"Measurable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... discontent is past. (At least, we hope so.) Comfortless months of training are safely behind us, and lo! we have grown from a fortuitous concourse of atoms to a cohesive unit of fighting men. Spring is coming; spring is coming; our blood runs quicker; active service is within measurable distance; and the future beckons to us with both hands to step down at last into the arena, and try our fortune amid the uncertain but illimitable chances of the ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... than this clearly applicable test of vocabulary is the more general and less measurable test of programmes and news. The programme of National Guilds, for instance—"Guild Socialism" as "The New Age," its advocate in this country, has called it—is followed everywhere, and is everywhere considered. Journalists employed by ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... but that in all probability they, and not only they, but their water-born prototypes in the East also, are destined to such a process of dissection and diffusion as to amount almost to obliteration, so far, at least, as the blot on the map goes, within a measurable further ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... ocean will he enter into the heart of its greatness, and power, and utility in promoting life, and so come to experience a feeling of respect for it. When it has won his respect he can read Victor Hugo's matchless description of the sea with understanding, measurable appreciation, and, ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... something worthless for their money, that they would not spend it for artistic fiction, or indeed for any fiction all, except Mr. Clemens's, which they probably supposed bad. Some good books of travel had a measurable success through the book agents, but not at all the success that had been hoped for; and I believe now the subscription trade again publishes only compilations, or such works as owe more to the skill of the editor than ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... great star Sirius, the brightest in the heavens, is about six times as far off as alpha Centauri. His probable diameter is twelve million miles, and the light he emits two hundred times more brilliant than that of the sun. Yet, even through the telescope, he has no measurable diameter; he looks merely like a very ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... therefore, what a shock it was to that gigantic brain to learn that science was rapidly reaching a point where his favourite gems might become all at once a mere drug in the market. Depreciation is the one bugbear that perpetually torments Sir Charles's soul; that winter he stood within measurable distance ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... men among whom Tolstoy belongs: which of these the greater, which of these the less? My friends, when we arrive at these, we are no longer among the measurable planets, but among the immeasurable fixed stars. Sirius flashes indeed with greater splendor than Vega, and Vega than Arcturus, and Arcturus than Capella, and Capella flashes with greater splendor ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... discovered an old picture of what I am sure all unbiased scientists will recognize as the world's greatest laboratory—greatest in terms of measurable output. I brought ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... there can be no doubt that so far it was like nature. Pettitt had strengthened the positive and scientific tendency that there is in me, so that I was quite ardent in the pursuit of the rigid and measurable truths, neither knowing nor caring anything about those more subtle and less manifest truths that the cultivated artist loves. However, I painted away diligently enough from nature, giving two long sittings each day, and writing ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... mystical view of Fire be clear, it will be easy enough to follow what Law says about Light and Darkness, or Air, Water, and Earth, interpreting them all in the same way as "eternal Things become gross, finite, measurable, divisible, and transitory."[47] ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... amount of a gas,—atmospheric air for instance,—can be compressed into a space a thousand times smaller by mere mechanical pressure, and then its bulk must be to the least measurable surface of a solid body, as a grain of sand to a mountain. By the mere effect of mass,—the force of gravity,—gaseous molecules are attracted by solids and adhere to their surfaces; and when to this physical force is added the feeblest chemical affinity, the liquifiable gases cannot retain ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... destruction is a danger in every way as real and immediate as riot or invasion, equally measurable in losses to us today and more far reaching in effect upon future prosperity. Although less sensational, it ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... up. His threat to retire in six months did not mean that he would not have given the British a fight before he lowered the tricolour. He was not the man to surrender quite tamely; but he knew that he could no longer hold out for more than a measurable period, the length of which would depend ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... resolved. Such a fact is an example of what is stated in the text; and a belief based on the absolute and unchangeable stability of such a fact would not be unassailable. But none of the above stated instances of "dead-lock" in evolution are within "measurable distance" of ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... Crawley in "The Mystic Rose," the taboos on knots at childbirth, marriage, and death, are much better described by the term "sympathetic taboo." Moreover, if taboo were a form of magic as defined by Dr. Frazer, it would be a somewhat definite and measurable quantity; whereas the distinguishing characteristic of taboo everywhere is the "infinite plus of awfulness" always accompanying its violation. As Dr. Marett observes, there may be certain definite results, such ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... education, then, as a producer of wealth, it follows that the more educated a people are, the more will they abound in all those conveniences, comforts, and satisfactions which money will buy; and, other things being equal, the increase of competency and the decline of pauperism will be measurable on this scale. ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... the affair of Anne of Cleves. The risk of this alliance had forced Charles into a conciliatory attitude towards Francis; relieved from it, he could now revert to his normal attitude. At the end of 1540, the Emperor and the French King were almost within measurable distance of hostilities, while the relations between the latter and Henry were becoming seriously strained by his neglect to pay the instalments of cash due under past treaties. For the time being, however, there was no immediate likelihood of ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... form of dancing. But civilised warfare is a different kind of thing, to a very limited extent depending on, or encouraging, the prowess of the individual fighting men, and to be judged by other standards. What precisely is the measurable effect of war, if any, on the civilised human breed? If we want to know what to do about war in the future, that is the ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... power of bringing a vibrating magnetic needle suspended over it rapidly to rest; and that on causing the disk to rotate the magnetic needle rotated along with it. When both were quiescent, there was not the slightest measurable attraction or repulsion exerted between the needle and the disk; still when in motion the disk was competent to drag after it, not only a light needle, but a heavy magnet. The question had been probed and investigated with admirable ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... hat, wondering, as men have probably wondered since the ages began, how it is that women seem to begin life with as great a knowledge of the world as we manage to acquire towards the end of our experience. Marguerite made her statements with a certain careless aplomb, and these were usually within measurable distance of the fact, whereas a youth her age and ten years older, if he be of a didactic turn, will hold forth upon life and human nature with an ignorance of both which ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... existing walls were built, or restored rather (the north wall being in any case, of course, entirely new), in 1437. There seems to be no doubt that the present south front of the Tartar city was the south front of Taidu. The whole outline of Taidu is therefore still extant, and easily measurable. If the scale on the War Office edition of the Russian Survey be correct, the long sides measure close upon 5 miles and 500 yards; the short sides, 3 miles and 1200 yards. Hence the whole perimeter was just about 18 English miles, or less than 16 Italian miles. If, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... will appreciate this," he said, "but to explain the marvel of such spider-like spinning, Estelle, I may tell you that seventeen and a half pounds of Catherine's yarn would have sufficed to stretch round the equator of the earth. No machine-spun yarn has ever come within measurable distance of this astounding feat, and I have never heard of any spinner in Europe or America equalling it; yet even this has been beaten when we ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... townships spoke of country fare and pleasant summer evenings on the stoop. It was a sort of flat paradise; but, I am afraid, not unfrequented by the devil. That morning dawned with such a freezing chill as I have rarely felt; a chill that was not perhaps so measurable by instrument, as it struck home upon the heart and seemed to travel with the blood. Day came in with a shudder. White mists lay thinly over the surface of the plain, as we see them more often on a lake; and though the sun had soon dispersed and drunk them up, leaving ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... theory of translation, in that it ignores the discrepancies between precept and practice, and the influence which practice has exerted upon theory; on the other hand, however, it confines a subject, otherwise impossibly large, within measurable limits. The chief emphasis has been laid upon the sixteenth century, the period of the most enthusiastic experimentation, when, though it was still possible for the translator to rest in the comfortable medieval conception of his art, the New Learning was offering new problems ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... foes, and it did much to stimulate Italian confidence and enthusiasm for the war. Some further progress on the Carso was made during the autumn, and great Italian victories were announced in September, October, and November; but the Italians were never within measurable distance of capturing the key of the Carso at the Hermada, and Trieste was a very distant prospect until other causes had brought about the collapse of the Hapsburg Empire. When at the end of August Italy at last declared war on Germany, the course ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard |
