"Minuteness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their relative susceptibility be assumed to be the same, the lethal dose given the rabbit is equivalent to giving a 140-pound man one dose containing the furane-alcohol content of over 5,000 cups of coffee. Thus, in view of the very apparent minuteness of the quantity of this compound present in one cup of coffee, together with the fact that it is not cumulative in its physiological action, the importance of its toxic properties becomes very inconsequential to even the most profuse and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... was entered first as upon the earlier visit, but Ashton-Kirk wasted but little time upon it. In the front room, however, he examined things with a minuteness that amazed Pendleton. And yet everything was done quickly; like a keen-nosed hound, the investigator went from one object to another; nothing seemed to escape him, nothing was too small for his attention. One ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... our statesmen, with whom reform has been a characteristic trait, was more devoted or happy. His delight, deep and unfailing, extended to every department of the government, and the minuteness of his knowledge betrayed the intimate acquaintance which he had gained of the affairs of the State during his four years in the Senate. His message caught the inspiration of this fresh and joyous maturity. It was written, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... question, or any new rules of conduct pointed out, our author gives a minute detail of two cases, where any ancient female of ordinary capacity could have decided as well as himself, and relates with laboured minuteness the contrary opinions of some eminent physicians on a late memorable occasion in this country." Pinel an old woman! It will probably be new to most, if not all, of our readers that this illustrious man was regarded in this light by the leading Review of our country, when his writings first ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... adverse opinions, however, he pursued his investigations with the thorough minuteness that characterizes all his laboratory work, and in due time produced a mixture which on elaborate test overcame all objections and answered the complex requirements perfectly, including the making of a surface smooth, even, and entirely waterproof. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... to a detailed consideration of a few highly special lines of evidence. By thus suddenly passing from one extreme to the other, I hope to convey the best idea that can be conveyed within a brief compass of the minuteness, as well as the extent, of the testimony which is furnished by ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... next day, the 5th, General Greene, who had been delayed at that place, ordered two regiments of his brigade—Hitchcock's Rhode Island and Little's Massachusetts—to appear in their best form and escort the general into the city. The minuteness of Greene's directions on the occasion furnishes us with the material for a picture of the personal appearance of the early Continental soldier when on parade. As preserved among the papers of the Massachusetts colonel, the order runs ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... practical grounds as making for efficiency, or on scientific grounds as favoring analysis, but may be understood from the artistic standpoint. For it was only through a method and medium that renounced the musical manner of poetry, with its vaguely expressive, yet rigid forms, that the fullness and minuteness of life could ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... examine the finger nails, and, according to their form, colour, thickness, surface, and grain, to determine the character and destinies of those who consulted him. I was at once pleased and surprised at the minuteness of his observation, and the infinite variety of his distinctions. Besides the qualities of the nails that I have mentioned, he noticed some which altogether eluded my senses, such as their milkiness, flintiness, friability, elasticity, tenacity, and sensibility; whether they were aqueous, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... before the supreme representatives of Harvard University itself. This I now do, and it is entirely unnecessary to look any farther. But, in order to lay the case before you fully, it is incumbent upon me to state the details of these proceedings with some minuteness, and I now proceed to unfold the ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... to form the three most remarkable of the mental faculties developed by the Indian girl. She examined (when once her attention was roused) any object with critical minuteness. Any knowledge she had once acquired she retained; her memory was great, she never missed a path she had once trodden; she seemed even to single out particular birds in a flock, to know them from their companions. Her powers of imitation were also great. She brought ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... dignitary of the order to another. Much stateliness of Latin greeting, commendation of the returning missionary, mention of a slight present of a golden dish wrought in alacrity and joy by Indian converts; lastly, and with some minuteness, the gossip, political and ecclesiastical, of the past twelfth month. The sinking of the Spanish ships and the sacking of the town of Nueva Cordoba by English pirates, together with their final defeat, were touched upon; but more was ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... at twelve; but an incident had happened before his arrival there very important in the annals which are now being told,—so important that it is essentially necessary that it should be described with some minuteness ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... of legislation into his own hands, is what we object to, is what General Taylor objects to, and is what constitutes the broad distinction between you and us. To thus transfer legislation is clearly to take it from those who understand with minuteness the interests of the people, and give it to one who does not and cannot so well understand it. I understand your idea that if a Presidential candidate avow his opinion upon a given question, or rather upon all questions, and the people, with full ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... subtle. Ghiberti himself fell under the influence of it; allowed the borders of his gates, with their fluttering birds and bossy fruits, to dispute the spectators' favor with the religious subjects they inclosed; and, from that day forward, minuteness and muscularity were, with curious harmony of evil, delighted in together; and the lancet and the microscope, in the hands of fools, were supposed to be complete substitutes for imagination in the souls of wise men: so that even ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... well be half or twice as long as they now are. Their composition is not that of a great historical picture, but rather that of a frieze, or of some rich festoon entwined among groups of picturesque figures. And precisely as in the figures or tendrils of a frieze we do not look for minuteness of execution in the individual forms, or for distant perspectives and different planes, so we must as little expect anything of the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... agreed to come to Mante, on condition that Charles and the Duke of Burgundy would come to Ponthoise. A large field on the banks of the Seine, near to the gate of Melun, was selected for the meeting. The preparations for the interview are described with great minuteness by historians. A pavilion at an equal distance from the tents of both nations was erected by the Queen of France, and presented to Henry; adjoining to it were two withdrawing apartments. The King ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... favoured with an enumeration of the Attendants of this "debonair" Nymph, in all the minuteness of a German Dramatis Personae, ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... of the following remarks will therefore be limited to a consideration of such features of the subject as appear to throw light upon the supernaturalism in "Macbeth." This consideration will be carried out with some minuteness, as certain modern critics, importing mythological learning that is the outcome of comparatively recent investigation into the interpretation of the text, have declared that the three sisters who play such an important part in that drama are not witches at all, but are, or are intimately allied ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... afloat the phrase that since the death of Thackeray and Dickens fiction has become a finer art. If Mr. Howells had meant what many people supposed him to mean, the saying would have been merely impudent He used the word 'finer' in its literal sense, and meant only that a fashion of minuteness in investigation and in style had come upon us. There is a sense in which the dissector who makes a reticulation of the muscular and nervous systems of a little finger is a 'finer' surgeon than the giant of the hospitals whose diagnosis is an inspiration, and whose knife ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... own,—rooted perfectly in and growing entirely from the man himself,—and has no borrowed sap or flavour whatever. And as he surpasses all others alike in breadth and delicacy of perception, in sweep and subtilty of thought, in vastness of grasp and minuteness of touch, in fineness of fibre and length and strength of line; so all these are faithfully reflected in his use of language. There is none other so overwhelming in its power, none so irresistible in its sweetness. If his intellect could crush the biggest and toughest problems ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... color; the humor is nearly always mechanical; there is little conversation and the characters are never normal human beings. Although the stories are strongly romantic in subject, plot, and setting, there is an extraordinary realism in treatment, a minuteness and accuracy of detail equaling the work of Defoe. This is one secret of the magical art that not only transports us to the world of dream and vision where the author's own soul roamed, but for the time makes it all real ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... improbabilities—are far more than atoned for by the masterly portrait of the simple, manly, generous, and wholly lovable vicar who is the central figure of the story. "It has," says Mitford, "the truth of Richardson, without his minuteness, and the humour of Fielding, without his grossness; if it yields to LeSage in the diversified variety of his views of life, it far excels him in the description of domestic virtues and the pleasing ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the slightest attempt to give an expression of activity, cunning, nobility, or any other attribute of the Mercurial mind. Extreme simplicity, unpretending vigor of work, which claims no admiration either for minuteness or dexterity, and suggests no idea of effort at all; refusal of extraneous ornament, and perfectly arranged disposition of counted masses in a sequent order, whether in the beads, or the ringlets of hair; this is all you have to be pleased with; neither will you ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... (28) The minuteness of this narrative, combined with the simplicity of it, proves that it was written at no great distance of time from the event. It is the first that occurs of any length in the older MSS. ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... their ultimate result, nor concerning the chief operations of the conqueror and his successors in the newly-acquired territory, which was formally annexed as a province of the Empire. Some historians have attempted to define with great minuteness the boundaries of the new province, but more cautious writers content themselves with naming approximate limits; and these have done wisely, as there is no doubt that the movements of the neighbouring tribes and even of the conquered Dacians (for it is a mistake to suppose, as some do, that they ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... noted with a degree of minuteness that would have done credit to the habitual observation of his friends, the Delawares. Nor did he fail to perceive the distinction that existed between the appearances on the different sides of the bed, the head of which stood against the wall. On that opposite to the one ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... seeds, by their being furnished with special structures of very different kinds. The diverse modes by which such seeds are dispersed are well expressed by Mr. Darwin. He says:[50] "Seeds are disseminated {66} by their minuteness,—by their capsule being converted into a light balloon-like envelope,—by being embedded in pulp or flesh, formed of the most diverse parts, and rendered nutritious, as well as conspicuously coloured, so as to attract and be devoured ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... so that to understand the spirit and usages prevailing in them it is well to give these rules some study. They are contained in a book numbering one hundred and seven pages,[36] treating with great minuteness every question that affects the daily lives of the deaconesses. The qualities that the office demands are first dwelt upon as they are described in Acts vi, 3, and 1 Tim. iii, 8, 9. The sisters ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... woman not only of sprightly wit, but of great beauty. She liked to tell in her old age of a dinner which John Hancock gave for her father and her, in Boston, when she was a girl. She described her dress with great minuteness, and added naively, "Didn't I ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... as a house is composed of a group of bricks, or a sand heap of grains of sand, the human body is composed of small divisions called cells. Ordinarily we cannot see these cells because of their minuteness, but if we examine a piece of skin, or a hair of the head, or a tiny sliver of bone under the microscope, we see that each of these is composed of a group of different cells. A merchant, watchful about the fineness of the wool which he is purchasing, ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... it is hardly perceptible; and has entirely disappeared on the tenth day from the commencement of the fever, or the sixth from its own first appearance. As the fading proceeds, the spots drop off in the form of little branny scales, which are sometimes, from their minuteness, scarcely perceptible. They leave a slight discolouration on the ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... and cynical affection for a death struggle. She never spoke of anything but of the people she had seen die, of the various kinds of deaths at which she had been present, and she related with the greatest minuteness, details which were always the same, just like ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... nimble fingers were flying here, there, and everywhere, feeling, pressing, unbuttoning, examining, while his eyes wore the same far-away expression which I have already remarked upon. So swiftly was the examination made, that one would hardly have guessed the minuteness with which it was conducted. Finally, he sniffed the dead man's lips, and then glanced at the soles of his ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... presentiment that everything relating to him would one day be an object of curiosity and interest. The date of his entrance at Harrow,[44] the names of the boys who were, at that time, monitors, the list of his fellow pupils under Doctor Drury,[45]—all are noted down with a fond minuteness, as if to form points of retrospect in his after-life; and that he sometimes referred to them with this feeling will appear from one touching instance. On the first leaf of his "Scriptores Graeci," we find, in his schoolboy ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... exception. If you are without strong passions, you cannot be a painter at all. The laying of paint by an insensitive person, whatever it endeavors to represent, is not painting, but daubing or plastering; and that, observe, irrespective of the boldness or minuteness of the work. An insensitive person will daub with a camel's hair-brush and ultramarine; and a passionate one will paint ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... signs of weakness. It would not have been easy to say whether he most felt respect, or regret, at the faith of the Narragansett. Accompanied by his two grim warriors, the chief examined the position of the shadow with critical minuteness, and when there no longer existed a pretext for affecting to doubt the punctuality of their captive, a deep ejaculation of assent issued from the chest of each. Like some wary judge, whose justice is fettered by legal precedents, as if satisfied there was ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... minuteness with which you have related the youthful adventures of Mr. H. I am surprised at your not mentioning one which I know to be a fact. On the first night's performance of the company after his arrival at Bristol, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... you shall deem suitable and of greatest merit and experience, in order that whatever is done be concurred in by all and the expense be no greater than what is unavoidable. You shall endeavor to make as safe as possible the regions pacified and subdued. You shall advise me, with the minuteness and circumspectness required by the importance of this matter and my desire for its execution, of what you do, of what is pacified, the means that you employ, and the condition in which it shall be placed ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... better one supplies its place, and that I think hardly possible. You have now fairly beaten Spencer on his own ground, for he really offered no solution of the difficulties of the problem. The incomprehensible minuteness and vast numbers of the physiological germs or atoms (Which themselves must be compounded of numbers of Spencer's physiological units) is the only difficulty, but that is only on a par with the difficulties in all conceptions of matter, space, motion, force, etc. As I understood Spencer, his ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Holy Inquisition), his Lordship ordered me, Ygnacio de Paz, that, continuing the work, I should set down the information given by the said Father Maxino Sola. And, in obedience to that order, that relation which I have been able to procure with the exercise of all care and minuteness, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... which they told me incidentally. The anonymous letters detailed to me the events, the prolongation of sitting, while my wife wrote: 'We again went to see Alba's portrait yesterday. The painter erased what he had done.' Finally it became impossible for me to endure it. With their abominable minuteness of detail, the anonymous letters gave me even the address of their rendezvous! I set out. I said to myself, 'If I announce my arrival to my wife they will find it out, they will escape me.' I intended to surprise them. I wanted—Do I know what I wanted? I wanted to suffer no ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Refined society requires greater minuteness of regulation; and the steps of all advancing States are more and more to be picked among the old rubbish and the new materials. The difficulty lies in discovering the right path through the chaos of confusion. The adjustment of mutual rights and wrongs is also more difficult ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... determined by experience; but we know that its effects need only to equal the effects of temptations which proceed no further than the thought of doing evil before reaction may follow, therefore we can form no conception of the minuteness of the dose which may be sufficient for ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... clothed them from the shore to their summits were not that unbroken gloom which they had seemed. The snow shone through their stems, and the inky river at their feet lay a motionless extent of white. As his carriole slipped lightly over it, Northwick had a fantastic sense of his own minuteness and remoteness. He thought of the photograph of a lunar landscape that he had once seen greatly magnified, and of a fly that happened to traverse the expanse of plaster-like white between ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... reciprocal and indestructible repulsion, and within, theatres of action where the blind tendencies and traditions of classes and parties weighed little on the freedom of individual character, and citizens could watch and measure and study one another with the minuteness of private life. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... secret has been unearthed by science than the discovery of the length and minuteness of our memories. No matter how much one may think he has forgotten, the tablets of his mind are closely written with records of infinitesimal experiences, shadowy sensations, old happenings which the conscious ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... with the richest harmony of colours, and was decorated with the purest gold; an atmosphere peculiarly favourable both to the display and the preservation of art, permitted to external pediments and friezes all the minuteness of ornament—all the brilliancy of colours; such as in the interior of Italian churches may yet be seen—vitiated, in the last, by a gaudy and barbarous taste. Nor did the Athenians spare any cost upon the works that were, like the tombs ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... run so close beside the moored ships that the continuous echo of all her sounds—the flutter of her great wheels, the seething of waters, the varied activities of her lower deck—came back and up to the three voyagers with a nearness and minuteness that startled the girl and drew her glance; but just as her dancing eyes returned reproachfully to the youth the big bell at her back pealed its signal for landing and she sprang almost off her feet, cast herself into the nurse's bosom, and laughed ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... only made me deplore my ignorance, since I was unable to read a word of any of them. The illuminations, though, struck me as fully equal to the finest fourteenth-century European work in their extreme minuteness and wonderful delicacy of detail. The young priest, whom I should suspect of being what is termed in ecclesiastical circles "a spike," was evidently very familiar with the Liturgy of the Church of England, but it came with somewhat of a shock to hear him apply to Buddha terms which we are ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... very partial,) may doubtless have been points of peculiar interest to the colonel himself, but are not likely to engage the attention of the world in general, and had better have been omitted in the revision of the diary, instead of being chronicled, as they are on all occasions, with wearisome minuteness of detail. But with all these drawbacks, a man who, as he says of himself, "has dwelt in India twenty-five years, and traversed it from the snowy range to Bombay on the west, must have seen something of the country, and may be supposed to know something ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... Communities and villages have geographical names. The name adopted for a community will probably be the name of some adjoining river or ridge. That adopted for a village will probably be the name of the exact crest or spot on which it is placed, the minuteness of the geographical nomenclature here being remarkable. Clan-groups of villages, forming part of a community, have, as such, no geographical names, but a member of one such group will distinguish himself from those of another group by saying that he is a man ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... suggests that it is the best picture in the world. But read his amazing words. "I know," he says, "no other which unites every nameable quality of painter's art in so intense a degree—breadth with tenderness, brilliancy with quietness, decision with minuteness, colour with light and shade: all that is faithfullest in Holland, fancifullest in Venice, severest in Florence, naturalest in England. Whatever de Hooghe could do in shade, Van Eyck in detail, Giorgione in mass, Titian in colour, Bewick and Landseer in animal life, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... the original of which is in the British Museum, is a remarkable and curious detail of the intrigues resorted to for this purpose. His mission to the Emperor Rodolph, offering him the sceptre of universal dominion, is told with great minuteness; and there is little doubt that Elizabeth herself did not disdain to converse and consult with him on this extraordinary project. Her visits to his house at Mortlake are well known. He had been consulted as to a favourable ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... he finds in the berth of a steam-boat. At length you are on shore, and marched off in a long string, like a gang of convicts to the Bureau de l'octroi, and here is begun an examination of the luggage, which promises, from its minuteness, to last for the three months you destined to spend in Switzerland. At the end of an hour you discover that the soi disant commissionaire will transact all this affair for a few francs; and, after a tiresome wait in a filthy room, jostled, elbowed, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... with singular minuteness the struggle between the people of these regions and the power of Rome, overwhelming, although tottering to its fall; and has moreover, devoted several chapters of his work upon Germany to a description of the most remarkable Teutonic tribes of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... because it leads men not only to dwell in the unseen world, but to work for it with as much energy and conviction as if it was before their very eyes. Unthoughtful or ill-read persons almost start sometimes at the minuteness, familiarity, and assurance with which men talk of the unseen world, as if it were the banks of the Rhine, or the olive-yards of Provence, the Campagna of Rome, or the crescent shores of Naples, some place which they ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... Just a son or a mother to seize! No such booty as these. Were it simply a friend to pursue 'Mid my million or two, Who could pay me in person or pelf What he owes me himself! 30 No: I could not but smile through my chafe: For the fellow lay safe As his mates do, the midge and the nit, —Through minuteness, to wit. ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... for printing from glass or paper negatives, giving a minuteness of detail unattained by any other method, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... minuteness, was George Muller led to put before God, in prayer, all matters that lay upon his mind. This man was to be peculiarly an example to believers as an intercessor; and so God gave him from the outset a very simple, childlike disposition toward Himself. ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... shams of society to the realities of war, and sets before us with a graphic power and minuteness the inner life of that great struggle in which Count Tolstoi took part.... A thrilling tale of besieged Sebastopol. All is intensely real, intensely life-like, and doubly striking from its very simplicity. We have before our eyes war ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... of the affrighted servants had left, and Henri, as he took it up, again bade Ludovico good night, who, having respectfully returned the wish, closed the door upon them, and fastened it. Then, as he retired to the bed-chamber, he examined the rooms, through which he passed, with more minuteness than he had done before, for he apprehended, that some person might have concealed himself in them, for the purpose of frightening him. No one, however, but himself, was in these chambers, and, leaving open the doors, through which he passed, he came ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... give some account of its grammatical forms. A little work printed in 1842, with the modest title of "A Spelling-book of the Seneca Language," comprises the variations of nouns, adjectives and pronouns, given with much minuteness. Those of the verbs are promised, but the book closes abruptly without them, for the reason—as the author afterwards explained to a correspondent—that he had not as yet been able to obtain such a complete ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... that of any other prince in the series. It has therefore a proportionable scope allotted it in the plan of Mr. Gibbon; who seems to understand better than almost any historian, what periods to sketch with a light and active pen, and upon what to dwell with minuteness, and dilate his various powers. While we pursue the various adventures of Cosroes II., beginning his reign in a flight from his capital city; suing for the protection and support of the Greek emperor; soon ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... sacking of a convent! You would have thought you heard some gormandizer dilating upon the roasting of a savory goose at Michaelmas,[4] as he described the roasting of some Spanish don to make him discover his treasure,—a detail given with a minuteness that made every rich old burgher present turn uncomfortably in his chair. All this would be told with infinite glee, as if he considered it an excellent joke, and then he would give such a tyrannical leer in the face of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... venture to present this journal letter, with a few omissions, just as it was written, trusting that the interest which attaches to aboriginal races and little-visited regions will carry my readers through the minuteness and multiplicity ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... kept me good company, and this I discovered as soon as he was gone, for in a few days I became as melancholy as before. Fortunately, I was still allowed my walk in the garret, and I began to examine its contents with more minuteness. One of the chests was full of fine paper, pieces of cardboard, uncut pens, and clews of pack thread; the other was fastened down. A piece of polished black marble, an inch thick, six inches long, and three broad, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... body of the work; and moreover we shall show that in one instance, where Le Sage hazarded an allusion to Parisian gossip, he betrayed the most profound ignorance of those very customs which, in other parts of the work passing under his name, are delineated with such truth of colouring, and Dutch minuteness of observation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... Once an Indian went forth to hunt. And he departed from the east branch of the Penobscot, and came to the head of another branch that leads into the east branch, and this he followed even to the foot of Mount Katahdin. [Footnote: This minuteness of needless detail is very characteristic of Indian tales. I do not think that it is introduced for the sake of local color, or to give an air of truthful seeming, because the Indian simply believes the whole, as it is. ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... appreciation of their peculiarities Deena had not anticipated; he introduced her to flying fish, and then to the renowned albatross, and he conducted her up the river Platte to Montevideo, which he described with the ponderous minuteness of a guide book. At the end he made a confidence—namely, that even his summer flannels had proved oppressive in that climate—but the intimacy of his letter went no further, and he omitted to mention any personal feelings in ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... unsupported by any analogy we are acquainted with, ascribes a greater tenuity to organized matter, than we can readily admit; as these included embryons are supposed each of them to consist of the various and complicate parts of animal bodies: they must possess a much greater degree of minuteness, than that which was ascribed to the devils that tempted St. Anthony; of whom 20,000 were said to have been able to dance a saraband on the point of the finest needle ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... it. The instant the glasses disappeared he commenced a long story about a great public character, whose name he had forgotten, making a particular happy reply to another eminent and illustrious individual whom he had never been able to identify. He enlarged at some length and with great minuteness upon divers collateral circumstances, distantly connected with the anecdote in hand, but for the life of him he couldn't recollect at that precise moment what the anecdote was, altho he had been in the habit of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... feeling akin to terror. But in the thirteenth century, in the minds of Dante and his readers, they were living, terrible realities. That Dante believed literally in all this unearthly world, and described it with such wonderful minuteness because he believed in it, admits of little doubt. As he walked the streets of Verona the people whispered, "See, there is the man who has been in hell!" Truly, he had been in hell, and described it as he had seen it, with the keen eyes of imagination and ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... by the Marquis, who made him a Chevalier in order to honour him the more, he was received lovingly by that Pontiff and straightway commissioned to paint a little chapel that is in the said place. This he executed with diligence and love, and with such minuteness that the vaulting and the walls appear rather illuminated than painted; and the largest figures that are therein, which he painted in fresco like the others, are over the altar, representing the Baptism of ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... at some time to play an important part in Russian and Chinese diplomacy. At present it is entirely controlled by China, but it appears on all the late maps of Eastern Siberia with such minuteness as to indicate that the Russians expect to obtain it before long. Formerly the Chinese claimed the Songaree as the real Amoor, and based their argument on the fact that it follows the general course of the united stream and carried a volume of water as large as the other. They have now abandoned ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... twenty years, Schiller himself, on meeting with his early comrade (the late Dr. Elwert of Kantstadt) for the first time since their boyhood, reminded him of the adventure, recounting the circumstances with great minuteness and glee. It is as follows: Once in 1768, Elwert and he had to repeat their catechism together on a certain day publicly in the church. Their teacher, an ill-conditioned, narrow-minded pietist, had previously threatened them with a thorough ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... as he liked, and made them stand in a row. He then felt each of them in every part of the body; made them open their mouths to see if their teeth were sound, and carried the examinations to a degree of minuteness of which only a slave dealer ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... determined to call a council of half a dozen of the regular boarders in the house, as soon as breakfast was over, and decide upon the steps best to be taken. Accordingly, after breakfast, a few of us assembled in a private parlour, and I again related, with minuteness, all that I had heard. After sundry expressions of horror and indignation, a gentleman said to me—"Are you sure it was grains or granules of aconite and arsenic that were ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... is strange that Pigafetta who records the doings of Magellan with such marvelous minuteness, does not mention this ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... predecessors or immediate successors disclosed any lands the existence of which was not before known to Europeans; but they gave fuller knowledge of many countries and nations of which the names only were known; and they gave this knowledge with astonishing freshness, minuteness, and accuracy. The writers of these books travelled over many thousands of miles, and they described, in the main, what they saw, although, of course, they repeated, with more or less of exaggeration, much which they only knew from conversation or from hearsay. ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... find; live on whatever the country afforded in the shape of food; establish a trade in oil, whalebone, arctic foxes, etcetera, etcetera, if they were to be got; and bring about a reconciliation between the Esquimaux and the Indians of the interior, if that were possible. With the careful minuteness peculiar to documents, Stanley's instructions went on to point out that he was to start from Moose—with two half-sized canoes, each capable of carrying ten pieces or packages of 90 pounds weight each, besides the crew—and ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... observations comprehend; but, with the use of apparatus suitably arranged, the movements at all depths have been determined, with the exact amount of power exerted by streams coursing along the bed of the sea. The necessity for this minuteness of examination has been fully shown in some of the curious ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... clergy an assistant, collateral, and lay Pope—such was the pretension of the old government, and such, in effect, is the sense, the juridical bearing, of the Gallican maxims.[5176] Napoleon pro-claims them anew, while the edict of 1682, by which Louis XIV. applied them with precision, rigor and minuteness, "is declared the general law of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of witches with their familiars were discussed with a relish and a filthy minuteness worthy of Sanchez. Could children be born of these devilish amours? Of course they could, said one party; are there not plenty of cases in authentic history? Who was the father of Romulus and Remus? nay, not so very long ago, of Merlin? Another party denied the possibility of the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... previous personal contact with the various problems to be solved, suffices to permeate the very large lump of crude helplessness that may be unavoidably thrown upon the hands of regimental officers; and even where such personal experience has been wholly wanting to a particular ship's company, the minuteness of the regulations, if intelligently followed, gives {p.088} a direction and precision to action, which will quickly result in the order and convenience essential to the crowded life afloat. Nowhere more ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... promises and falsehoods of the pope, the opinions of the European universities, and a general epitome of the course which had been pursued.[385] These were to be read aloud to the congregations; and an order for preaching was at the same time circulated, in which the minuteness of the directions is as remarkable as the prudence of them. Every preacher was to deliver one sermon at least ("and after at his liberty") on the encroachments and usurpations of the papal power. He ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... stood near the wedding party, and recalled, with fond minuteness, the hour when one, about the same age as Pet, and resembling her in the freshness of her youthful beauty, had crowned him with happiness. Mrs. Crull was close by, and looked at the bride, whom she had dressed, with the pride of an artist. Mrs. Frump stood next to her, and shared in the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... degree conclusive was elicited. The walls, ceiling, and floor of the room were carefully examined, in order to ascertain whether they contained a trap-door or other concealed mode of entrance, but no such thing appeared. Such was the minuteness of investigation employed, that, although the grate had contained a large fire during the night, they proceeded to examine even the very chimney, in order to discover whether escape by it were possible. ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... be imagined with what eagerness I now scanned the house, with what minuteness I sought for a weak place. The longer I looked, however, the less comfort I derived from my inspection. I saw before me a gloomy stronghold of brick, four-square, and built in the old Italian manner, with battlements at the top, and a small machicolation, little more than ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... One can fancy the solemn, conscientious elaborateness with which a person would write, with the notion that his letter would have a whole coach and a whole bag to itself, and travel two hundred miles alone, the exclusive object of a red guard's care. The only thing like it now—the deferential minuteness with which one public office writes to another, conscious that the letter will travel on her Majesty's service three doors down the passage—sinks ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... this Poem, as well as in others, speaks openly of his tastes and passions: his own fortunes are dwelt on with painful minuteness, and his errors are recorded with the accuracy, but not the seriousness of the confessional. He seems to have been fond of taking himself to task. It was written when "Hungry ruin had him in the wind," and emigration to the West Indies was the only refuge which he could think of, or his friends ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... unexcelled by any of my later writings,—at least in what I have always studied as the main essential of style in narrative; namely, its harmony with the subject selected and the passions to be moved,—while it exceeds them all in the minuteness and fidelity of its descriptions of external nature. This indeed it ought to do, since the study of external nature is made a peculiar attribute of the principal character, whose fate colors the narrative. I do not know whether it has been ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the ablest man of the party, all ultra Loyalists, to consider the future policy as to arrests,—all doubtless feeling that the non-action course needed explanation. The details of this consultation are given at such length, and with such minuteness, by Bernard, in a letter addressed to Lord Hillsborough, that these learned political doctors can almost be seen making a diagnosis of the prevalent treason-disease and discussing proposed prescriptions. They carefully considered what had been done at the great public meetings, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... it from this," Henley said to himself. Yes, that was obvious. Trenchard had described the prison-house of despair, where the two victims of a strange, desolating habit shut themselves up to sink, with a curious minuteness. He had even devoted a paragraph to the tall iron gate, whose round handle he had written of as "bald, and exposed to the wind from the river, the paint having long since been worn off it." In the twilight Henley bent down and examined the handle of the gate. The paint seemed ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... to recount to him the history of her hours, would go over each incident, and body forth every thought that had occurred to her, with a grave and serious minuteness that evinced her capabilities of ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Bourg; if they had not intended to go there they would have taken the road to Marlieux. Now, Bourg was the headquarters Roland had himself chosen for the centre of his own operations; it was his own town, and he knew, with the minuteness of boyish knowledge, every bush, every ruin, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... Emain Macha. The floruit of Cuculain, therefore, falls completely within the historical penumbra, and the more carefully the enormous, and in the main mutually consistent and self-supporting, historical remains dealing with this period are studied, the more will this be believed. The minuteness, accuracy, extent, and verisimilitude of the literature, chronicles, pedigrees, &c., relating to this period, will cause the student to wonder more and more as he examines and collates, seeing the ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... wisdom. His tales are the product of a morbid but powerful imagination. His style is in perfect keeping with his peculiar gifts. He had a highly developed artistic sense. By his air of perfect candor, his minuteness of detail, and his power of graphic description, he gains complete mastery over the soul, and leads us almost to believe the impossible. Within the limited range of his imagination (for he was by no means the universal genius he fancied himself ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... to which, at that time, the King could, probably, not have trusted for any leanings in his favor; but he referred it, in an informal way, to the Lord Chancellor (Lord Cowper) and the Common-law Judges. They investigated it with great minuteness. A number of precedents were adduced for the marriage and education of the members of the royal family being regulated by the sovereign, beginning with Henry III., who gave his daughter Joan, without ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... now answer your question to my mother more at large, and likewise more at small—with equal perspicuity and minuteness; for the very day of our leaving Southampton is fixed; and if the knowledge is of no use to Edward, I am sure it will give him pleasure. Easter Monday, April 3, is the day; we are to sleep that night at Alton, and be with our friends at Bookham the next, ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... of science started on the instant, despite philosophy, on receiving an answer ascertaining, with such minuteness, that the ideal spectre was close to his own person. He resorted to other means of investigation and cure, but with equally indifferent success. The patient sunk into deeper and deeper dejection, and died ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... gain a definite notion of the furnishing of colonial houses from a contemporary and reliable source—the inventories of the estates of the colonists. These are, of course, still preserved in court records. As it was customary in early days to enumerate with much minuteness the various articles of furniture contained in each room, instead of classifying or aggregating them, we have the outlines of a clear picture of the ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... after a long search, the doll in the bath was discovered to be sitting upon it, and once it actually flew down Regie's back; and amid the wild excitement of the children its cold descent was described by Regie in piercing minuteness until the moment when it rolled out over his stocking at ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... divided into the following ages or periods according to the purpose to be served or the minuteness of ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... framework of his picture, and the events of the time when he lived gave the scenes for the painting, his colours would fail, and his outlines become unsteady. In other words, there could not be the scrupulous minuteness and the perfect freedom which make history live and breathe, unless, like Tacitus, he registered facts in which he took the deepest interest, from feeling their influence directly and powerfully exerted over himself, and the living and ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... Lectures on English Grammar with that degree of minuteness which enables me to yield my unqualified approbation of the work as a grammatical system. The engaging manner in which you have explained the elements of grammar, and accommodated them to the capacities of youth, is an ample illustration of the utility of your plan. ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... duck quack, or waved the tiny rod of the magician, contributed in future years to purposes of higher import,—the wheels and pinions, which in these automata almost eluded the human senses by their minuteness, reappearing in modern times in the stupendous mechanism of our self-acting lathes, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... crossed the intervening space and entered the corral. He strode up to the wagon and examined it closely, studying its position and the wheel tracks, with a minuteness that left him in possession of every available fact. Having satisfied himself in this direction, he passed out of the corral and ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... through the pores of the flesh, the blood is returned from the arteries to the veins, not without some other admirable artifice" (non sine artificio quodam admirabili). It was this artificium admirabile of which Harvey was unable to give a description. On account of the minuteness of their structure, the capillaries were beyond his sight, aided as it was by a magnifying glass merely. He indeed demonstrated physiologically the existence of some such passages; but it remained for a later observer, with improved appliances, to verify the fact. This was ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... possible to obtain, for this reason, inspire so little confidence, that it is necessary to use them with great caution. It is evident that all the district magistrates and curates do not possess the same degree of care and minuteness in a research so important, and the omission or connivance of their respective delegates, more or less general, renders it probable that the number of tributes, not included in the annual returns, is very considerable. If to this we add the leged exemptions from tribute, justly ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... interest in the social circle," said Major Favraud. "His range of thought is the grandest and most unlimited, his powers of conversation are the rarest I have ever met with. Yet he never refused, on any occasion, to answer with minuteness the inquiries of the smallest child or most insignificant dependant. 'Had he not been Alexander, he must have been Parmenio.' Had fortune not struck out for him the path of a statesman, he would have made the most impressive and perfect of teachers. As it was, without ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... American mammals. In the entirely proper desire to be thorough and to avoid slipshod methods, the tendency was to treat as not serious, as unscientific, any kind of work that was not carried on with laborious minuteness in the laboratory. My taste was specialized in a totally different direction, and I had no more desire or ability to be a microscopist and section-cutter than to be a mathematician. Accordingly I abandoned all thought of becoming a scientist. Doubtless this meant ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... profound believer in the inward and higher nature of man, and in the existence of the spiritual life. As one critic says: "The earnestness, depth and grandeur, humility and conscious choice of high ideals, have raised his work far above mere intellectual acuteness and minuteness." ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... and villages, and also military ranks and movements, as well as coins and measures, dry and liquid, and weights, so as to be commensurable and agreeable to one another. Nor should we fear the appearance of minuteness, if the law commands that all the vessels which a man possesses should have a common measure, when we consider generally that the divisions and variations of numbers have a use in respect of all the variations of which they are susceptible, ...
— Laws • Plato
... diagonal. This is another characteristic of De Quincey; he is sometimes tediously exact in his details; perhaps the minuteness is justifiable in this instance, as the statement increases the realistic effect of ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... merit of this series of stories is that they are absolutely true to life ... the photographic accuracy and minuteness displayed are really marvellous."—Aberdeen ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... branches, he raises his hand aloft, plucks off a spray of the flowers, and dismounting, proceeds to examine it with curious minuteness, as if a botanist endeavouring to determine its genus or species! But he has no thought of this; for he knows the tree well, knows it to possess certain strange properties, one of which has been his reason for riding up to it, and acting as he ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... multiplicity, profusion, and minuteness of its ornamental detail, it has by some received the designation of FLORID; by others, from the mullions of the windows and the divisions of ornamental panel-work running in straight or perpendicular lines up to the head, ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... unfortunate event which Father Medina mentions with as much minuteness as candor, two important points must not be overlooked by the judicious reader, which were the cause of this unfortunate deed. One was the extreme harshness of the provincial in his government, which must have been very excessive.... The imposition of new ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... until May, dated from all sorts of German towns, chiefly gambling towns; but the innocent dwellers at Cairnforth (save the earl) did not know this fact. They were sweet, fond letters as ever— mindful, with a pathetic minuteness, of every body and every thing at the dear old home; but not a complaint was breathed—not a murmur of regret concerning her marriage. She wrote very little of her husband; gradually, Lord Cairnforth fancied, less and less. They had not been to the ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... serves to bring in M. Rouquet's countryman, Moser), Jewelry, China, (i.e. Chelsea ware) are all successfully treated with more or less minuteness, while, under Architecture, are described the eighteenth-century house, and the new bridge at Westminster of another Swiss, Labelye, who is not named: "The architect is a foreigner," says Rouquet, who considered he had been inadequately ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... specimen. I have now been using the apparatus for nearly a month, and in its earliest days it led me right in the diagnosis of a microscopical mineral, iolite, not before found in our Irish granite, I think. The unlooked-for characters of the mineral, coupled with the extreme minuteness of the crystals, led me previously astray, until my meldometer fixed its fusibility for me as far ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... that the very minuteness with which the comparison is sought to be sustained, destroys the effect. Regarding the repetition, they are just such as one may expect to find in verses ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... The detective sat near him, his hands on his knees, his head bent, his eyes cast upon the floor. He did not interrupt the story by a single word. When it was ended, he took up the envelope, and examined it in equal silence; examined it with ridiculous minuteness, Mr. Galloway thought, for he poked, and peered, and touched it everywhere. He held it up to the light, he studied the postmarks, he gazed at the seal through an odd-looking little glass that he took from his waistcoat pocket, he particularly criticised the folds, he drew his fingers ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Solomon might give to one who had time to read an idea of the richness of the materials employed, and the variety of the subjects of the decorations. There is marble—work and wood—work, silver doors, ivory doors, and rooms, halls, and passages of these materials, all carved with Indian minuteness and delicacy, with telling scenes from the stories of Hindoo deities; and in the middle of these Eastern marvels are alas! cast-iron pillars from Glasgow. They form a central group from base to top of the great tower; between ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... place? there is no other clearing within a mile? My directions have been given with exact minuteness of detail. I have followed them to the letter: I cannot be mistaken: I have reached ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... conforming the seer to themselves as with some cunning physical necessity. This theory,* in itself so fantastic, had however determined in a range of methodical suggestions, altogether quaint here and there from their circumstantial minuteness. And throughout, the possibility of some vision, as of a new city coming down "like a bride out of heaven," a vision still indeed, it might seem, a long way off, but to be granted perhaps one day to the eyes thus trained, was presented as the motive ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... eyes" went out. His bodily frame, which by assiduous care he had maintained as a worthy organ of his mind, sank into weakness. His last years, his last hours even, are described by his well-beloved disciple and friend Wasianski with a faithful and pathetic minuteness which, in the view of some of the great thinker's deepest admirers, might well have been less microscopic. The spectacle of a great mind losing itself at length in the feebleness of age, almost the imbecility of second childhood, might well, they ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... infirmities of age unfitted them for the hardships of a nomadic life. Long experience has given them a terrible familiarity with the best and quickest methods of taking life; and they often explained to us with the most sickening minuteness, as we sat at night in their smoky pologs, the different ways in which a man could be killed, and pointed out the vital parts of the body where a spear or knife thrust would prove most instantly fatal. I thought of De Quincey's celebrated Essay ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the exactness and minuteness of such descriptive character sketches, but even the shortest and most general is necessary to the proper appreciation of every play, even if it is being merely read. When a student is assimilating a role for rehearsing or acting, these additions ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... who allow their feelings to show themselves, and afterwards feel bound by the memory of what they have shown. She, too, smiled most sweetly as she surveyed the beautiful fair queen from beneath her long drooping lids, and examined her appearance with all possible minuteness. She remembered her well enough, but so warm was the welcome she received, that she almost thought she had misjudged Atossa in calling her hard and cold. She drew her guest to the cushions upon the carpets, and they sat ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Imagination works downward, and considers the Bulk of a human Body in respect of an Animal, a hundred times less than a Mite, the particular Limbs of such an Animal, the different Springs [which [2]] actuate the Limbs, the Spirits which set these Springs a going, and the proportionable Minuteness of these several Parts, before they have arrived at their full Growth and Perfection. But if, after all this, we take the least Particle of these Animal Spirits, and consider its Capacity of being Wrought into a World, that shall contain within ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... this be not abominable fustian." Van Lann stigmatizes this poem, Le Semaine ou Creation du Monde, as "the marriage-register of science and verse, written by a Gascon Moses, who, to the minuteness of a Walt Whitman and the unction of a parish-clerk, added an occasional dignity superior to anything attained by the abortive epic of ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... minuteness one of the most extensive silver mines in the world, where an average of 5000 men and unnumbered animals are employed, it will not be necessary to go into details as we notice the many ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... the language, the minuteness of the detail, the absolute certainty of the prevision. That is not the language of a man who simply is calculating that the course which he is pursuing is likely to end in his martyrdom; but the thing lies there before Him, a definite, fixed certainty; every detail ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... elated, and could talk of nothing else when he got home. Father, and mother, and sister, had to listen to the fullest details of the struggle and its surprising issue, and Bert fairly outdid himself in the vigour and minuteness of his description. When the fountain of his eloquence at last ran dry, Mr. Lloyd had a chance to say, with one of ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... of Erfurt, Napoleon had still found time to study the military situation in Spain with minuteness, and he finally wrote to Joseph that he was coming in person to end the war by one skilful stroke. This hope was founded on the position held by Blake, advanced as it was beyond the Spanish line, and remote enough to ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... intent of an aquatint engraving is, as the reader may or may not know, to produce the effect of a drawing in Indian ink.[C] Still there is much in these pictures to delight the Cruikshankian connoisseur,—infinite variety in physiognomy, wonderful minuteness and accuracy in detail, and here and there sparkles of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... only those who have gone with some minuteness into the facts of this singular life are aware how great was the change effected during this very short period of time. When Coleridge left London for the Lake country he had not completed his eight-and-twentieth ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... not doubt that it will be full of ability; although my own opinion is that she stands higher as the authoress of 'Our Village' than of 'Rienzi,' and writes prose better than poetry, and transcends rather in Dutch minuteness and high finishing, than in Italian ideality and passion. I think besides that Mr. Forrest's rejection of any play of Sheridan Knowles must refer rather to its unfitness for the development of his own personal talent, than to its abstract demerit, whatever Transatlantic tastes he ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... for either preference. We can only make sure that we have here an annalist, or analyst, as we choose, who fascinates us from his first page to his last, whose narrative or whose comment may enter into any minuteness of detail without fatiguing us, and can only truly grieve ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... near Mrs. Rossall, from whom she received a kind look. Mr. Athel was relating a story of his early wanderings in Egypt, with a leisurely gusto, an effective minuteness of picturing, the result of frequent repetition. At the points of significance he would pause for a moment or two and puff life into his cigar. His anecdotes were seldom remarkable, but they derived ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... commendation from division commanders in the Army of the Tennessee. General Sherman both in his memoirs and report makes mention of this fact. General McCook himself belongs to a family which furnished many volunteers to the army. I refer to these circumstances with minuteness because I did General McCook injustice in my article in the Century, though not to the extent one would suppose from the public press. I am not willing to do any one an injustice, and if convinced that I have done one, I am always willing ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... writers, and one of which the female novelists have so far made the most effective use. One could wish that Boldrewood had made himself as far as possible an exception to the rule—that he had aimed at a praiseworthy provinciality by matching with the elaborate minuteness of his local colour some finished and memorable studies ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne |
