the Eighth at a later period, as an ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel



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