"Modern times" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by the name of slang, is much in use among a certain class of conveyancers, who disregard the distinctions of meum and tuum. Furthermore, it constitutes a great part of the familiar discourse of most young men in modern times, particularly lawyers' clerks and medical students. It bears a very close affinity to Law Latin, with which, indeed, it is sometimes confounded. Examples:— to prig a wipe— to steal a handkerchief. A rum start— ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... great preachers of his day. In Philadelphia, an earlier pastorate, "he preached to great congregations of eager listeners, and with a success unparalleled in the history of that city and rare in modern times." John Van Nest Talmage might have been his successor. But no sooner was the Board ready to send him than he was prepared to go. The day for leaving home came. Father Talmage and the older brothers accompanied John. They left ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... Britain is in the latitude of Labrador, which on our side of the continent is the synonym for almost perpetual ice and snow; still these wandering Trojans found it a region of inexhaustible verdure, fruitfulness, and beauty; and as to its extent, though often, in modern times, called a little island, they found its green fields and luxuriant forests extending very far and wide over the sea. A length of nearly six hundred miles would seem almost to merit the name of continent, and the dimensions of this detached outpost ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the fish from the water to the land, one of the most momentous chapters in the story of life. To that incident or accident of primitive life we owe our own existence and the whole development of the higher types of animals. The advance of natural history in modern times has made this passage to the land easy to understand. Not only does every frog reenact it in the course of its development, but we know many fishes that can live out of water. There is an Indian perch—called the "climbing perch," but it has only ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... election, puncta were made opposite the names or initials of the candidates. Tabellae were also used by the Roman judices, who expressed their verdict or judgment by the letters A. (absolvo), C. (condemno), and N. L. (non liquet). In modern times voting by ballot is usually by some form of writing, but the use of the ball still persists (especially in clubs), and a "black ball" is the regular term for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... Hellenising of the world—and to make this possible, the Orientalising of Hellenism—that double mission of Alexander the Great, still remains the most important event: the old question whether a foreign civilisation may be transplanted is still the problem that the peoples of modern times are vainly endeavouring to solve. The rhythmic play of those two factors against each other is the force that has determined the course of history heretofore. Thus Christianity appears, for instance, as a product of Oriental antiquity, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... was practised by Thracians, Picts, and Celts. Roman soldiers tattooed their arms with the names of their generals, and artisans in the Middle Ages were marked with the insignia of their crafts. In modern times this custom has fallen into disuse among the higher classes and only exists among sailors, soldiers, ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... fear-smitten exodus has been seen on earth in modern times. There was something in it at once fateful, trembling, and irresistible, which recalled De Quincey's famous story of The Flight of a Tartar Tribe. No barrier on the Holland border could have kept that flood of Belgian ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... that the Spaniards pursued gaming in the vulgar fashion, just as other people. At any rate the following anecdote gives us no very favourable idea of Spanish generosity to strangers in the matter of gambling in modern times; and the worst of it is the suitableness of its application to more capitals than one among the kingdoms of Europe. 'After the bull-feast I was invited to pass the evening at the hotel of a lady, who had a public card-assembly.... This vile method of subsisting on the folly of mankind is ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... But, my friend, in the Middle Ages bell-ringers were high officials. True, the craft has declined considerably in modern times. I couldn't tell you myself how Carhaix became hipped on the subject of bells. All I know is that he studied at a seminary in Brittany, that he had scruples of conscience and considered himself unworthy to ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... attempted to prostitute the law to their own base standard of political morality. They assiduously laboured to render life valueless in Ireland and property worthless, whilst no deed was too cowardly, no atrocity too barbarous, for them to praise. They alone in modern times warred against women and children. Animals were the dumb victims of the inhuman ferocity they in no way tried to check, and they effectively taught the receptive Irish millions that a British Government could be coerced into giving what was demanded provided a sufficient ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... had saved his empire by involving the kingdoms of the West in rebellion and blood; and from these scenes of discord uprose a generation of iron men, who assaulted and endangered the empire of his son. In modern times our debts and taxes are the secret poison which still corrodes the bosom of peace: but in the weak and disorderly government of the middle ages, it was agitated by the present evil of the disbanded armies. Too idle ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... conclusion that virtue, when an encumbrance to success, should be discarded. Chesterfield's answer, however, is not simply cynical. His pupil is to study men and politics thoroughly; to know the constitutions of all European states, to read the history of modern times so far as it has a bearing upon business; to be thoroughly well informed as to the aims of kings and courts; to understand financial and diplomatic movements; briefly, as far as was then possible, to be an incarnate blue-book. He was to study literature and appreciate ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... conversation—subtly differentiated. Occasionally, though in the ordinary letter not very often, you want argument: much oftener description. Pathos, tenderness, etc., are more exceptionally required: and it is, in modern times at least, generally accepted that in the letter consolatory, that almost greatest of Shakespearian magic phrases, "the rest is silence" should never be forgotten and very quickly applied. Wit is welcome, if it be well managed: but that is a ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... Scotch-Irish origin. A cross of those two noble races has produced a breed of men as renowned for great deeds and modest worth as perhaps any other in this world. Two instances will suffice for this. Perhaps the most manly and glorious feat of arms in modern times was the defence of Londonderry, as the boldest and most remarkable state paper was the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Both were the work mainly of men such as ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... an attempt to answer the question, Can virtue be taught? No one would either ask or answer such a question in modern times. But in the age of Socrates it was only by an effort that the mind could rise to a general notion of virtue as distinct from the particular virtues of courage, liberality, and the like. And when a hazy conception of this ideal was attained, ...
— Meno • Plato
... to our readers that we should take this opportunity of presenting them with a slight sketch of the life of the greatest king that has, in modern times, succeeded by right of birth to a throne. It may, we fear, be impossible to compress so long and eventful a story within the limits which we must prescribe to ourselves. Should we be compelled to break ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... comrades in a sort of second-hand intoxication, "drunkenness by induction." In the great mental epidemics of the Middle Ages this kind of contagion operated with more fatal results than ever before or afterward. But even in modern times a popular street riot may often show us something of the same phenomenon. The great tumult in London in 1886 afforded, it is said, a good opportunity of observing how people who had originally maintained ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... and all such things ceased with the apostles of old; the canon of scripture is full; religion has reached its perfection in plan, and, unlike all other systems contrived or accepted by human kind, is incapable of development or growth. It is true God lives, but He cares not for His children of modern times as He did for those of ancient days; He has shut Himself away from the people, closed the windows of heaven, and has suspended all direct communication with ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... without practical experiment of a noteworthy kind in gliding flight. Among the recruits to the ranks of pioneers was a certain Besnier, a locksmith of Sable, who somewhere between 1675 and 1680 constructed a glider of which a crude picture has come down to modern times. The apparatus, as will be seen, consisted of two rods with hinged flaps, and the original designer of the picture seems to have had but a small space in which to draw, since obviously the flaps must have been much larger than those shown. Besnier ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... names, not from original Latin expressions, but from the translation of Arabic terms. For all such words the Greeks and Romans have quite other expressions, in which the sense of our modern terms is not contained. This has given rise to many misunderstandings, and to many attempts in the modern times to return to the classic terminology rather than preserve what in many cases are the barbarisms introduced through the Arabic, but it is doubtful whether any comprehensive reform in the matter can be effected, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... In modern times there have been two principal colonizing nations, which not merely have occupied and administered a great transmarine domain, but have impressed upon it their own identity—the totality of their political and racial characteristics—to a degree ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... In modern times, when Lord Clive, in India, acted on the theory that an utter lack of veracity and good faith on the part of an enemy justified a suspension of all moral obligations toward him, and practiced deceit on a Bengalee by the name of Omichund, in order to gain an advantage over the Nabob ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... I am inclined especially to recommend to the pianolist "Germany," with its beautiful, broad, sustained melody, thoroughly German in contour and expression, and among the most beautiful melodies composed in modern times; and "Spain," one of the most brilliant little rolls for the piano-player—gay, spirited and full of snap and go, the movement never flagging from beginning to end. Moskowszki has shown himself most happy in catching the spirit of Spanish music. He has a book of Spanish ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... own brother to Calverley, and in modern times there has been nothing so good of its sort as 'Tillers of the Sand.'... Mr. Seaman proves himself so brilliant a jester that it needs must be he takes the jester's privilege of offending no ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... one, between an inert mass and a growing organism. The transition of knowledge from the dead to the living form must, in any complete review of the subject, be looked upon as the really great event of modern times. Before this event the intellect was bound down by a scholasticism which regarded knowledge as a rounded whole, the parts of which were written in books and carried in the minds of learned men. The student ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... kind of law to go by. So a law was made that any Christian might worship as he saw fit. This was the first toleration act in the history of America. It was the first toleration act in the history of modern times. But the Puritan, Roger Williams, had already established religious freedom in Rhode Island ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... such knives in the fields that extend along the little valley, and a few came to light in my search that afternoon in the brook-side sands and gravel. So, if this chipped flint is a knife, then, as in modern times, the children ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... only in London in these prosaic modern times," I persist. "How of such can one make a story that shall interest ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... and the water rat,—stoat, weasel, mole, and mouse. There are more varieties of mouse than of any other animal: these, the weakest of all, have escaped best, though exposed to so many enemies. A few foxes, and still fewer badgers, complete the list, for there are no other animals here. Modern times are fatal to all creatures of prey, whether furred or feathered; and so even the owls are less numerous, both in actual numbers and in variety of species, than they ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... call civilization, and particularly in that great department which concerns so nearly all human interests,—that of the regulation of mutual social relations; and this by modes and with results which have had their direct influence upon our modern times. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... De Rege et Regis Institutione, written by the celebrated Jesuit, Juan de Mariana. This man, truly great, and whom Gibbon places in the number of the most distinguished historians of ancient and modern times, wrote that work, apparently with the view of assisting in the education of Philip IV., but in reality to justify the assassination committed in France on the person of Henry III., and probably to prepare for that of his successor. Mariana sustains, with warmth, with eloquence, and with erudition, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... penurious coachman, and so provide the world with a nine days' sensation, but such cases are no rarer in the royal courts of Europe than in our own plutoaristocratic court circles. Has there ever been a king in modern times with anything like the power of Mr. Rockefeller? Is any feature of royal recognition withheld from Mr. Morgan when he goes abroad in state, an uncrowned king, fraternizing with crowned but envious fellow-kings? The existence of classes in ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... that man is an animal degenerated by peace. On the rest of the planet, the people were displaying unusual prudence. Even aboard the transatlantic liner, the little world of passengers of most diverse nationalities appeared a fragment of future society implanted by way of experiment in modern times—a sketch of the hereafter, without frontiers or ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... for these, armarium, is the same as that which was applied by the Romans to their bookcases; and probably the idea of such a piece of furniture was due to a far-off echo of ancient usage. The official who had charge of the books did not derive his name from them, as in modern times, but from the presses which contained them—for ...
— Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods - The Rede Lecture Delivered June 13, 1894 • J. W. Clark
... for the distribution of governmental powers, is, in its last analysis, a formal expression of adherence to that which in modern times has been called the higher law, and which in ancient times was called natural law. The jurisprudence of every nation has, with more or less clearness, recognized the existence of certain primal and fundamental ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... undertake to write the history of a small party of men who, cast by Providence into the very centre of the greatest drama of modern times, comprise in themselves the ideas, the passions, the faults, the virtues of their epoch, and whose life and political acts forming, as we may say, the nucleus of the French Revolution, perished by the same blow which crushed ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... It is supposed to have been founded about A.D. 1000, but the discovery of ancient Egyptian idols, and of coins of the early Persian and Chinese dynasties, goes to show that it must at different ages have been settled by people of the very earliest civilisations. Coming to more modern times, it was held on and off from 1505 to 1729 by the Portuguese, a permanent memorial of whose occupation remains in the shape of the grim old fortress, built about 1593—on the site, it is believed, of a still older stronghold. These ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... expected it. But before that fortuitous result was destined to take place—in fact, as preliminary to its achievement—he was destined to be an actor in the most remarkable scene that ever has been recorded in the annals of prison life, and in one of the strangest duels of modern times. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... in modern times turned rather from the city as a complete and beautiful thing, to the individual home, and to the interior of that, and, in the modern competitive search for the necessary straws and sticks to make our individualist-domestic composition of comfort and artistic ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... specialty: he was perpetually in search of some notorious somnambulist. It is a well-known fact that the mental agitation caused by governmental crises is very favorable to these pythonesses of modern times. Each wishes to outrun the future and to afford himself at least an illusion of the triumph of his party. The oracles varied according to the opinion of the person who magnetized these ladies, and, often, according to the ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... when I speak of literature, to mean literature, and not a compendious term for anything that is not science. The opposition that has in modern times been set up between science on the one hand and a jumble of studies labelled either literary or "humanistic" studies on the other is to my mind wholly unfounded in the nature of things, and destructive of any liberal view ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... geography in Jewish school education. The works of the past, with their consoling legends and hopes, continued to hold a place in the heart of Jewish readers. But from Wessely's time onwards a long series of Jewish explorers and travellers have joined the ranks of those who have opened up for modern times a real knowledge ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... execute the labour of patient thought which needs perpetual concentration on one subject. If Gibbon had continued to be an amateur soldier and a man of the world, as he began, he might have written a history, but it would not have been the most astonishing history of modern times. In Macaulay's brilliant and often too creative work, one sees the influence of his changing political career, to the detriment of sober study. For the more the creative man sees and lives in his times, the more he is impelled to create. In the midst of his best years of painting, Lionardo da ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... final consequence of war among human groups has been the absorption of weaker groups and the growth of larger and larger political groups, until in modern times a few great nations dominate the population of the whole world. That this was not the primitive condition, we know from human history and from other facts which indicate the disappearance of a vast number ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... evidence that both were used as food by desert-dwelling people in the days of Scripture. It is, therefore, but natural to suppose that St. John, when in the desert, was forced to partake of this food; just as many a traveller of modern times has eaten of it when crossing the deserts that surround us here in ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... literature of Wales is divided into three perfectly distinct distinct branches: the bardic or lyric, which shines forth in splendour in the sixth century by the works of Taliessin, of Aneurin, and of Liware'h Hen, and continues through an uninterrupted series of imitations up to modern times; the Mabinogion, or literature of romance, fixed towards the twelfth century, but linking themselves in the groundwork of their ideas with the remotest ages of the Celtic genius; finally, an ecclesiastical ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... "The gentlemen of modern materialistic schools do not compare favorably with Plato and Cicero in the elevation and reverence of their opinions." "Science has certainly made some advancement, but where is the warrant for the boasting" of sciolists of modern times? ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... the great universities that sprang up, as well as teachers, transcribers, and illuminators in the great nunneries. I could give a long and honorable list of names of woman writers and artists, in many lands, from Mediaeval to modern times; and one of the interesting things revealed by such a record would be the number who were working with, or were directly inspired and helped by, a father or a brother. The Court contained some women who, like Lady Jane Grey, upheld the model of purity while acquiring the learning ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... ancient times many philosophers have imagined vaguely that one species can be transformed into another. This doctrine seems to have been adopted by the Ionian school from the sixth century before our era.... Undoubtedly also the same opinion reappeared on several occasions in the middle ages, and in modern times; it is to be found in some of the hermetic books, where the transmutation of animal and vegetable species, and that of metals, are treated as complementary to one another. In modern times we again find it alluded ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... of the original doorway is easily traced. Fig. 93, from an adobe wall in Zuni, gives an illustration of this. The entrance doorway of the detached Zuni house illustrated in Pl. LXXXIII, has been similarly reduced in size, leaving traces of the original form in a slight offset. In modern times, both in Tusayan and Cibola, changes in the form and disposition of openings seem to have been made with the greatest freedom, but in the ancient pueblos altered doors or windows have rarely been found. The original placing of these features was more carefully considered, and the buildings were ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... will render us useful to the whole commercial world, and happy in ourselves. You shall assure her Imperial Majesty of our ambition to number so wise and magnanimous a Princess among our friends, and to assign her a distinguished place among those illustrious personages of ancient and modern times, who have delighted in promoting the happiness of mankind, and in disarming tyranny of the power of ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... entirely swept away, together with the neck north of it, represented on Champlain's map as covered with trees. The bay now extends, as we have stated above, into the town of Orleans. The island G, known in modern times as Ram Island, disappeared in 1851, although it still continued to figure on Walling's map of 1858: The two other little bays mentioned in the text scarcely appear on Champlain's map; and he may have inadvertently included in this bay the two that are farther north, viz. Crow's ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... successfully the vast operations of the war. Our annual expenditures at that time were four times the amount of our currency; were three times the aggregate coin of the country; were greater than any ever borne by any nation in ancient or in modern times. The highest expenditure of Great Britain during her war with Napoleon, at a time when her currency was inflated, when she made the Bank of England notes a legal tender, was ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... remarkable. All the speakers admitted that which it was impossible to deny, the terrible reality of the famine, unequalled, as Lord Hatherton said he believed it to be, in past history, and certainly not to be paralleled in the history of modern times. Lord Brougham made a joke and raised a laugh at the expense of the Irish landlords. He inclined, he said, to the opinion that Parliament ought to have been called together sooner, but it was objected that such ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... once only in modern times the soul of America was stirred. The Civil War swept like a purifying fire through the land. Men marched together and knew the feel of shoulder to shoulder action. Brown stout bearded figures returned after the ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... were wasted on the desert air," said the patroon, grimly, to that disappointed worthy. "What's the use of tenants who don't pay? Playing at feudal lord in modern times is a farce, Scroggs. I wish we had lived ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... would come. Unconscious of impending calamity, we were proud of our position and character as American citizens. We were free from oppressive taxation, and enjoyed unbounded liberty of speech and action. Revelling in the fertility of a virgin continent, unexampled in modern times for the facilities of cultivation and the richness of its return to human labor, it was a national characteristic to felicitate ourselves upon the general prosperity, and boastingly to compare our growing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... untillable mountain and moor, and with fewer people in the whole country than in the city of London, and to-day she wields an influence in the world out of all proportion to her population and resources. In fact, the Scotch are in many respects the greatest people of modern times. ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... Of course I pretended to think him the greatest painter of modern times. Nothing else will satisfy the silly little woman. You found ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... the Hermitage is sustained by sixteen monoliths, and the magnificent room which receives the treasures from the Cimmerian Bosphorus has the support of twenty monoliths. But the greatest single block of modern times stands in front of the Winter Palace, as a monument to Alexander I. The height is eighty-four feet, and the weight nearly four hundred tons. The story goes that the contractor in Finland, finding that he had exceeded the required length, actually cut off ten or fifteen feet. The ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... languid, soften the callous, humble the proud, alarm the guilty, comfort the sorrowful, call back to the fold the lost. Is the culture to be slovenly where the glebe is so fertile? The only field left in modern times for the ancient orator's sublime conceptions, but laborious training, is the Preacher's. And I own, George, that I envy the masters who skilled to the Preacher's art ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... day. But all these things are extraneous to our enquiry, the purpose of which was to discover whether any real evidence could be derived from sacred history to prove the early existence of that branch of demonology which has been the object, in comparatively modern times, of criminal prosecution and capital punishment. We have already alluded to this as the contract of witchcraft, in which, as the term was understood in the Middle Ages, the demon and the witch or wizard combined their various powers of doing harm to inflict calamities upon ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... strangers. Into this library Bulkin precipitated himself, followed by his admirers, and began to lecture on the family portraits. Beginning with the Crusaders (painted by Lorenzo Credi) he soon got down to modern times. He took no notice of the Duchess, whom he believed to be a housekeeper; but, posting himself between the unfortunate lady and the door, gave a full account of the career of the late Duke. This was more than the Duchess (who knew all about the subject of the ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... spectators looked down from the stony platform above. We wondered that although these grand old times of feudalism had passed away, no enterprising artist had been found to transfer to canvas an historic record of such deep interest, and thus make the scene live again in modern times. ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... argument is usually applied to grown up people, but may be applicable to youth, when we consider the ingenious inventions of modern times, such as maps of dissected geography, historical and other games, which, while they afford pleasure, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... if there had been no prophets who, in virtue of a special revelation, could give absolution for regicide, the kings would have possessed absolute rights over all matters both spiritual and temporal. (106) Consequently the rulers of modern times, who have no prophets and would not rightly be bound in any case to receive them (for they are not subject to Jewish law), have absolute possession of the spiritual prerogative, although they are not celibates, and they will always retain it, if they ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... was a small square apartment; for it must be remembered that books at this time being multiplied by manual labor only, and the art being comparatively rare and very costly, the vast collections of modern times were utterly beyond the reach of individuals; and a few scores of volumes were more esteemed than would be as many thousands now, in these days of multiplying presses and steam power. But although ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... with the result, it is hoped, that to the authority of the world's best thinkers is added the picturesqueness of their fine writing. Plato, Spencer, Newton; Darwin, Haeckel, Virchow; AEschylus, Shelley, Ibsen; Burton, Mandeville, Loti; or Brandes, Matthew Arnold, and Demosthenes—from old and from modern times they yield ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... Estates of the realm. Orders or classes of people with regard to political rights and powers. In modern times, the nobility, the clergy, and the people ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... indication of cherishing the highest respect for Pompey's memory. There stands to the present day, among the ruins of Alexandria, a beautiful column, about one hundred feet high, which has been known in all modern times as POMPEY'S PILLAR. It is formed of stone, and is in three parts. One stone forms the pedestal, another the shaft, and a third the capital. The beauty of this column, the perfection of its workmanship, which still continues in excellent preservation, and its antiquity, so ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... labours of thirty years were blasted in a single day. Of the use or abuse of the South Sea scheme, of the guilt or innocence of my grandfather and his brother directors, I am neither a competent nor a disinterested judge. Yet the equity of modern times must condemn the violent and arbitrary proceedings, which would have disgraced the cause of justice, and rendered injustice still more odious. No sooner had the nation awakened from its golden dream, than a popular, and even a Parliamentary clamour, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... said, 'If they bore themselves haughtily in their hour of triumph, they bore defeat with splendid fortitude. Their entire system crumbled and fell around them in ruins; they remained unmoved; they suffered the greatest humiliation of modern times; their slaves were put over them; they reconquered their section and preserved the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon.' It is not necessary, ladies and gentlemen, that I should introduce the next speaker to you, for I doubt not that ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... oppression.[25] Men came to be so scarce, that is men that were men enough to take their true place as leaders, that a woman had to step into the breach, and assume leadership. But the student of history and of modern times is used to that. The result was great victory, and a forty years' rest from ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... other conditions, must weigh the fact that no novel which does not deal with modern times is ever really popular among the serious-minded. It is difficult to imagine a tale whose action developed under the rule of the Caesars or the Merovingians being treated as more than a literary hors d'oeuvre. We purchasers of "vital" novels know nothing about the period, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... said to be, one thing is certainly true with regard to our reading habits in modern times. Men who are habitually shamefaced or absent-minded before the ideal—that is, before the actual nature of things—cannot expect to be real readers of books. They can only be what most men are nowadays, merely busy and effeminate, running-and-reading sort of men—rushing about ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... confidence in the inherent power of adaptation to the necessities of the people, possessed by the constitution of our country. Thus, the social wants of the outer man having been in a great measure supplied, the philanthropy of modern times has been chiefly employed on the mental and moral improvement of the species; the wants of the inner man are now the objects of universal attention, and education has become the great necessity of the age. Hitherto, the municipal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... century. The origin and development of the Gothic Romance are set forth in detail from the appearance of Walpole's Castle of Otranto in 1764 to the publication of Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer in 1820; and the survey of this phase of the novel is continued, in the later chapters, to modern times. One of these is devoted to the Tale of Terror in America, where in the hands of Hawthorne and Poe its treatment became a fine art. In the chapters dealing with the more recent forms of the tale of terror and wonder, the scope ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... I could be punished under the "Foreign Enlistment Act," for the part I had taken in the liberation of Chili, Peru, and Brazil? To this I replied, that "if Government was indiscreet enough further to persecute me for having thrown open to British commerce the largest field for enterprise of modern times, they could take what steps they chose, for that I, having accepted service in South America before the passing of the Act, was not afraid of the consequences of having infringed its provisions." It is almost needless to say ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... however, are carried under the bank. We will now consider generally the methods employed in determining the site, dimensions, and methods of construction of reservoir dams adapted to the varying circumstances and requirements of modern times, with a few references to some of the more important works constructed or in progress, which it will be endeavored to make as concise and burdened with as few ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... settlers. Enthusiasts in England who write to the papers on this topic seem often to take for granted that the farms of the burghers in the two Republics will at the close of the war be presented to any reservist or yeoman who wishes to settle in South Africa. But is there any precedent in modern times for the confiscation of the private property of a conquered people? Are the burghers who survive the struggle to be evicted from their farms and left with their wives and children to starvation? This would be a bad beginning towards ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... the advice of their powerful "ally," but were unable of themselves to execute its purpose. The British Government then applied to General Gordon, who had been formerly governor of the Soudan, and who had more influence over the Arab tribes than any other European of modern times, to undertake the task of the evacuation of Khartoum, the civil population of which numbered about 11,000. General Gordon at once responded to the call of his country, and set out for Khartoum, which he reached with General Stewart ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... told of distinguished women who have borne a very prominent part in politics, both in ancient and modern times, and yet the multitude of men have believed and acknowledged that it was all right; and are now acknowledging it with all the enthusiasm of devoted loyalty. They are now acknowledging it in the case of an Empire on which it has been said that the sun never sets—an Empire, "The ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and you see that in telling you that secret I lay my hand upon you, and enlist you. Corentin! 'the greatest man of the police in modern times,' as the author of an article in the 'Biographies of Living Men' has said of me—as to whom I ought in justice to remark that he doesn't know a thing ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... some thousands of years of domestication and selection, different breeds being used and preserved for different purposes; but some of the best breeds are known to have been improved and perfected in modern times. About the middle of the last century a new and improved kind of foxhound was produced; the greyhound was also greatly improved at the end of the last century, while the true bulldog was brought to perfection about ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... designed in the action, means to attain it, and authoritative enforcement of the use of those means by a lawgiver. Are the laws of nature laws given by some supposed intelligent being, worshiped by the heathen of old, and by the atheists of modern times, under that name? Or do they signify the orderly and regular sequence of cause and effect, which is so manifest in the course of all events? If, as atheists say, the latter, this is the very thing we want them to account ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... naturally that birds were tempted to peck at them, and we know much more accurately of the many delightful bits of wall-painting the rich man of Pompeii and Herculaneum used to have put on his walls, but the easel painting is a creation of modern times. ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... younger was presumed to have been the survivor; but if one was under the age of puberty, the other was presumed to have been the survivor.—(Dig. lib. 34, tit. 5, Sec.Sec. 9, 22, 23.) It is very curious to see how this question is dealt with in modern times. The Code Civile (in France) adjusts the presumption to specific periods of life. If those who perished were all under 15 years of age, the eldest is presumed to have survived; if all above 60 years, the youngest. If some under 15, and others above 60, the former shall be presumed ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the influence exerted by Abelard on the minds of his contemporaries and the course of medieval thought, he has been little known in modern times but for his connexion with Heloise. Indeed, it was not till the 19th century, when Cousin in 1836 issued the collection entitled Ouvrages inedits d'Abelard, that his philosophical performance could be judged at first hand; of his strictly philosophical works ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... red spat on his nose, and pointed a bony finger at Mr. Cluyme. Many a criminal had grovelled before that finger. "I, too, am for the Union. And the Union will never be safe until the greatest crime of modern times is wiped out in blood. Mind what I say, Mr. Cluyme, in blood, sir," ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... has seen the fertile domain at our threshold ravaged by fire and sword in the course of a struggle unequaled in the history of the island and rarely paralleled as to the numbers of the combatants and the bitterness of the contest by any revolution of modern times where a dependent people striving to be free have been opposed by the power of ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... ruins of habitations, of which the foundations alone remain. In one of these buildings are seen the remains of two columns of white marble, one foot and a quarter in diameter. The whole seems to have been constructed in modern times. Following the Mountain to the southward of these ruins, for twenty minutes, I came to the place where the Moiet Andjar, or river of Andjar, has its source in several springs. This river had, when I saw it, more than triple the volume ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... more hatred than any other Russian of recent times,—the former Emperor's tutor and virtual minister as regards ecclesiastical affairs, Pobedonostzeff. His theories are the most reactionary of all developed in modern times; and his hand was then felt, and is still felt, in every part of the empire, enforcing those theories. Whatever may be thought of his wisdom, his patriotism is not to be doubted. Though I differ from him almost totally, few men have so greatly interested me, and one ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... the condolence of friendship. The curing of cold-nips by the appliance of snow, and of burns by the application of heat, could not have appeared more fraught with ridicule to the old women of former days, than would the custom I have here cited to the comforters of modern times. If I cannot say that, amongst some bold remedies, I have recommended it, I have, at least, avoided, on all occasions, officious endeavours to counteract the oppressing burden, by wrenching the mind from the engrossing thought—a process generally attended with no ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... site of the original still exists at Haverstock Hill, and was fifty years ago more remote than it is now. Hence the title of one of the most pleasing little poems of comparatively modern times. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... Fletcher ever seems to have thought it possible to lay a course at all unless the wind was somewhere abaft the beam. So England can fairly claim this one epoch-making nautical invention, which might be taken as the most convenient dividing-line between the sailing craft of ancient and of modern times. ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... In modern times the scientific historical spirit has developed greatly in Portugal, under the influence of the great historian Alexandre Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo, and the publication of documents has taken the place of the publication of historical summaries. Among these ranks first the ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... expressing his thoughts in writing An essay on the opera of Der Freischutz was his first published literary production. Before he was twenty-one years of age, he wrote "Black-eyed Susan," one of the most popular dramas of modern times. Several other popular plays followed this. He was a regular contributor to the London "Punch," from the second number, and edited, at different times, several papers and magazines. As a humorist, he occupies the ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... potential divinity, 5; hierophants of Lesser Mysteries, 10; influence of, upon writers of modern times, 11; midnight service of, 11; object of, to unite religion and science, 12; work with ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... In modern times homoeopathy has come in as a protest against the drawing of blood and the administration of drugs that corrode. For a form of skin disease sulphur has been given by the teaspoonful by my brethren ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... a series of poems from which, as from his letters, we could sift here and there a kernel from the mass of chaff. Coleridge's youthful efforts give no promise whatever of that poetical genius which produced at once the wildest, tenderest, most original and most purely imaginative poems of modern times. Byron's "Hours of Idleness" would never find a reader except from an intrepid and indefatigable curiosity. In Wordsworth's first preludings there is but a dim foreboding of the creator of an era. From Southey's early poems, a safer augury might have been drawn. They show the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... than hitherto, because several of the most eminent Greek and Latin historians have left on record full and circumstantial accounts of eclipses which have come under their notice, and which have been more or less completely verified by the computations and researches of astronomers in modern times. But these remarks do not, however, quite apply to the first eclipse ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... fireside—a knowledge that too often escapes them, knowledge that embraces not only a faithful picture of contemporary life in the French provinces, but a living and exact description of French society in modern times. They may feel certain that when they have read these romances, they will have sounded the depths and penetrated into the hidden intimacies of France, not only as she is, but as she would ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... to one wife, they, like the Jews and other Eastern nations, both of ancient and modern times, scrupled not to admit other inmates to their hareem, most of whom appear to have been foreigners, either taken in war, or brought to Egypt to be sold as slaves. They became members of the family, like those in Moslem countries at the present day, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... useless. Nor would the Romans have probably prevailed against Jerusalem had not famine decimated and weakened the people. Fortified cities, though scarcely ever impregnable, were yet more in use in ancient than modern times, and greatly delayed the operations of advancing armies. And it was probably the fortified camp of the Romans, which protected an army against surprises and other misfortunes, which gave such efficacy ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... front of us," said Holmes as we stood waiting for the arrival of the express from town. "I shall soon be in the position of being able to put into a single connected narrative one of the most singular and sensational crimes of modern times. Students of criminology will remember the analogous incidents in Godno, in Little Russia, in the year '66, and of course there are the Anderson murders in North Carolina, but this case possesses some features which are entirely its own. Even now we have no clear case against this very ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... referred to) gave a public lecture on the growth of Council Government. He traced it from the Amphictionic Council of Greece as far down as the Oligarchical Council of Venice; it was thought that had the evening been longer he would have traced it clean down to modern times. ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... not been wanting in latter ages, who found much interest in taking advantage of the weakness or credulity of their fellow creatures. Against this pestilent and abandoned race of men, most civilized countries have enacted penal laws. But what rendered such persons peculiarly detestable in modern times, was the communication which they were supposed to hold with the devil, to whom they sold themselves, and from whom, in return, they derived their information. And by this principle the penal statutes, instead of extirpating, inflamed the evil. They alarmed ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... was, a noble pastime—and we have now prevented our eyes from glancing at Jer-falcon, Peregrine, or Goshawk; but Owling, we do not doubt, would be noways inferior sport; and were it to become prevalent in modern times, as Hawking was in times of old, why, each lady, as Venus already fair, with an Owl on her wrist, would ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... principal theme comes as a surprise. The recapitulation always remained more or less faithful to the exposition. It is interesting to note how little the character and contents of the recapitulation section have been affected in modern times by the growth of the development section. In the matter of balance the two sections of movements in binary form are more satisfactory than the two sections (two, so far as outward division is concerned) of modern sonatas. The grain of mustard-seed in ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... realize clearly both what has happened in East Anglia, and the monumental unfitness of our authorities and defences to meet and cope with such an emergency—that then we should see England torn in sunder by the most terrible revolution of modern times. We should see statesmen hanging from lamp-posts in Whitehall; 'The Destroyers' would be destroyed; the Crown would be in danger, as well as its unworthy servants. And the Kaiser's machine-like army would find it had invaded ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... Unquestionably they are intended to be regarded by us with both reverence and delight; and every hour we give to them renders their beauty more apparent, and their interest more engrossing. Natural science—which can hardly be considered to have existed before modern times—rendering our knowledge fruitful in accumulation, and exquisite in accuracy, has acted for good or evil, according to the temper of the mind which received it; and though it has hardened the faithlessness of the dull and proud, has shown new grounds ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... overflowing of some small streams. In the flourishing ages of Roman history these pestilential marshes did not exist, or were confined to a very limited space; but from the decline of the Roman empire, the waters gradually encroached, until the successful exertions made by the Pontiffs in modern times to arrest their baleful progress. Before the drainage of Pope Sixtus, the marshes covered at least thirteen thousand acres of ground, which in the earlier ages was the most fruitful portion of the ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... exquisite loveliness. It is a large drawing room, elegant in all its appointments. Its coloring as seen by gas light is soft, rich, and beautifully blended or prettily contrasted. Its pictures are rare bits of art from the brush of the most popular artists of ancient and modern times, and all its ornamentation is forcibly suggestive of culture and refinement. All these things we feel rather than see, for our attention is riveted ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... Eudynamis cyanocephala sub-species everetti, a small form of the Koel, and Eurystomus australis, the Australian Roller. Joao de Barros, in his Asia, mentions the parrots of the Banda Islands,[5] and we find accordingly that one of the Psittaci is recorded from Banda in modern times, namely, Eos rubra, a red, or rather a crimson lory. The ornithologist Mueller saw many of these birds in Great Banda, on the Kanary trees. Additional pigeons are the seed-eating Chalcophaps chrysochlora and the fruit-eating Ptilonopus wallacei, and finally there is one gallinaceous ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... Bruges, p. 169 (Dent and Co., London, 1901). Mr. Gilliat-Smith's book is a picturesque account of Bruges in the Middle Ages. Of the English works relating to Bruges, there is nothing better than Mr. Wilfrid Robinson's Bruges, an Historical Sketch, a short and clear history, coming down to modern times (Louis ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... writings; and in his Discorsi on Roman History, many of the most profound observations ever made by man on the working of the human mind under free institutions, and of the corresponding effects of similar principles of action in the republics of antiquity, and of those of Italy in modern times, are to be found. But it was Montesquieu who first carried out the doctrine to its full extent, and traced its operation through an infinity of historical events and political institutions. It is to the success with which he has done this, and the combined ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... all sections show a substantial and growing backing of Webster's 7th of March speech as "the only statesmanlike and practicable way to save the Union". "To you, more than to any other statesman of modern times, do the people of this country owe their national feeling which we trust is to save this Union in this its hour of trial", was the judgment of "the neighbors", the plain farmers of Webster's old New Hampshire home. ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster
... we are wont to boast, the salt of the earth and the light of the world, what if the salt should lose its savour? What if the light which is in us should become darkness? For myself, when I look upon the responsibilities of the free nations of modern times, so far from boasting of that liberty in which I delight—and to keep which I freely, too, could die—I rather say, in fear and trembling, God help us on whom He has laid so heavy a burden as to make us free; responsible, each individual of us, not only to ourselves, but to Him and all ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... the Phaenomena of Aratus is extant, the author of which is called in the MSS. 'Claudius Caesar,' or 'Germanicus.' He is generally identified with Germanicus, the adopted son of Tiberius (so Jerome and Lactantius), though in modern times the poem has been ascribed to Domitian, who had the title of 'Germanicus' from A.D. 84. There are also fragments of Prognostica, which are independent ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... criminal offence, adultery was, according to the ancient laws of Japan, punished by crucifixion. In more modern times it has been punished by decapitation and the disgraceful exposure of the head after death; but if the murder of the injured husband accompany the crime of adultery, then the guilty parties are crucified to this day. At the ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... the still more excellent Fergusson, yet I am hurt to see other places of Scotland, their towns, rivers, woods, haughs, &c., immortalized in such celebrated performances, while my dear native country, the ancient bailieries of Carrick, Kyle, and Cunningham, famous both in ancient and modern times for a gallant and warlike race of inhabitants; a country where civil, and particularly religious liberty have ever found their first support, and their last asylum; a country, the birth-place of ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... lively spirit and inventive imagination of the latter damsel, who was unwearied in her contrivances to amuse her mistress, and to banish, for a time at least, the melancholy which preyed on her bosom. She danced, she sung, she recited tales of ancient and modern times, with that heartfelt exertion of talent, of which the pleasure lies not in the vanity of displaying it to others, but in the enthusiastic consciousness that we possess it ourselves. And yet these high accomplishments were mixed with an air of rusticity ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... he has been called, a scholastic adventurer, a philosophical and theological freelance, and it was after the Calamity that he followed those courses that resulted finally in his silencing and his obscure death. It is almost impossible for us of modern times to understand the violence of partisanship aroused by his actions and published words that centre apparently around the placing of the hermitage he had made for himself under the patronage of the third ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... an ebb and flow of sentiment In educational tides, Which oft discards some solid old facts, And on wild new hobbies rides. The educator of modern times Must prove the false and the true, Hold fast the worthy of the old, Unprejudiced, ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... had ever been known before. Mark Twain's name seemed suddenly to be on every tongue—his book in everybody's hands. From one end of the country to the other, readers were hailing him as the greatest humorist and descriptive writer of modern times. By the first of the year more than thirty thousand volumes had been sold. It was a book of travel; its lowest price was three and a half dollars; the record has not been equaled since. In England also large editions had ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the shores of the Mediterranean sea were as verdant and beautiful, in those ancient days, and perhaps as fruitful and as densely populated as in modern times. The same Italy and Greece were there then as now. There were the same blue and beautiful seas, the same mountains, the same picturesque and enchanting shores, the same smiling valleys, and the same serene and genial sky. The level lands were tilled industriously by a rural population corresponding ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott |
