"Inversion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which, no doubt, the popularity of this class of beverage is largely due. Invert sugar is prepared by the action either of acid or of yeast on cane sugar. The chemical equation representing the conversion (or inversion) of cane ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Principalities, North America, etc. Artificial fertilizers, guano in particular, indeed substitute the offal of men and beasts; but many farmers can not obtain the same in sufficient quantity; it is too dear; at any rate, it is an inversion of nature to import manure from great distances, while it is allowed ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... and hospitality, was held in high reputation, assuming, in these respects, the attitude of a royal court in the northern parts of the kingdom; and the family were regarded with such veneration and esteem that the following harmless inversion was familiar "as household words:"—"God save the Earl of Derby and the King;" the general feeling and opinion thereby apparent being love to their lord and loyalty to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... acquaintance with the mythology of other nations, were made to furnish him with the materials for hastily applying one solution to all the early Jewish histories, which he failed to invalidate by the application of the historic method just described. By an inversion of the argument of the early Christian apologists, he pretended that the early history preserved among the Hebrews was borrowed from the heathens, instead of claiming that the heathen mythology was a trace of Hebrew tradition; and, with a view ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... man and the crocodile are difficult to understand, the more so as the tale breaks off in the midst of that part. It appears also as if there had been some inversion of the paragraphs; for, first, we read that the wife would not let the prince go alone, and one goes with him toward Egypt, and the crocodile of the Nile (apparently) is mentioned; then he is said to be sitting ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... suddenly became in the end of February next; and by a clear enough genealogy, we can trace a considerable share in that event to the good simple Pope with the New Testament in his hand. An outbreak, or at least a radical change and even inversion of affairs hardly to be achieved without an outbreak, everybody felt was inevitable in France: but it had been universally expected that France would as usual take the initiative in that matter; and had there been no reforming Pope, no insurrectionary Sicily, France had certainly not broken ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... gave a grand entertainment to certain distinguished persons of both sexes at Wittenberg. To render the scene more splendid, he contrived to exhibit a memorable inversion of the seasons. As the company approached the doctor's house, they were surprised to find, though there was a heavy snow through the neighbouring fields, that Faustus's court and garden bore not the least marks of the season, but on the contrary were green and blooming as in the height ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... following classification of players who are to be met with in clubs, country-houses or saloons by any ordinary wielders of the cue. Any reader who has ever endeavoured to master what may be called (by way of inversion) the Three Balls Art has power to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... with which the superstition of the enemy invested them. These oppressed yet dreaded fugitives obtained, naturally enough, the character of the German spirits called Kobold, from which the English goblin and the Scottish bogle, by some inversion and alteration ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... such a way that the shortcomings now to be noticed bear not upon Mr. Longfellow's own style of work so much as upon the method itself with which they are necessarily implicated. These defects are, first, the too frequent use of syntactic inversion, and secondly, the too manifest preference extended to words of Romanic over words ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... laughter, crumpled up, and helpless. You have it, too; I have it; all really nice people have it. I have been refreshing myself with Irish Memories since dinner. Do you remember what is said of Martin Ross? 'The large conventional jest had but small power over her; it was the trivial absurdity, the inversion of the expected the sublimity getting a little above itself and failing to realise that it had taken that fatal step over the border—those were the things that felled her, and laid her, wherever ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... inversion of old ideas; before the change the ecclesiastical authority had been civil, but because of the change the civil authority became ecclesiastical. If theocracy means the rule of the church or the sovereignty of the clergy in the state, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... the lip of Atta-Kulla-Kulla the council did not immediately acquiesce in his view, and thus for a time flattered the hope of the ada-wehi that they were resting in suspension on the details of this choice argument. There was an illogical inversion of values in the experience of the tribe, and while they could not now accept the worthless figments of long ago, it was not vouchsafed to them to enjoy the substantial merits of the new order of things. Reason, powder, diplomacy, had brought the Cherokee ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... questioner was asking only about trivial matters, which might be dealt with in the way he mentioned, while great offences, such as those against a sovereign or a father, could not be dealt with by such an inversion of the principles of justice [5]. In the second Book of the Li Chi there is the following passage:— 'With the slayer of his father, a man may not live under the same heaven; against the slayer of his brother, a man must never ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... rule of dress we take to be the following—utility in all cases, ornament when practicable. The first should ever precede, and serve as the basis to the second; and it is the inversion of their due positions that causes so many applications of the utile and the dulce to end in sheer absurdity. The usefulness of any article or system of dress depends entirely upon climate, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... finest inversion of immortality conceivable. It is even better than his serious apostrophe to the great heirs of glory, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... dreadful thing it is that people should have to go to America again, after coming to Europe! It seems to me an inversion of the order of nature. I think America is a sort of 'United' States of Probation, out of which all wise people, being once delivered, and having obtained entrance into this better world, should never be expected to return ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... succeeded that of poetry and sculpture, which fell into decline with the decay of literature. Music, rising into excellence and importance at a time when poetry was on the decline, acquired such superiority that verse, instead of being its mistress, became its handmaid. The first occasion of this inversion was in the year 1594, when Rinuccini, a Florentine poet, associated himself with three musicians to compose a mythological drama. This and several other pieces by the same author met with a brilliant reception. Poetry, written only ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... young Clergyman stated incidentally that he used every day with great profit certain devotional books, and that about twice a week he took for definite meditation and prayer a passage from the Gospels. It struck me that here was a strange and sad inversion of the right order of proportion; devotional books daily, and the New Testament (in any sense of earnest meditative study) about twice a week! Very different, I thought, is the view and teaching of ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... other climes and elder states, What strange inversion all his works awaits! From age to age, on every peopled shore, Stalks the fell Demon of despotic power, Sweeps in his march the mounds of art away. Blots with his breath the trembling disk of day, Treads down whole nations ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... apparently plausible, but really fallacious inversion of the Pantheistic view of the Universe, I repeat that the latter is the precise opposite of Atheism. So far from tolerating any doubt as to the being of God, it denies that there is anything else. For ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... war began on account of their passion for inverting the names of things. You must not, if you want such a thing, say one pot of raspberry jam. You say, instead, jam, raspberry, pot, one. It is odd that in the few cases in which such inversion is really desirable the authorities refuse to practise it. Horse Transport, Base, would be intelligible after thought. Base Horse Transport, till you get accustomed to it, seems a gratuitous insult to ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... other parts of Australia, seldom hunt without making perpetual grass or spinifex fires, and the traveller in these wilds may be always sure that the natives are in the neighbourhood when he can see the smokes, but it by no means follows that because there are smokes there must be water. An inversion of the terms would be far more correct, and you might safely declare that because there is water there are sure to be smokes, and because there are smokes there are sure to be fires and because there are fires there are sure to be natives, the present case being no exception ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... third error, deserving of brief comment, is a singular inversion of the relationship of the Feelings to the Imagination. It is frequently affirmed, both in criticism and in philosophy, that the Feelings depend upon, or have their basis ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... at certain times, it can be sufficiently extended to allows the lenticular substance to protrude; he would have discovered the real use of the scaly plates; he would have explained that of the canal k, of the plaited pallet q, and the movements of all these parts, more admirable perhaps than the inversion which he was the ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... passions. There is also the latent longing to be conformed to the good. There is the sense that he fulfils himself then only when he is obedient to the good. One of the great facts of spiritual experience is this gradual, or even sudden, inversion of standard within us. We do really cease to desire the things which are against right reason and conscience. We come to desire the good, even if it shall cost us pain and sacrifice to do it. Paul could write: 'When I would do good, evil is ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... can be accomplished by a temporary army, that this army will be subsisted by State supplies and that taxation alone is adequate to our wants is in my opinion absurd, and as unreasonable as to expect an inversion of the order of nature to accommodate itself to our views. If it were necessary it could be easily proved to any person of a moderate understanding that an annual army or any army raised on the spur of the occasion besides being unqualified for the end designed is, in various ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... where I was, to ascertain whether his object was to come to close quarters and speak on this occasion. To my surprise he passed on rapidly, without saying a word, without even looking up in my face as he went by. This was such a complete inversion of the course of proceeding which I had every reason to expect on his part, that my curiosity, or rather my suspicion, was aroused, and I determined on my side to keep him cautiously in view, and to discover what the business might be in which he was now employed. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... are divided, give young stems a brushy appearance. About the upper portion of the stem, and especially upon the extreme top, are numerous white, wiry hairs, 6 in. or more long, and gathered sometimes into locks. To this character, the plant owes it name Old-Man Cactus; but, by a curious inversion of what obtains in the human kind, old plants are less conspicuous by their white hairs than the younger ones. Some years ago, there were three fine stems of this Cactus among the cultivated plants at Kew, the highest of which measured 181/2 ft. There was ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... crystalline lens in the higher cuttle-fish consists of two parts, placed one behind the other like two lenses, both having a very different structure and disposition to what occurs in the vertebrata. The retina is wholly different, with an actual inversion of the elemental parts, and with a large nervous ganglion included within the membranes of the eye. The relations of the muscles are as different as it is possible to conceive, and so in other points. Hence it is not a little difficult to decide how far even the same terms ought to be employed ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... heredity by sex may account both for those sexual differences of mind which distinguish men and women in all races, and for those which distinguish them in each race, or each society. An interesting subordinate inquiry may be, how far such mental differences are inverted in cases where there is inversion of social and domestic relations; as among those Khasi Hill-tribes, whose women have so far the upper hand that they turn off their husbands in a summary way if they ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Indeed, with all the title and pace, this seems very like the virtual "slow" movement. A mood of rapt, almost melancholy absorption prevails, with rare flashes of joyous utterance, where the Allegro enters as if to break the thrall of meditation. A very striking inversion of the theme now appears. The gradual growth of phrases in melodious instalments is a trait of Franck (as it is of Richard Strauss). The rough motto at each turn has ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... The inversion of reference in these lines is an illustration of the rhetorical figure 'chiasmus.' Cp. the arrangement of the demonstrative pronouns in these sentences from 'Kenilworth':—'Your eyes contradict your tongue. That speaks of a protector, willing and able to watch over you; but these tell ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... chapter on "Browning's Obscurity," has done his best to smooth the path of the reader by explaining, and so removing from his way, those grammatical obstructions, habits of word inversion and baffling ellipses that stand as a lion in the path to so many of the poet's untried readers. This chapter is exceedingly well wrought out, and, once carefully studied, with the illustrations given, can hardly fail to banish ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... at five shillings a bottle, champagne (nee gooseberry) at five pounds, Cape smoke at two shillings per two fingers,—and, at a given signal, there was an inarticulate roar from dusty throats, an inversion of tumblers over thirsty mouths, and a second inversion over the ground to show that all ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... particularly speak, is more rare. We have seen three cases of the latter, and, no doubt, might have found many more if our opportunities of studying canine pathology were equal to those of the English writers. The inversion of the eyelids upon the globe is accompanied with pain and irritation, swelling and inflammation, both of the lids and eye, which ultimately renders the dog almost useless, if ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... retina is reversed. In order to take account of this, we should require another eye to see this image. This answer appears particularly to the point. It will be found that it is absolutely correct if we reflect that this case of the unfelt inversion of the image on the retina is but one example of the anatomical ignorance ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... In the Declaration of Rights, there is an inversion of ideas in the first article, liberty being placed before equality, from which it in reality springs. This defect is not to be wondered at; the science of the rights of man is a new science: it was invented yesterday by the Americans, to-day the French are perfecting ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... the hotels in Grenada" (he overlooked the police station), and, failing to find Margot, becomes mad. He goes about ejaculating "Mad, mad!" than which nothing could be more eloquent of his complete mental inversion. In his paroxysms the Countess di Morno persuades him to "lead her to the altar," but on the way (with a certain indelicacy they go to church in the same conveyance) she lets slip a little secret. So Di Sorno jumps out of the carriage, "hurling the crowd apart," and, "flourishing ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... representing the midrib the funicle corresponding to the petiole. The outer tegument of the ovule, according to Griffith, is a leaf united along its margins, but always more or less open at its apex. No inversion can, therefore, really take place in anatropous ovules, but the blade of the leaf is bent back on the funicle, with ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... often be found that what we believe to be unhappiness is really, in the secret and unconscious self, a joy, which the familiar process of inversion sends up into our consciousness in the form of grief. If, for instance, a mother bewails the illness of her child, it is because her unconscious self is experiencing the pleasure of importance, of being condoled and sympathised ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... value about 50 p.ct. that of an equal weight of dextrose. As an extreme hydrolytic treatment the products were dissolved in 70 p.ct. H{2}SO{4}, allowed to stand 24 hours, then considerably diluted (to 3 p.ct. H{2}SO{4}) and boiled to complete the inversion. The yields of glucose, calculated from the cupric reduction, were ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... infectious and penetrating. In that quality he was original and affluent. As we look along the line of the British dramatists for the last hundred years we shall find no parallel to his felicity in the use of comic inversion and equivoke, till we come to Gilbert. Though he was tedious while he deferred to that theatrical sentimentality which was the fashion of his day (and against which Goldsmith, in She Stoops to Conquer, was the first to strike), he could sometimes escape ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... yesterday, ever dearest—and since, I have been reading your third act which is perfectly noble and worthy of you both in the conception and expression, and carries the reader on triumphantly ... to speak for one reader. It seems to me too that the language is freer—there is less inversion and more breadth of rhythm. It just strikes me so for the first impression. At any rate the interest grows and grows. You have a secret about Domizia, I guess—which will not be told till the last perhaps. And that poor, noble ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett |
