"Potential" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... awakened by the shaking and thrilling of the whole building. As I staggered to my feet, I saw the four pictures hanging against the wall swing outwardly from it on their cords, and my door swing back against the wall. At the same moment, acted upon by the same potential impulse, the door of the end room in the hall, opposite the stairs, also swung open. In that brief moment I had a glimpse of the interior of the room, of two figures, a man and a woman, the latter clinging to her companion in abject terror. It was only for an ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... intervals along the dusty way, once a narrow trail worn by the patient feet of that gentle and great padre, Junipero Serra,—a trail from the San Gabriel Valley to the shores of Monterey. A narrow trail then, but, even then, to him it was broad in its potential significance of the dawn of Grace upon the mountain shores of ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... his political fortunes. He was not one that could be grossly corrupted, yet he was willing to play to the galleries in order to serve his ambition, and he was willing to forecast his political acts in order to obtain potential support. ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... electrical condition or "potential" between the plates by which the current is started has been called the electromotive force, or force which puts the electricity in motion. The obstruction or hindrance which the electricity overcomes in passing through its conductor is known as the RESISTANCE. Obviously the ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... they depend on the regularity of the rains: in seasons of prolonged drought they are said to be reduced to great extremities. Hence the rain-maker is a very important personage among them to this day; indeed the men in authority whom travellers dub chiefs or sheikhs are in fact the actual or potential rain-makers of the tribe or community. Each of them is believed to be animated by the spirit of a great rain-maker, which has come down to him through a succession of rain-makers; and in virtue of this inspiration a successful rain-maker enjoys very great power and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Peter's have been very strange! To this unmentionable Duke of Mecklenburg she has left one Daughter, a Princess Elizabeth-Catherine, who will be called Princess ANNE, one day: whose fortunes in the world may turn out to be tragical. Potential heiress of all the Russias, that little Elizabeth or Anne. Heiress by her wily aunt, Anne of Courland,—Anne with the swollen cheek, whom Moritz, capable of many things, and of being MARECHAL DE SAXE by and by, could not manage ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... are numerous harbors along the Dalmatian coast which would answer the needs of Jugoslavia as well, or almost as well, as Fiume. Now, I am speaking from first-hand knowledge when I assert that this is not so, for I have seen with my own eyes every harbor, or potential harbor, on the eastern coast of the Adriatic from Istria to Greece. As a matter of fact, the entire coast of Dalmatia would not make up to the Jugoslavs for the loss of Fiume. The map gives no idea of the city's importance as the southernmost ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... spit,—a spectacle which (we record it with shame) quite banished from his mind not only all thoughts of Ralph's barbarism, but even the sublime military ardour awakened by the din and perils of the late conflict. Nor were its effects less potential upon Nathan and Ralph, who, having first washed from their hands and faces the stains of battle, now drew nigh, snuffing the perfume of a dinner with as much ardour as they could have bestowed on the scent of battle. ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... was thinking of other things. "After all," he said to himself—"after all, Gombauld is better looking than I, more entertaining, more confident; and, besides, he's already somebody and I'm still only potential..." ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... his ray up, and was about to pull the trigger that would send the huge engine toppling over upon them, when he saw that it was running. He thought of the unknown energies in the machine, the potential destruction, and he shook his head. Cautiously he looked around the edge of the towering mass, waiting—his beam flashed out, and there was a snapping sound as the ray caught a reaching hand and hurled its owner against a mighty transformer of some sort. For an instant the ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... synthesis of qualities, attributes and relations—and conception—which is only the consciousness of a quality, quantity, or relation, often of only a single word accompanied by vague outlines and a latent, potential knowledge; between concrete and abstract, the image occupies an intermediate position and can run from one pole to another, now full of reality, now almost as poor and pale as a concept. The representation ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... Germany, balked, potential, or veritable, who were ready to rise and rescue what was left of the youth of Germany. If victory for the German arms were hopeless they would risk their own lives to force a peace that would leave them with the rags of their old honor ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... a skin that, strangely enough, did not covet its sensual touch. She craved back to the starchy blue-gingham morning dresses. It was as if she sat among the ruins of those crispy potential yesterdays, all her to-morrows ruthlessly ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Hideyoshi behaved with marked caution. By granting to the Tokugawa chieftain the whole of the Kwanto, Hideyoshi made it appear as though he were conferring a signal favour; but in reality his object was to remove Ieyasu out of the zone of potential danger to Kyoto. Ieyasu fully recognized this manoeuvre, but bowed to it as the less of two evils. As a further measure of precaution, Hideyoshi interposed one of his own family, Hidetsugu, between the Kwanto and Kyoto, and with the object of menacing the rear of Ieyasu ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... decompose water into its components and split them into subatomic form. They reunite to give something other than matter. It is a liquid—liquid energy, though the term is inaccurate—that separates out in two forms, and a fluid ounce of each is the product of thousands of tons of water. The potential energy is all there. A current releases it; the energy components reunite to give matter again—hydrogen and oxygen gas. Combustion adds ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... his life has held a close secret, to divulge it at a moment's notice, in a sudden fit of warm friendliness, to a comparative stranger, and so Abel Cumshaw found it. It is even harder to surrender one's hopes and ambitions in favor of a potential rival, honest and all as that rival may appear to be. For one brief moment Cumshaw paused on the brink of revelation, the while he weighed the matter in his mind. In some strange way Bryce had guessed that he was after the gold, but did he know why and how? Cumshaw ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... sojourning a certain time upon the hill, not to concede that there were two equally strong centres of attractions, that drew the world hither-ward. One remained, indeed, gravely suspended between the doubt and the fear, as to which of these potential units had the greater pull, in point of actual attraction. The impartial historian, given to a just weighing of evidence, would have been startled to find how invariably the scales tipped; how lightly an historical Mont, born ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the world by Christianity." The love of men became a social dogma of the Church. Some other convictions of Jesus left few traces on the common thought of Christendom, but the Church has always stood for a high estimate of the potential worth of the soul of man. It has always taught that man was made in God's image and that he is destined to share in the holiness ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... evening Everett watched the two potential murderers with lessening interest. He even made a bet with Upsher, of a bottle of fruit salt, that the chief of police would be the one ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... safety, knowing that he was in most danger when he had his back to them, and reached his tent unharmed, but persuaded of the critical nature of the situation. The treachery of the Granthis, whether actual or only potential, practically neutralised the powers of the rest of his force. If he ordered them to advance, they would promptly fraternise with the foe, if he kept them in reserve, they would fall upon his rear, and if he led the whole line into battle, they would turn their arms against their comrades. A day ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... the very time when his inspiring presence was most needed. How much England then lost can never be known. Vorontzoff, Russian ambassador at London, who had earlier been a bitter enemy of Pitt, now expressed the fervent desire that death had carried off his weary old frame, rather than that of the potential Saviour of Europe. The words are instinct with prescience. The personality and the actions of Pitt were alike a summons to a life of dignity and manly independence. His successors had perforce to take a course not unlike that which they were about to censure in him; and the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... 15) need to invest more in schools, while countries with older populations (high percentage ages 65 and over) need to invest more in the health sector. The age structure can also be used to help predict potential political issues. For example, the rapid growth of a young adult population unable to find ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... systems of our geologists and cosmogonists, from Burnet to La Place, afford strong presumption. As an idea, it must be interpreted as a striving of the mind to distinguish being from existence,—or potential being, the ground of being containing the possibility of existence, from being actualized. In the language of the mysteries, it was the 'esurience', the [Greek: pothos] or 'desideratum', the unfuelled fire, the Ceres, the ever-seeking maternal goddess, the origin and interpretation of whose ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... matter; life-energy is not a thing unique and created at a particular time in the past. If evolution be true, living matter has been evolved by natural processes from matter which is, apparently, not alive. But if life is potential in matter, it is a thousand times more evident that Mind is potential in Life. The evolutionist is impelled to believe that Mind is potential in matter. (I adopt that form of words for the moment, but ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... artificial seeding. The latter danger may easily warrant public alarm manifested by restrictive laws. Universal ground burning of green timber will distinctly reduce the prospect of unassisted natural reforestation on the great area of potential timber land in which, as a resource, regardless of ownership, the public is vitally interested. Under present conditions at least, a large proportion of this is likely to be logged without any view to a future crop. It is questionable whether any state should, ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... I immediately performed my promise. I had always intended that not only the young lady, but her father, should know what we thought of Patrick, and what he might have been, if he had lived. I wrote to that potential personage, telling him of all the facts of the case, except the poverty, which might be omitted as essentially a slight and temporary circumstance. I reported of his life of industry and simple self-denial,—of his prospects, his friendships, his sweet and gay decline and departure, and his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... world." Shelley, who knew what he was talking about when poetry was the subject, has said it, and with a profundity of truth Whitman seems in a peculiar degree marked out for "legislation" of the kind referred to. His voice will one day be potential or magisterial wherever the English language is spoken—that is to say, in the four corners of the earth; and in his own American hemisphere, the uttermost avatars of democracy will confess him not more their ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... daybreak, the Army is astir again, simultaneously wending forward; spread over wide areas, like a vast cloud (potential thunder in it) steadily advancing on the winds. Length of the Army, artistically portioned out, may be ten or fifteen miles, breadth already more, and growing more; Schwerin always on the right or western wing, close by the Bober ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sun; in existence &c. n.; extant; afloat, afoot, on foot, current, prevalent; undestroyed. real, actual, positive, absolute; true &c. 494; substantial, substantive; self-existing, self-existent; essential. well-founded, well-grounded; unideal[obs3], unimagined; not potential &c. 2; authentic. Adv. actually &c. adj.; in fact, in point of fact, in reality; indeed; de facto, ipso facto. Phr. ens rationis[Lat]; ergo sum cogito: "thinkest thou existence ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Paradise and thus cheering the lives of the friends they leave on earth. Assured of this, as we are, all inactivity is unbearable to us. At the present moment we are, so to say, unemployed philanthropists; we are but a potential and passive blessing to our fellow-creatures, though we burn to be doing good to all! I appeal to my friend, Count Gambardella, here. Is ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... But so it has been, and forever will be. What yeoman shall swear that he is not descended from Alfred? what dunce, that he is not sprung of old Homer? King Noah, God bless him! fathered us all. Then hold up your heads, oh ye Helots, blood potential flows through your veins. All of us have monarchs and sages for kinsmen; nay, angels and archangels for cousins; since in antediluvian days, the sons of God did verily wed with our mothers, the irresistible daughters of Eve. Thus all generations are blended: and heaven ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... remembering that the railway after all was a creature of government and of politics. It sometimes deflected public attention from the "melon" patch which was the Toronto World's sobriquet for the C.P.R. "pork barrel," and from the ever potential lobby maintained by the company at Ottawa. Of course lobbies are always repudiated. No self-respecting railway ever knows it by that name. There is no department of lobbyage in the head offices. The art is never taught. But ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... which should provide their spiritual Superior with palfrey and trappings. No Bishop assisted at the solemnity, to receive into the higher ranks of the Church nobility a dignitary, whose voice in the legislature was as potential as his own. With hasty and maimed rites, the few remaining brethren stepped forward alternately to give their new Abbot the kiss of peace, in token of fraternal affection and spiritual homage. Mass was then hastily performed, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... had lost its own charter by expiration, and hence had absolutely nothing to offer the Leyden people beyond the personal and associate influence of its members, and the prestige of a name that had once been potential. In fact, the New Netherland Company was using the Leyden congregation as a leverage to pry for itself from the States General new advantages, larger than it had ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... the motor and walk on through the wood to the bare upland beyond. The wood is still a wood of death, actual or potential. Our own batteries are all about us; so too are the remains of French batteries, from the days when the French still held this portion of the line. We watch the gunners among the trees and presently pass an encampment of their huts. Beyond, a high and ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Morals? Bah, what were they! In France, Bert Darrow would have earned for himself a wink and a shrug, as though to say: "Ah, these young fellows! One must watch out for the rascals!" In the United States, he was a potential felon. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... you to work against normals," Lambertson said. "He's swallowed the latency hypothesis whole. He thinks that everybody must have a latent psi potential, and that all that is needed to drag it into the open is a powerful stimulus from someone with ...
— Second Sight • Alan Edward Nourse
... marble stairways, Paris dresses by the gross, and hatfuls of diamonds, where the women were always discovered in boudoirs with a French maid named Fanchette in attendance, receiving bunches of long-stemmed roses from potential correspondents, while the men, all very tall and dark, possessed of interesting pasts, were introduced before fireplaces in sumptuous bachelor apartments, the veins knotted on their temples, and their strong yet aristocratic ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... close together. One is free to vibrate as a diaphragm, while the other is fixed. The element 1 in Fig. 7 is merely a stud to hold rigid the plate it bears against. Each of two instruments connected by a line contains such a pair of plates, and a battery in the line keeps them charged to its potential. The two diaphragms of each instrument are kept drawn towards each other because their unlike charges attract each other. The vibration of one of the diaphragms changes the potential of the other pair; the degree of attraction thus is varied, so that vibration of the diaphragm ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... necessity toward development that determined the issue. This assertion does not deliver us into the hands of teleology, but is based upon the idea that ontogeny and phylogeny are under the same law of growth. In the little eohippus was potentially the horse we know, as surely as the oak is potential in the acorn, or the bird potential in the egg, whatever element of mystery may enter ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... later Malthus's theory must operate, then it may be said, on the other hand, that as yet we see no limit of man's mastery over nature, and that apparently we are just entering upon the stage of material progress. Moreover, so far as any given country is concerned, wealth is potential food supply, and in the United States during the last fifty years wealth has increased four times as fast as the population. Malthus, of course, did not foresee the inventions and agricultural progress of the nineteenth century. Still, it is evident ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... created great excitement among scientific men, who immediately began active investigations of certain electrical phenomena. Volta showed that all metals could be arranged in a series so that each one would indicate a positive electric potential when in contact with any metal following it in the series. He constructed a pile of metal disks consisting of zinc and copper alternated and separated by wet cloths. At first he believed that mere contact ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... told me these things was for several years an outlaw in the Southwest and a follower of the pursuit he so frankly describes. His description of the modus operandi should prove interesting, his counsel of value to the potential passenger in some future "hold-up," while his estimate of the pleasures of train robbing will hardly induce any one to adopt it as a profession. I give the story in almost exactly ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... battle of Poplar Grove is to be considered a success or not depends upon the view which is taken of its actual and potential results. Lord Roberts did not capture another Boer army, as he fully expected to do, but he expelled it from a good position, and put it on the run; and the British Army was one stage ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... sure and a greater bonus probable, the double should be made during either the first or second game of the rubber. During the rubber game, however, the doubler should be more conservative, and should "take in" his rubber unless satisfied that the double will produce 300, with a potential ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... collective mail, I mean,) did our utmost to exalt the idea of our privileges by the insolence with which we wielded them. Whether this insolence rested upon law that gave it a sanction, or upon conscious power, haughtily dispensing with that sanction, equally it spoke from a potential station; and the agent in each particular insolence of the moment, was viewed reverentially, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... is indispensable. We are a maritime power, ruling a maritime empire, our potential enemies being military nations. He has warned us that democracy cannot govern an empire. Perhaps our type of this creed is not so full of the lust for domination and aggrandisement as was that of Athens; it may be suspected that we are ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... only up to the present, is the story of how the Jewish massacres were stayed. The Jews were potential Germans, and Germany, who sat by with folded hands when Arabs and Armenians were led to torture and death, put up a warning finger, and, for the present, saved them. In her whole conduct of the war, nothing has been more characteristic than her 'verboten' to one projected massacre ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... it. But on the other hand if the grand harmony of the Originating Spirit within itself is duly regarded, then the individual mind affords a fresh center from which the Spirit contemplates itself in what I have ventured to call its Artistic Originality—a boundless potential of Creativeness, yet always regulated by its own inherent ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... that dark heart of his for love?... the heart of a thief and a potential assassin, the heart ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... thee Make thy words faith'd? No: what I should deny As this I would; ay, though thou didst produce My very character, I'd turn it all To thy suggestion, plot, and damned practice: And thou must make a dullard of the world, If they not thought the profits of my death Were very pregnant and potential spurs To ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... this also (pursues Eleutherius) methinks both you and the Chymists may easily agree, that the surest way is to Learn by particular Experiments, what differing parts particular Bodies do consist of, and by what wayes (either Actual or potential fire) they may best and most Conveniently be Separated, as without relying too much upon the Fire alone, for the resolving of Bodies, so without fruitlessly contending to force them into more Elements than Nature made Them ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... is not contained in the sheath as a bundle, which will astonish us, when expanded, by the extent and extreme complication of its surface. Or, to speak more exactly, it is there, but in a potential state. Before becoming an actual thing it is a virtual thing which is not yet, but is capable of becoming. It is there as the oak is ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... of our Bibles, 'God shall help her at the appearance of the morning.' There are two promises here: first of all, the constant presence; and second, help at the right time. Whether there be actual help or no, there is always with us the potential help of God, and it flashes into energy at the moment that He knows to be the right one. The 'appearing of the morning' He determines; not you or I. Therefore, we may be confident that we have God ever by our sides. Not that that Presence ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... she is at home. Where the daisy and the buttercup and clover bloom, and where corn will grow, is her proper domain. The agriculture of no country can long thrive without her. Not only a large part of the real, but much of the potential wealth of the land is wrapped ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... unison with the natural parts and functions they affect, conquer or subdue the inharmony, and vice versa, as before stated. In all cases of disease and medicine, it is a simple question of A WAR BETWEEN THE ATOMS, and, therefore, the most potential forces within Nature are always at the command of the true Alchemist, because he knows bow and when to select his fighting forces, and when to set them in motion, for ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... childless marriage, the small family system that contemporary writers deplore. In Seeley's striking phrase: 'The human harvest was bad,' It was bad in all classes, but the decline was most marked in the upper ranks, the most educated, the most civilized, the potential leaders of the race. In the terrible words of Swift, facing his own madness, the Roman Empire might have cried: 'I shall die like a tree—from the ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... when he was away from her, when he had had leisure to consider that she might regard him in the light of a third potential rifler of her father's treasure-house. But at the moment, looking down into her dark eyes, he reproached himself and wondered where ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... Larry King's when there was something in the wind, seemed quiet, easy, potential. His searching glance held warmth and a gleam that thrilled Neale. But he was ceremonious, not permitting himself his old familiarity before these ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... communication. And then it stands nobly on a magnificent river, with high, overhanging rock, and a natural grandeur of position which has perhaps gone far in recommending it to those whose voice in the matter has been potential. Having the world of Canada from whence to choose the site of a new town, the choosers have certainly chosen well. It is another question whether or no a new town ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... the Sex Problem, p. 8. Crawley had previously argued (The Mystic Rose, pp. 134, 180) that this same necessity for solitude during the performance of nutritive, sexual, and excretory functions, is a factor in investing such functions with a potential sacredness, so that the concealment of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... perfumed, Oriental—interwoven with bits of gruesome tenderness. The thread of his own life intertwined with the thread of the story. All genuine art is autobiography. It is not, however, necessarily a revelation of the artist's actual self, but of a myriad of potential selves. Ah, our own potential selves! They are sometimes beautiful, often horrible, and always fascinating. They loom to heavens none too high for our reach; they stray to yawning hells beneath our ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... life it will be seen that he was one of the most interesting personalities of his day. He played a bold and distinguished part in the war for the Union, quite out of proportion to the actual command which fell to his lot. Indeed, it may well be doubted if any other single officer exerted a more potential or beneficial influence than he did upon the plans and operations in which he took part. While he was austere and reserved in manners, he was most highly esteemed by all with whom he served, and received unstinted praise for his suggestions and assistance, and yet strangely enough he became ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... of her mood had vanished, something of the exultant joy of the heroine had given place to the calmer resignation of the potential martyr. Gradually the colour faded from her cheeks, the light died slowly out of her eyes, and the young fair head so lately tossed triumphantly in the ardour of patriotism sunk gradually ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... Gootes. He regarded a bowl of algae as if about to make it disappear. Mentally I agreed; one of the greatest potential moneymakers of the age lost ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... hand of cordial welcome. Charlotte had no choice but to welcome him, too, and so the matter was simple for her. She was pouring, as usual, for her mother, who liked to eliminate herself from set duties and walk round among the actual portraits in fact and in frame and talk about them to the potential portraits. Peter, qualified by long sojourn in England, at once pressed himself into the service of handing about the curate's assistant; Mrs. Forsyth electrically explained that it was one of the first brought ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... gravitational field centred within the globe, and extending thence in all directions through space, across and beyond the earth's body. Every point in space, both inside and outside the earth, is characterized by a definite intensity of this field, the so-called gravitational potential. This is subject to variations due to the presence of other physical masses, which carry their own fields of gravity. What happens between such masses and that of the earth, as well as mutually between such masses themselves, is brought ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... he takes advantage of weakness or ignorance because he can, or if he secures an advantage through credulity or trickery, he must settle for the crime before a judge who is absolutely just! If he has this education, which is a constitutional ingrafting from the mother's blood, fructified by a like potential father, he will be almost immune from all diseases. This is an education that can not be secured unless the individual has the prenatal and environing influences to differentiate these static attributes of his nature, and, if he has, the result will be that all these qualities will come to him because ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... was not the same loveliness. Aunt Jane's repeated threat of school brooded over his sensitive spirit, like the thundercloud in the wood that was the colour of spilled ink. And the Boy-of-ten—a potential enemy—was coming ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... only a little. The bacteria clinging to the dry hair can grow but little, if at all, and those in pure water multiply very little. When dried as dust they are entirely dormant. But each individual bacterium or spore has the potential power of multiplication already noticed, and as soon as it by accident falls upon a place where there is food and moisture it will begin to multiply. Everywhere in Nature, then, exists this group of organisms with its almost inconceivable power of multiplication, but ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... object is denied, then religious observances yield a very passable substitute for the expression of the emotion. Religious observances provide the sensuous atmosphere, the call for self-renunciation, the means of expressing powerful and voluminous feeling, that the potential or disappointed lover needs. The madrigal is transformed into the hymn; the adornment of the person that should have gone to allure the beloved now takes the shape of ecclesiastical vestments; the reverence that should have been paid to the loved one ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... of the social law for which the Hawtreys had stood for generations. On several occasions she had seen a Revercomb really "roused," and when the transformation was once achieved, not all the gravity of all the Hawtreys could withstand the force of it. And this terrible potential energy in her husband's stock would assert itself, she knew, after a period of tranquillity. She hadn't been married to a Revercomb for nothing, she ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Demorest. With his usual instincts he was naturally pleased to observe that he looked older and more careworn. The softer, sensuous climate had perhaps imparted a heaviness to his figure and a deliberation to his manner that was quite unlike his own potential energy. ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... Here are the youths some share of whom must by right belong to the service of Art. And here are the millions which go to support men in every molehole of scientific research and other millions spent stupidly and wantonly for whatever the shopkeepers tell us is beautiful. We could not create these potential forces that make for art. But if it is true that they are here, we can organize them, as David Starr Jordan and the like of him less than twenty years ago organized the forces that make for science. We can make ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... supreme, peoples, some of them, would be nothing. It is the vision of empire, however forlorn and hopeless, that keeps many nations alive, perhaps all. Nations seek to express in visible form the evidence of their inner and potential greatness. The historic and time-honored art of empire-building is the only art they know. Whether this is the tragedy of history, the world's fate and the condemnation of it to perpetual warfare—or is but a term in the logic by which ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... was afterwards introduced to the public as "Myatt's Early Ashleaf." It was one of the best potatoes ever grown, very early, and splendid in quality, and it was unfortunate that he parted with it so cheaply, though, of course, the purchaser of the first few tubers had no idea of its immense potential value, and possibly, like so many novelties, it might have proved a failure. It is still in cultivation, though its constitution is impaired, like that of all potatoes of long standing. Later on I shall have more to say about this unfortunate ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Tudor Baird came into New York to see her and two other ancient beaux turned up, stationed at Camp Dix. As these men were ordered overseas they, so to speak, handed her down to their friends. But after another rather disagreeable experience with a potential Captain Collins she made it plain that when any one was introduced to her he should be under no misapprehensions as to her status and ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... in displacing the shattered masses. The proportion of useful work obtainable has been variously estimated at from 14 to 33 per cent. of the theoretical maximum potential." ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... with a mind that controlled his own. Perhaps the physical state of his nerves made him less able to cope with the half-bullying, but thoroughly good-humoured imperiousness of Ferrers. Every day this stranger became more and more potential with Maltravers. Ferrers, who was an utter egotist, never asked his new friend to give him his confidence; he never cared three straws about other people's secrets, unless useful to some purpose of his own. But he talked with so much zest about himself—about women ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... advice is to shoot first and enquire after. Remember that every Pole and Russian and Hungarian there carries a knife or a slug—he has to in self-protection—and uses it as we do slang. Every foreign workman on a railway construction gang is a potential murderer. . . . I'd rather give evidence for you on a murder charge than strew flowers on ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... offered a facile means of acquiring new helpmates in the East by emancipating its various peoples in the name of right and justice. It held out to the capitalists who deplored the loss of their milliards a potential source whence part of that loss might be made good.[128] To the zealots of the League of Nations it offered an unresisting body on which all the requisite operations from amputation to trepanning might be performed without the use ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... out of chaos. It is clear that just as in every thousand human beings there will be statistically so many artists, so many athletes, so many thinkers, and so many potentially good soldiers, so there will be so many potential organizers in times of emergency. In point of fact, not only in the great city, but in the outlying towns, these natural ordermakers, whether amateurs or officials, came to the front immediately. There seemed to be no possibility which there was not some one there to think of, or ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... undertones of 'bus and tram, A garret and a glimpse across the roofs Of clouds blown eastward over Notre Dame, The glad-eyed streets and radiant gatherings Where I drank deep the bliss of being young, The strife and sweet potential flux of things I sought Youth's dream of happiness among! It walks here aureoled with the city-light, Forever through the myriad-featured mass Flaunting not far its fugitive embrace, — Heard sometimes in a song across the night, Caught in ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... speaking voices are of greater potential range than their possessors show in the use of them. This is particularly true of American voices. There are exceptions enough, but as a nation, men and women, we speak higher than we need to; that is, we use only the upper and middle notes, ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... differs considerably from the apod'osis, or principal clause, even where both are expressed as facts. Hence some of our modern grammarians, by the help of a few connectives, absurdly merge a great multitude of Indicative or Potential expressions in what they call the Subjunctive Mood. But here again it is better to refer still to the Indicative or Potential mood whatsoever has any proper sign of such mood, even though it occur in ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... to bar the Harley doors to Richard had set him agog with angry apprehensions. What! should his best agent of politics, one who was at once the correspondent of that powerful influence the Daily Tory and the authorized mouthpiece of the potential Mr. Gwynn who owned the Anaconda, nay, was the Anaconda, be insulted, and arrayed against him? And for what? Because of the baby heart of a girl scarce grown! Was a White House to be lost by such tawdry argument? Forbidding Richard the door might ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... taken as symbolizing joy and spotless purity, and black grief and death. A blend of black and white produces gray which, as has been said, is silent and motionless, being composed of two inactive colours, its restfulness having none of the potential activity of green. A similar gray is produced by a mixture of green and red, a spiritual blend of passivity and ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... of my Lohengrin, which I had totally forgotten. Suddenly I felt something like compassion lest the music might never sound from off the death-pale paper." In other words, Lohengrin, though finished in every detail, was merely potential music. To make it anything more, the aid of singers and orchestra ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... scar. Concealing our find under our taa-taa we scraped and slid over the faulted and tilted strata to which Whinney had referred until we reached the beach. High above us I could hear the anguished cry of the mother fatu-liva vainly seeking her ravished home and potential family. ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... boundary diligently everywhere, when none of the besieged troops are near, and to do nothing when any of them are seen approaching, and until after they have turned again inward. The result will be that, with exactly the same sum of kinetic and potential energies of the same inclosed multitude of particles, the throng has been caused to be denser. Now Joule's and my own old experiments on the efflux of air prove that if the crowd be common air, or oxygen, or nitrogen, or carbonic acid, the temperature is a little higher in the denser than in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... poverty in the lap of potential wealth, thriftlessness in the face of every seeming stimulus to diligence. Here is a diversified landscape that should inspire and a climate that should invigorate, but in place of vivacity and health we find apathetic endurance and intrenched disease. ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... can lie to our supposing potential or elementary volition and consciousness to exist in atoms, on the score that their action would be less regular or uniform if they had free will than if they had not. By giving them free will we do no more than ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... in the proper place, To proper placemen, every Russ credential; And was received with all the due grimace By those who govern in the mood potential, Who, seeing a handsome stripling with smooth face, Thought (what in state affairs is most essential), That they as easily might do the youngster, As hawks may pounce ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... hearing the hawk, ran faster, moving in circles until it disappeared from view five minutes later. When last observed the cottontail was 1,700 feet from its home range and was headed in the opposite direction. It had passed several potential shelters but had not attempted to use them, presumably because it was not familiar with the area. Although for several months afterward traps were operated in the cottontail's home range area and in the area where it escaped, the ...
— Home Range and Movements of the Eastern Cottontail in Kansas • Donald W. Janes
... the Allies laid their cards face up on the table, and America realized to what she was committed. Almost overnight a potential army of hundreds of thousands was changing to one of millions. The situation was desperate. Germany had more men than the Allies, and had vast eastern resources to draw on for still more. To the Allies only the ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... session of the Workshop, Prosser GIFFORD directed discussion to future courses of action and the potential role of LC in advancing them. Among the recommendations ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... and detested the idea of having himself and his affairs discussed by the press, we were careful not to gainsay the popular belief that Griscelli was neither more nor less than a dangerous and resolute burglar, and, as his possession of lethal weapons proved, a potential murderer. As for the cause of death I said, as I then fully believed (though I have since had occasion to modify this opinion somewhat), that the battery was not strong enough to kill a healthy man, and that Griscelli had died of nervous shock and fear acting on a weak heart. ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... of potential bad men who died mute and inglorious after a life spent at a desk or a plow. They might have been bad if matters had shaped right for that. Each war brings out its own heroes from unsuspected places; each sudden ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... constabulary under the leadership of a mere handful of Europeans may be trusted to maintain order in any emergency. As Governor Murray truly states in his interesting book "Papua, or British New Guinea," the most valuable asset the colony possesses is not its all but unexplored mineral wealth or the potential value of its splendid forests and rich soil, but it is the Papuans themselves, and let us add that under the leadership of the high-minded, self-sacrificing and well-trained civil servants of Great Britain the dawn of Papuan civilization is fast breaking into the sunlight of a happiness such as ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... which is yet discernible, clearly enough to show that it really visited certain Greek minds here and there; and discernible, not as a late after- thought, but as a tradition really primitive, and harmonious with the original motive of the idea of Dionysus. In its potential, though unrealised scope, it is perhaps the subtlest dream in Greek religious poetry, and is, at least, part of the complete physiognomy of Dionysus, as it actually reveals itself to the modern ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... state has had not only continuous existence always, but continuous, potential readiness, if not continuous employment; and the greatest changes in the mutual relations of nations have been brought about by the victory of the armed force of one state over the armed force of another state. This does not mean that the fundamental causes ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... persuasion, whose frantic speeches and other wild performances during a political canvass several years ago procured him the sobriquet of "Notoriety," is just now lording over our unhappy people in the guise of a United States commissioner. In this potential capacity he has commenced active operations against those who he or his ebon emissaries choose to suspect of transgressing the internal revenue law. Farmers who may have been in the habit of purchasing small quantities of tobacco just as they purchase other supplies for the use of the laborers ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... use of 'wast' for the second person of the perfect-indicative, and 'wert' for the present-potential, simply to be understood; as I should hardly be if I substituted the latter for the former, and therewith ended my phrase. 'Where wert thou, brother, those three days, had He not raised thee?' means one thing, and 'Where wast thou when He did so?' means another. ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... reason why we might not continue indefinitely to approach it; and to all sceptical arguments, drawn from our reason's actual finiteness, gnosticism can still oppose its indomitable faith in the infinite character of its potential destiny. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... most potential, I would but tell thee this, to wit, that I did keep faith with thee, that I, by means of this unworthy hand, did set thee beyond care, lift thee above sorrow, and gave to thee the heaven of thy most warm ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... exultation that was beginning to take hold of him. Premature this might prove to be, but it seemed impossible to misunderstand the emotion under which the chief engineer was labouring or to underestimate its potential value to Lanyard. Surely it would seem that his faith in his star had been well-placed: was it not now—or all signs failed—delivering into his hand the forged tool he had so desperately needed, for which he had ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... his cabinet was, therefore, justly held to be opposed to the practice of parliament and the doctrines of the constitution. Much of the odium of this procedure fell upon the Duke of Wellington, who was supposed to be the potential adviser of Sir Robert in this matter, and whose despotic sympathies, betrayed in many ways, gave great offence to the people. Had not the previous ministers, by their inconsistency, incompetency, and truckling to O'Connell and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sufficiently removed from the town to avoid any possible danger of infecting healthy persons. There should also be a large mess hall from which good nourishing food can be served, and plenty of level ground on which tents can be erected during the dry season. Baguio's potential importance as a resort for victims of the great white plague justifies every cent of expenditure necessary ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... the naval situation at the end of 1915 was such as to give assurance to the Western Powers. They had converted potential control of the sea into actual control, save in limited areas on the enemies' sea frontiers. Germany had lost her cruisers and her colonies, and her shipping had been destroyed or driven from the seas. Though losses from submarines averaged 150,000 tons a month in 1915, they had not yet ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... so-called potentiometer circuit, ABCDGEF. The section DGE of this circuit is a slide wire, uniform in resistance throughout its length. The scale is fixed on this slide wire. The current from the cell Ba as it flows through DGE, undergoes a fall in potential, setting up a difference in voltage, that is, an electromotive force, between D and E. There will also be electromotive force between D and all other points on the slide wire. The polarity of this is in opposition to the polarity of the thermo-couple which connects into the potentiometer ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... difference of potential of the centrifugal force between the position of the clock and the centre of the disc by f, i.e. the work, considered negatively, which must be performed on the unit of mass against the centrifugal force in order to transport it from the position of the clock on the rotating disc ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... to be trusted; and that the road to a more effectual union lies, not through stricter coercion, but through a system of instant defence making itself apparent to the people as a means of provisional or potential coercion in the proper case arising. One traitor cannot exist as a public and demonstrative character without many minor traitors to back him. To Great Britain it ought to cost no visible effort, resolutely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Margaret and will have far more to say in the world, to think of them—how many they are. I am not sentimentalising. When an Elementary Schoolmaster spreads himself and tells me he looks upon every child entering his school as a potential Lord Chancellor, I answer that, as I expect, so I should hope, to die before seeing the world a Woolsack. Jack cannot ordinarily be as good as his master; if he were, he would be a great deal better. You ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... FRANCE.—In all calculations on which a declaration of war is based the moral fibre of the actual and potential enemy nations is fully considered. It is difficult to imagine that the Headquarters Staff of the German and Austrian Armies failed to bring under review the moral of the nations against whom their armies were to be launched in July, 1914. The Spirit of France had shown no signs of deterioration, ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... (also an idiot!!!)" upon a banner, and the party of each is busy about its placard and banner. What is true at such minor and momentary elections must be much more true in a great and constant election of rulers. The House of Commons lives in a state of perpetual potential choice; at any moment it can choose a ruler and dismiss a ruler. And therefore party is inherent in it, is bone of its bone, and ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... resolving that he would refuse to be a soldier. It was because he could do better, finer work by living for Ireland than by dying for England. People throughout Europe were already perturbed at the waste of potential men in war ... wondering whether, after all, it was a wise thing to let rare men, men of unique gifts go to war. Was it really wise of England to let such a man as Gilbert Farlow, with the rare gift of comedy, be lost in that haphazard manner? Ninian had had the potentialities ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... a case of a thoroughly speculative transaction carried through by means of the usual accompaniments. A defaulting State believed to be possessed of great potential wealth, thought, or was induced to think, that by building a railway it could tap that wealth. The whole thing was a pure possibility. If the loan had been successfully placed at the issue price it would have sufficed to build the first section (fifty-three miles) of railway, and to leave ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... supersensitive—refined a bit beyond humanity. We, who are as little gross as need be, become their instruments. Life is grounded in them, like electricity in the earth; and we take from them their unrealized life, turn it into light or warmth or power for them. The ordinary woman is, alone, a great potential force, an accumulator, if you like, charged from the source of life. In us ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... wider area, and had a body of Teutons been before the factory, or even inside it, many of them would have been accounted for, since there were several holes in the wall through which Ned's bullets sped, carrying potential death with them. ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... when he said: "If the nation could purchase a potential Watt, or Davy, or Faraday, at a cost of a hundred thousand pounds down, he would be dirt cheap at that money." Fifty-two of the inventions now prized by the civilized world were made in Germany, and within the influence of her ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... German army has accomplished along these lines were not true, there can be no freedom of political speculation or experiment, no time to make mistakes and to retrieve the situation, when one is surrounded on all sides by overt or potential enemies. Germany must have a powerful army and fleet, must have a strong and autocratic government, or she is lost. "Ohne Armee kein Deutschland." She can permit no silly, no stupid, no excited majority to imperil ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... military service. This, it appears, is erroneous. Only those are exempt whom a Medical Board has declared unfit for general service; and even these, according to Mr. FORSTER, may now be re-examined. This ought to prove a great comfort to certain potential heroes. ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... However great Balzac's potential genius, it was too little developed, too little exercised at this period for him to produce anything of real, permanent worth. The fiction in which he was destined to excel, the only fiction he ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... of a man's wife were regarded as his potential wives. If he was not disposed to marry them, they could not be disposed of to any other man without ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... any rate her young men are always confiding their woes to me. My status as a potential grandmother makes me a ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... for us the most magnificent spectacle of all. To imaginative feeling, every landscape is a potential painting, every life-story a romance, history a drama, every man or woman a statue or portrait. Beauty is everywhere, where we who are perhaps not artists but only art lovers can find it; we cannot embody it in enduring form or throw over ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... left him in the corner. Remember that you are a stranger in the place, and they take more notice of what you do, so you must be careful. Now let's have our conjugations. Give me the verb 'to be,' potential mood, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... lost through the decay of conversation. "Come, let us reason together." And "letters" are only a form of reasoning together adapted to our special needs, gaining perhaps some added pathos from the implied separation of kindred souls, and a further value from the permanence and potential artistry of the form itself. It is not incumbent upon us to be very deep in the eighteenth century to remark that, with conversation, letter-writing dwindles and dies before the rush of mechanism and trade. It is easy to see the reason of this. Mechanism and trade are expressions ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... of arable land, and most food has to be imported. The principal livestock activity is sheep raising. Manufacturing consists mainly of cigarettes, cigars, and furniture. The rapid pace of European economic integration is a potential threat to Andorra's advantages from its duty-free status. GDP: purchasing power equivalent - $727 million, per capita $14,000; real growth rate NA% (1990 est.) Inflation rate (consumer prices): NA% Unemployment ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency. |
