"Solidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if not the most ancient, triumphs of human art. Many of the specimens of former ages are admired for their massive solidity, as well as for the beauty of their architectural decoration. The present bridge, a fabric of the last century, has neither of these attractions, though it is constructed upon the best principle of modern bridge-building—that of having one single arch. Peronnet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... would hurl its ruins into the waters beneath. Not a stone looks in its place; they appear as if confusedly heaped one on the other, after having been destroyed and built up again: it is, therefore, with infinite surprise that you find, on approaching nearer and nearer, that its solidity is still so great—that the melted lead inserted between the stones, which binds it so firmly, is as strong as ever, and that parts of the interior of the arch are even and smooth; much, however, of this has been restored. After looking at ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... history and of human nature. Mr. Hughes has since been gathering his energies for a bolder effort in the same direction. He now publishes in the Methodist Times his latest piece of recklessness or fatuity. It is a sermon on "The Solidarity of Mankind," and is really an exhibition of the solidity of Mr. Hughes's impudence. It required nothing but "face," as Corbett used to call it, to utter such monstrous nonsense in a sermon; it would need a great deal more courage than Mr. Hughes possesses to utter it on any platform where he could be ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... nest inside it, has only blackened the outer walls and arches venerably. Utility and perfect adaptation of means to ends form the beauty of Roman buildings. The science of construction and large intelligence displayed in them, their strength, simplicity, solidity, and purpose, are their glory. Perhaps there is only one modern edifice—Palladio's Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza—which approaches the dignity and loftiness of Roman architecture; and this it does because of its absolute freedom ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... to the rare qualities possessed by Englishmen; their unpretending magnanimity; their fine talents for business; their keen views in policy; the great things they had done in the arts of peace and war, as well as their capability of continuing to accomplish still greater achievements in both; the solidity of their understandings and their reflective spirits, which, when directed and applied to political schemes, devise and consummate sound and lasting reforms of ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... the man more unexpected than an angel, Mr. Jones scrambled up and stood on the wharf by the side of Heyst. He swayed like a reed. The night descending on Samburan turned into dense shadow the point of land and the wharf itself, and gave a dark solidity to the unshimmering water extending to the last faint trace of light away to the west. Heyst stared at the guests whom the renounced world had sent him thus at the end of the day. The only other vestige of light left on earth lurked in the hollows of the thin ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... some young women from eighteen (as it appeared to me) up to twenty; the most modest attire, the simplest fashion of wearing the hair, were apparent in all; and good features, ruddy, blooming complexions, large and brilliant eyes, forms full, even to solidity, seemed to abound. I did not bear the first view like a stoic; I was dazzled, my eyes fell, and in a voice ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... having a soothing effect on the eye. The golden glow which doubtless once suffused the whole, has, alas! disappeared under cruel restorations, and flatness of tone has inevitably resulted, but we may still admire the play of light on horizontal surfaces, and the chiaroscuro giving solidity and ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... picture more real, she glanced out of the window. Suddenly her hands flew in terror to her breast, and all her plans for vengeance were left hanging in mid-air; for it was not Crosby's trim little figure that was climbing the steps, but the stately solidity of Mrs. Pemberton herself. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... to bestow on it all the attention in my power; and I have deemed it right to treat on this subject in a particular dissertation. After having deeply studied it, and obtaining as much information as I was able, I found little solidity and certainty on the subject; which, joined to the opinion of some prudent and respectable persons whom I consulted, had induced me to give up my design entirely, and to renounce laboring on a subject which is so contradictory, and ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... This fortification, which extended for more than two leagues, rested at either end on the bold, natural buttresses of the chain of mountains. It was built of immense blocks of stone nicely laid together without cement, and from the remains that still exist it is easy to imagine what its size and solidity must have been. This singular structure marked the limits of Tlascala, and was intended, the natives said, as a barrier against Mexican invasions. The soldiers paused amazed, and not a little apprehensive as to their reception in Tlascala, since a people who were capable of such a work as that ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... solution in ether and alcohol of guncotton (otherwise known as pyroxylin or nitrocellulose), which is made by the action of nitric acid on cotton. Hyatt tried mixing the collodion with ivory powder, also using it to cover balls of the necessary weight and solidity, but they did not work very well and besides were explosive. A Colorado saloon keeper wrote in to complain that one of the billiard players had touched a ball with a lighted cigar, which set it off and every man in the ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... "industrious." They are highly commended for their good qualities by those who have had the best opportunities for judging. While not as bright in intellect as some of the prairie tribes whom we shall soon consider, they appear to possess more solidity of character. By their willingness and efficiency as workers they have made themselves necessary to the white farmers and have thus supplied themselves with good clothing and many of the comforts of life. They have resisted, too, many of ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... and the Sevres manufactories have been the work of men of science, and it was by multiplying his chemical researches that Wedgewood was enabled to produce at so cheap a rate those beautiful imitations which while they surpass the ancient vases in solidity and perfection of material, equal them in elegance, variety, and tasteful arrangement of their forms. In another department, the use of the electrical conductor was a pure scientific combination, and the sublimity of the discovery of the American philosopher was only equalled by the happy ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... spite of the diversity of their effect, obtained from very scanty material, are distinguished by a sort of simplicity, and even by a solidity and conciseness, which one only meets with in Beethoven.... One may find here and there harmonies that are commonplace and trivial, and others that are incorrect—at least according to the old rules. In some places his harmonies ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... forwarding it securely. Your attentions to the Leyden gazette are, in my opinion, very useful. The paper is much read and respected. It is the only one I know in Europe which merits respect. Your publications in it will tend to re-establish that credit which the solidity of our affairs deserve. With respect to the sale of lands, we know that two sales of five millions and two millions of acres have been made. Another was begun for four millions, which, in the course of the negotiation, may have been reduced to three millions, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... names are . . . Gidya, Gidia, or Gidgee (with other spellings in New South Wales and Queensland). This is the commonest colonial name . . . much sought after for turner's work on account of its solidity and fragrance. . . . The smell of the tree when in flower is abominable, and just before ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... it, seems almost supernatural. For we must judge visible and measurable manifestations. So judging, what a contrast between the emotional and intellectual worlds of West and East! Far less striking that between the frail wooden streets of the Japanese capital and the tremendous solidity of a thoroughfare in Paris or London. When one compares the utterances which West and East have given to their dreams, their aspirations, their sensations,—a Gothic cathedral with a Shinto temple, an opera by Verdi or a trilogy by Wagner with ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... wondered that he could have been interested in such a vain, shallow creature as Mrs. Grobb had proved herself, and he excused himself on the ground that he had idealized her into something that she was not. All that Annie said and did had the solidity of truth, and not the hollowness of affectation. And yet there was one thing that troubled him. While her effort to help him out of his morbid, unhappy state was so sincere, she showed no special personal interest in himself, such as he had in her. If he should now ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... before our date, conquered Greece, in so far as they were a people of letters or of effort in abstract thought, in so far as they possessed the arts of sculpture, architecture, painting, and music, they were almost wholly indebted to Greece. Their own strength lay in solidity and gravity of character, in a strong sense of national and personal discipline, in the gift of law-making and law-obeying. In culture they stood to the Greeks of that time very much as the Germans of two centuries ago stood to the French. After their conquest by ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... Now that the pain had left me, weak though I was, I was wildly impatient to return to the Markovitches. Through all these last days' torments I had been conscious of Semyonov, seen his hair and his mouth and his beard and his square solidity and his tired, exhausted eyes, and strangely, at the end of it all, felt the touch of his lips on mine. Oddly, I did not hate Semyonov; I saw quite clearly that I had never hated him—something too impersonal about him, some sense, too, of ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... inevitable disaster overtakes the man who would behave as though it were a thing of shreds and fragments. Now this law of what we may call the Divine unity is equally valid in the purely intellectual order. That, likewise, refuses to admit schisms and divisions to break in on the solidity of its unbroken ranks. An attempt to view life and its problems exclusively from our own standpoint, is to fail to grasp truth; our shadow gets projected over the surface, and the light is partially concealed, if not wholly confused. No better illustration of this fact, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... month. As in Berlin, we dined at a "restauration," or at the "Fress Madam's" (Mrs. Gobble's), a jocose term for a private eating-house, well known to the jewellers. The mid-day meal of the Viennese workman is remarkable for strength and solidity, but also for its sameness. It always takes the shape of fresh boiled beef and vegetables, the latter arranged in a thick porridge of meal and fat. It commences, of course, with soup; is followed by the "rind-fleisch ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... the plaster of the old wall, and the amianthus in the earthen vessels. Thus we have the combination A B C, or fibro-cartilage. Again, the bones were once only gristle or cartilage, A B. To give them solidity they were infiltrated with stone, in the form of salts of lime, an inorganic element, so that bone would be spelt out by the letters ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... implies some weight and solidity; Romance means nothing, if it does not convey some notion of mystery and fantasy. A general distinction of this kind, whatever names may be used to render it, can be shown, in medieval literature, to hold good of the two large groups of narrative belonging to the earlier and the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Asia," and "possessing a literature in vastness and antiquarian value surpassed by no other." He goes on to say that the translations hitherto made "have conveyed to us a faint notion of the compass, variety, solidity, and linguistic beauties of that literature." Such statements as these admit, unfortunately, of rhetorical support, sufficient to convince outsiders that at any rate there are two sides to the question, a conviction which could only be effectually dispelled ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... style, which had cost the second Cardinal de Bourbon a fortune at the beginning of last century. A real forest of woodwork formed the basis of the monument; the riches of the cardinal had created a prodigality of solidity and sumptuousness, and several days were required to fit together the Holy Catafalque, and not ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... set down, in orderly fashion, the list of the gem's attributes. I grouped together the fluctuating nature of its pale blue colour, its power of reproducing those who had gone into the Blind Spot, its combination of perfect solidity with extreme lightness; its quality of coldness to the touch of a male, and warmth to that of a female; and finally its ability to induct—I think this is the right term—to induct sounds out of the unknown. This last quality might be called spasmodic or accidental, ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... be pardoned for its singularity. The censure might indeed seem like adroit flattery, if it were not passed on an author whom any objection is sufficient to render unpopular and ridiculous. I grant it is best to unite solidity with show, general information with particular ingenuity. This is the pattern of a perfect style; but I myself do not pretend to be a perfect writer. In fine, we do not banish light French wines from our tables, or refuse to taste ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Grafton resigned office, and the seals which he resigned were given to the Duke of Richmond. When he resigned he declared that he had no fault to find with his colleague's, except that they wanted strength, and that his opinion was, Mr. Pitt alone could give vigour and solidity to any administration in the present state of affairs. Under him, his grace said, he was "willing to serve in any capacity, not merely as a general officer, but as a pioneer: under him he would take up a spade or a mattock." Such was the situation in which the ministers found themselves ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... gate. Mr. Keene was just outside; Alice beckoned to him to enter. His appearance was a great improvement on the old days; he had grown a beard, and in his eye you saw the responsible editor. Altogether he seemed to have gained in moral solidity. None the less, his manner of approaching Adela, hat in hand, awoke ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... the table, when at length we filed into the dining room, sent a chill through me. It was a meal for the very young or the very hungry. The uncompromising coldness and solidity of the viands was enough to appall a man conscious that his digestion needed humouring. A huge cheese faced us in almost a swashbuckling way. I do not know how else to describe it. It wore a blatant, rakish, nemo-me-impune-lacessit air, and I noticed ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... large men with loud voices, was able to give an impression of solidity that is very refreshing and reviving at times, but, otherwise, Joicey was not looking entirely himself. He passed his handkerchief over his face ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... unifies character and makes life a consistent and harmonious whole; so self-indulgence in vicious pleasures disorganizes a man's life and eats the heart out of him.—Corrupt means literally broken. The corrupt man has no soundness, no solidity, no unity in his life. He cannot respect himself. Others cannot put confidence in him. There is no principle binding each part of his life to every other, and holding the whole together. The other words by which we describe such a life all spring from the same conception. ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... that we have just laid out, that is to say, strength, lightness, rapidity of erection, and ease of carriage. The shelters that are at present employed for movable markets at Paris are very primitive, and are wanting in solidity and convenience. They consist simply of wooden uprights to which are affixed cross-pieces that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... Holy Grail Temple. The great north wall is not featureless. There are a number of architectural forms, of wonderfully varied shape, resting upon bases of massive solidity. The most striking of these is a squarebased monumental mass,—Holy Grail Temple, formerly Bass Tomb,—on which rests a well-shaped pyramid, crowned with a red and white circular shaft. The whole butte is well ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... the solidity of such a defence, it would be sufficient merely to consider in what consisted this prepossessing distinction, this captivating characteristic of greatness of mind. Is it not solely to be traced in great actions directed to great ends? In them, and them alone, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... garden to the back. Here he had apparently been supping; for by the light of a tallow dip the table was seen to be covered with a napkin, and set out with a quart of bottled ale and the heel of a Gouda cheese. The room, on the other hand, was furnished with faded solidity, and the walls were lined with scholarly and costly volumes in glazed cases. The house must have been taken furnished; for it had no congruity with this man of the shirt sleeves and the mean supper. As for the ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... tone down the crudeness of Hungerford's language. It contents me to think that the solidity of his character and his worth will appear even through the crust of free-and-easy idioms, as they will certainly be seen in his acts;—he was sound at heart ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had not experienced in all its recorded centuries of previous progress. Naturally enough the dramatic art of our ancestors was marked by scholar-like and thorough elaboration, mellow richness of colour, absolute simplicity of character, and great solidity of merit. Such actors as Wignell, Hodgkinson, Jefferson, Francis, and Blissett offered no work that was not perfect of its kind. The tradition had been established and accepted, and it was transmitted and preserved. Everything was concentrated, and the public grew to be entirely ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... crossed like swords; he was conscious from the flicker in her eyes that her temper was straining at the leash; and his jaw assumed a certain look of grim solidity. But the outbreak he expected did not come; Alison was an artiste too consummate not to be able to control and mask her emotions—even as she did now with a quick curtaining of ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... Rough and ready the hospitality indeed was, for the board was not only uncovered but unplaned, and the dishes were cracked and dinted—according to their nature; but the heartiness of the welcome, the solidity of the simple viands, the strength of appetite, and, above all, the presence of bright eyes and gentle spirits threw a luxurious halo round the humble apartment, in the light ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... the walls; while on the right it joins the most modern portion of the castle, the building erected, on foundations of enormous height and solidity, in 1635, by Gaston d'Orleans. This fine frigid mansion—the proper view of it is from the court within—is one of the masterpieces of Francois Mansard, whom a kind providence did not allow to make over the whole palace in the superior manner of his superior ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Tower were part of the old building—the Lancaster is entirely new. These towers which have machiolated battlements, are about 100 feet high; the gateway between them is 24 feet high. In our former Engraving, the gateway was in the distance, but the present being a near view, shows the solidity, largeness of proportions, and the boldness of the building, to greater advantage. The appearance of the whole is extremely beautiful, although its newness and cleanness remind us of Mr. Bowles's eccentric observation, that "it looks as if it was washed every morning with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... valuable, as the medium in which they were paid was less valuable; it was not possible that the small part of society which may be called the sober and reasoning part, should not be so struck with the sudden fortunes and extravagant enthusiasm which prevailed, as not to doubt of the solidity of a system, unphilosophical in itself, and which, after all, had to depend on the profits of a commercial company, the good faith of the regent, and the skill of Law; it was impossible, on these and other accounts, but that gold and silver should be at last preferred to paper notes, of ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... all have been fairly powerful men, the leader especially. But even the short struggle I had had with them showed me they were not. Their bodies, too, had seemed under my grip to have a flimsy quality, a lack of firmness, of solidity, entirely belied ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... contrary. The writings of the illustrious sage of Koenigsberg, the founder of the Critical Philosophy, more than any other work, at once invigorated and disciplined my understanding. The originality, the depth, and the compression of the thoughts; the novelty and subtlety, yet solidity and importance of the distinctions; the adamantine chain of the logic; and I will venture to add—(paradox as it will appear to those who have taken their notion of Immanuel Kant from Reviewers and Frenchmen)—the clearness and evidence, of the Critique of the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... turned on fully, and the juice boils until it reaches the solidity of twenty-five degrees, as measured by the saccharometer. This point attained, more pipes conduct it to a series of square iron tanks called filterers. Each is provided with a false bottom, covered with thick woolen ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... a well-known dramatic couple, who were extremely agreeable and genial, the husband abounding in droll reminiscences of the stage; a merry little German musician named Kreutzer, son of the great composer; and a young Englishwoman with a younger brother. I rather doubted the "solidity" of this young lady. By-and-bye it was developed that the captain was in love with her. Out of this, I have heard, came a dreadful tragedy; for the love drove him mad, the insanity developing itself on the return voyage. The captain ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... breadth; the numerous land drains, and, when necessary, shores and tunnels of substantial masonry, with which all the water arising from springs or falling in rain is instantly carried off; the great care with which a sufficient foundation is established for the road, and the quality, solidity, and disposition of the materials that are put upon it, are matters quite new in the system of road-making in these countries."— 'Report from the Select Committee on the Road from London to Holyhead ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... and I to part till we had spent an hour in talking over this amiable family, with whom he could not help being much delighted, though he observed they were very deficient in the bon ton, there was too much solidity in all they said, they would trifle with trifles indeed, but had not the art of treating more weighty subjects with the same lightness, which gave them an air of rusticity; and he did not doubt, but on a more intimate acquaintance we should find their manners ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... thing requiring the notes of seven German metaphysicians. I must go and talk a little to my friends the trees, and see if I can get any explanation from them. It is turning out a beautiful day after all, notwithstanding my praise of its solidity. ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... on his face like an impression on metal that cools into solidity. From the beginning he had conducted his courtship, as he had conducted his sacred office, with the manner of a gentleman and the infallibility of an apostle. Doubt of his perfect fitness for either vocation had never ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... work of that period; the stratification and form of the rocks in the foreground, the palms and other trees relieved against the lucid distance, and the mountain-ranges of tender blue beyond, are as much beyond praise for their beauty and their truth, as they have been beyond imitation from the solidity and transparent strength of their execution! The minute finish is Nature's, and the colouring more gem-like ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... They are flattish round, weigh from three to nine pounds when well grown, are very symmetrical in shape, standing apart from the surrounding leaves. They are not solid, though they have the finished appearance that solidity gives; they are remarkably tender, as though blanched, and of very fine flavor. It is among the earliest of drumheads, maturing at about the same time as the Early Winnigstadt. As an early drumhead for the family garden, it has no superior; and where the market is near, and ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... foothold in the enemy's camp. This was effected by electing Sieyes to fill the vacancy caused by the retirement of Rewbell from the Directoire,—Sieyes, who was known for his hostility to the existing system, whose reputation for solidity and political integrity was wide, whose capacity as a constitutionalist and ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... are devoted to the stems of the vegetation: on their sap-retaining power depends the life of the plant, so blossom and leaf, though exquisitely indicated, are fragile and incomplete compared to the solidity and bulbous appearance of the stalk. Everything is sacrificed to the practical principle of keeping life together, and it is not until these stout-stemmed plants are cultivated and duly sheltered and watered, and can grow, as it were, with confidence, that they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... destroy a house which was built upon a rock; and if it fell not, the fault lay not in the absence of ingenuity and strength of attack, but in the undecayed material and deeply-grounded solidity of the structure. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... perfectly willing to leave the decision of that question to the common consciousness of our race. If all men do not believe in a permanent reality—a substance which is external to themselves, a substance which offers resistance to their muscular effort, and which produces in them the sensations of solidity, extension, resistance, etc.—they believe nothing and know nothing at ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... under the influence of the cold. His manner had gained in solidity although his gaze was a little glassy. Hopefully Maida hunted about until she found ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... they're solid everywhere," she laughed. "It's only a question of degree; solidity here means a different thing ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... upon the sixteenth-century world, leaving its moulding into a classic French form to the next century; and by her spirit of tolerance she endeavored to further all moral development: thus is she entitled to the second consideration. Gifted with rare delicacy of taste, solidity of judgment, and the ability to select, discriminate, and adapt, she set the standards of style and tone: therefore, she is entitled ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... of the chateau is of enormous extent. The solidity of the walls and the towers resisted so successfully the mines and pickaxes of Richelieu that the great outlines of the immense building are still easily definable, with fine traces of the architecture of the great chapel. That St.-Louis and Henry IV. visited Coucy ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Their houses are of stone, and built for duration, not for show. If a German builds a house, its walls are twice as thick as others—if he puts down a gate-post, it is sure to be nearly as thick as it is long. Every thing about him, animate and inanimate, partakes of this character of solidity. His wife even is a jolly, portly dame, his children chubby rogues, with legs shaped like little old-fashioned mahogany bannisters—his barns as big as fortresses—his horses like mammoths—his cattle enormous—and his breeches surprisingly redundant in linseywoolsey. It matters ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... prudent housewife must take my place. It is no small matter. Your grandfather Assa often would say that a house well-conducted in every detail was a mark of a family owning an unspotted name, and living with wise liberality and secure solidity, in which each had his assigned place, his allotted duty to fulfil, and his fixed rights to demand. How often have I prayed to the Hathors that they may send you a wife after my ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... completely under the spell of the English Classic or so-called Georgian style. Correspondingly, American men of means were erecting country houses of brick, with ornamental trim classic in detail, and of marble and white-painted wood. Marked by solidity, spaciousness and quiet dignity, they are thoroughly Georgian in conception, and as such reminiscent of the manorial seats of Virginia, yet less stately and in various respects peculiar to this section of the colonies. Like the ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... in the pioneer days. The old civilization was aristocratic and exotic; it could not survive in the modern world. It is true that it produced great men, but its foundations were rotten. The new civilization may, for the moment, be less productive of individual works of genius, but it has a new solidity and gives promise of a new unity. It may be that I have taken too hopeful a view and that the future evolution of Russia will have as little connection with the life and tradition of its present population as modern America with the life of the Red Indian tribes. The fact that there exists in Russia ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... came shortly after Lionel Trilling's influential essay attacking Anderson, an attack from which Anderson's reputation would never quite recover. Trilling charged Anderson with indulging a vaporous sentimentalism, a kind of vague emotional meandering in stories that lacked social or spiritual solidity. There was a certain cogency in Trilling's attack, at least with regard to Anderson's inferior work, most of which he wrote after Winesburg, Ohio. In my book I tried, somewhat awkwardly, to bring together the kinds of judgment Trilling had made with my still keen affection for the best ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... and solidity about this rebuke which seemed to impress even my headstrong antagonist. He did not retort upon the instant, and all who listened felt the tension upon their emotions relaxed. Some on the outskirts began talking of other things, and at least one of the principals changed ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... all her troubles (she has been known to say she had rather be a washerwoman than a literary lady), had opportunities such as few women can now obtain. One is lost in admiration at the solidity of one's grandparents' taste, when one attempts to read the tragedies they delighted in, and yet 'Rienzi' sold four thousand copies and was acted forty-five times; and at one time Miss Mitford had two tragedies rehearsed upon the boards together; one at Covent Garden and one at Drury Lane, with Charles ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... the surface of the earth, that our air and sea were outside the globe; the latter part, indeed, he already knew from his astronomical specialists. He was very anxious to have more detailed information of what he called this extraordinary state of affairs, for from the solidity of the earth there had always been a disposition regard it as uninhabitable. He endeavoured first to ascertain the extremes of temperature to which we earth beings were exposed, and he was deeply interested by my descriptive treatment of clouds and rain. His imagination was assisted ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... dating from long before the British occupation, when the princes of the different states were all in rival camps and that was about the only opportunity to meet on reasonably friendly terms. In later years it had looked like developing into a focus of political solidity; so some ingenious commissioner had introduced the polo element, eliminating, item after item, all the rest. Then the date had been changed to the early hot weather, in order to reduce attendance; but the only effect that had was to keep away the English from outlying ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... stops before the door of Marya Petrovna Koshkin, a midwife and an old maid. Neither face nor hand can be distinguished in the autumn darkness, but in the very manner of his coughing and the ringing of the bell a certain solidity, positiveness, and even impressiveness can be discerned. After the third ring the door opens and Marya Petrovna herself appears. She has a man's overcoat flung on over her white petticoat. The little lamp ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... were great, and the flexibility with which he used his voice could only be likened to the facility of a skillful 'cello performer. He combined largeness of style, truth of accent, florid embellishment, and solidity. His acting, alike in tragedy and comedy, was spirited and judicious, though it lacked the irresistible strokes of spontaneous genius, the flashes of passion, or rich drollery which made Lablache so grand an actor, or, in a later time, redeemed the vocal imperfections ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... There seems to be a close connection between robust character and the soil, the hills, mountains and valleys, the pure air and sunshine. There is a very appreciable difference between the physical stamina, the brain vigor, the solidity and the reliability of country-bred men and that ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... days were very far from having attained the strength and solidity which a few generations later were bestowed upon them. The stones of which they were constructed were comparatively small, and fastened together by mortar, consequently they could ill resist even an assault by manual ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... man does, now, exhibit a better balance between these three components of him. Less evolved in some ways, he is on the whole, and for that reason, more forward. His evolution is proceeding with greater solidity. It is more stable, and more likely to ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... dignified expression of face. So it befits diplomatists to play; this was no doubt how he played in Petersburg with some influential dignitary, whom he wished to impress with a favourable opinion of his solidity and maturity. "A hundred and one, a hundred and two, hearts, a hundred and three," sounded his voice in measured tones, and Lavretsky could not decide whether it had a ring ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... perfect black transparent; hence when added to black in minute proportion, white gives it solidity; and from a like small proportion of black combined with white, the latter acquires locality as a colour, and better preserves its hue in painting. Both white and black communicate these properties to other colours, in proportion to ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... thought dull by those who seek amusement only." He hoped, however, as he says in one of his earlier essays, to become livelier as he went on. "The proper merit of a foundation is its massiveness and solidity. The conveniences and ornaments, the gilding and stucco-work, the sunshine and sunny prospects, will come with the superstructure." But the building, alas! was never destined to be completed, and the architect had his own misgivings about the attractions even of the completed ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... to principles, temper, and conduct. The mere mechanical parts of education may at all times be purchased for money; automatons may be made to perform wonders. But we all know that something more is wanting to give solidity and consequence to character. If you refuse my daughter, she will ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... rather neutral in private life, had strong opinions concerning the districts of the Niger, was much at home also in Brazils, spoke with decision of affairs in the South Seas, was studious of his Parliamentary and itinerant speeches, and had the general solidity and suffusive pinkness of a healthy Briton on the central table-land of life. Catherine, aware of a tacit understanding that he was an undeniable husband for an heiress, had nothing to say against him but that he was thoroughly tiresome ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... approached the town, I perceived it to be a fortress of vast extent; but as it is commanded from the heights from which I was descending, it appeared to want strength if approached from the south. The ramparts were built with great solidity, but rusty, old, dismounted cannon, obliterated embrasures, and palisades rotten from exposure to the weather, showed that to stand a siege it must undergo a considerable repair. The aspect of the place did not improve as we rumbled down the street, lined with houses ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... true," he murmured, "'the mystery of iniquity' that has long been working undermining the foundations of all true social and religious safety and solidity, is now to be openly manifested and perfected. The real Christians, the Church of God, which is the Bride of Christ, has been silently, secretly caught up to her Lord in the air. She was 'the salt of the earth,' she kept it from the open putrefaction that has already, now, begun ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... bindings. They show to best advantage in the southern parlour library, where books are rarely opened. To say the Elder is not a man of great parts, is to circulate a libel of the first magnitude. Indeed, he liked big books for their solidity; they reminded him of great thoughts well preserved, and sound principles more firmly established. At times he had thought they were like modern democratic rights, linked to huge comprehending faculties, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... this instance, so accurately the reflection of the father, that an acquaintance with either of the two Pedgifts was almost equivalent to an acquaintance with both. Add some little height and size to the figure of Pedgift Junior, give more breadth and boldness to his humor, and some additional solidity and composure to his confidence in himself, and the presence and character of Pedgift Senior stood, for all general ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... confidence of an old man who has founded and knows the solidity of the foundations—Thelismer Thornton smoked peacefully at one end of the village of Fort Canibas, and allowed rebellion to roar at its pleasure in the ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... are all pretty well acquainted with the object of the meeting; they have all read the facts in the same newspapers. The orator possesses no information which his hearers have not; yet he teaches them to see the thing with his eyes. By the new placing, the circumstances acquire new solidity and worth. Every fact gains consequence by his naming it, and trifles become important. His expressions fix themselves in men's memories, and fly from mouth to mouth. His mind has some new principle of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... gay colours everywhere, fill the eye with pleasure, not less exquisite than that which fills the ears from the warblings and chatterings of birds, the gentle tones of domestic animals, and the tinkling of rills. The mere solidity of the land, under foot, forms an element of pleasure after the tossings of the restless sea, and all the sweet influences put together tend to rouse in the heart a shout of joy and deep gratitude for a world so beautiful, and for powers so ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... astronomy. He was born at Pisa in 1564, and in 1609 the first telescope used for astronomical observation was constructed. Galileo died in 1642, the year in which Newton was born. It was Galileo who laid with solidity the foundations of that science of Dynamics, of which astronomy is the most splendid illustration; and it was he who, by promulgating the doctrines taught by Copernicus, incurred ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... other, flinging off his cap, "we are not perhaps in exactly the same camp. Your judgment is more philosophical. You are a man of few words, but I haven't met anybody who dared to doubt the generosity of your sentiments. There is a solidity about your character which ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... for the energies of the most prolific and the toughest of the races of mankind,—the purest, in fact, the only true race, properly so called, out of India, to which it would return as to its source, and there create an empire magnificent in force and solidity, the actual wedding of East and West; an empire firm on the ground and in the blood of the people, instead of an empire of aliens, that would bear comparison to a finely fretted cotton-hung palanquin balanced on an elephant's back, all depending on the docility of the elephant (his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... living-room Bartley made himself comfortable, admiring the generous proportions of the house, the choice Indian blankets, the wide fireplace, and the general solidity of everything, which reflected the personality ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... and implies a nobler art to represent the movement and complexity of life and emotion than to catch the fixed lineaments of outward aspect. To paint a policeman idly lounging at the street corner with such verisimilitude that we are pleased with the representation, admiring the solidity of the figure, the texture of the clothes, and the human aspect of the features, is so difficult that we loudly applaud the skill which enables an artist to imitate what in itself is uninteresting; and if ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... now standing before us, by its uprightness, its solidity, its durability, is no unfit emblem of his character. His public virtues and public principles were as firm as the earth on which it stands; his personal motives, as pure as the serene heavens in which its summit is lost. But, indeed, though a fit, it is an inadequate emblem. Towering high above ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... frivolity; and the saying above ascribes to the sex such a power of frivolity as connects itself evidently with the foregone conclusion that they are by nature incapable of being developed into any solidity of worth or character. The Gemara, Tosephoth, and Rashi as well all support Rabbi Eliezer in laying a veto on female education, for fear lest, with the acquisition of knowledge, women might become cunning, and do things on the sly which ought not to be done by them. Literally the saying is:—For ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... contemplate the result of this complete innovation, or, as some friends of his will call it, reform, in the whole body of its solidity and compound mass, at which, as Hamlet says, the face of heaven glows with horror and indignation, and which, in truth, makes every reflecting mind and every feeling heart perfectly thought-sick, without a thorough abhorrence of everything they say ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... expression. It was thus, he thought, that diplomatists ought to play. It was thus, in all probability, that he used to play with some influential dignitary at St. Petersburg, whom he wished to impress with a favorable idea of his solidity and perspicacity. "One hundred and one, hundred and two, heart, hundred and three," said the measured tones of his voice, and Lavretsky could not tell which it ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... not an artistic apartment; it was too comfortable for that. There were too many chairs and sofas; and they were designed on broad lines for the stolid, permanent sitting of stout, comfortable bodies. There were too many photographs on view of persons distinguished for their solidity rather than for their good looks, the portraits of the guests whom one would expect to find installed in those chairs. A grand piano was there; but the absence of any music in its neighbourhood indicated that its purpose was chiefly to symbolize ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... the pharmacopeias it has no special medicinal virtues. Balsam of Tolu is produced from Myroxylon toluiferum. It is of a brown colour, thicker than Peru balsam, and attains a considerable degree of solidity on keeping. It also is a product of equatorial America, but is found over a much wider area than is the balsam of Peru. It is used in perfumery and as a constituent in cough syrups and lozenges. Liquid storax or styrax preparatus, is a balsam yielded ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... from our standpoint; to touch its head it stretches out its hands in the same direction of its body as we do of ours to reach our feet. Repeated failures give experience and lead to the correction of the notions born of one sense by those derived through another; the sensations of distance and solidity are produced in ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... And the 'copter touched solidity and a great silvery cylinder touched very delicately close by, and the children ran, squealing, to be with people they'd feared they would never see again. And Soames and Gail walked a little bit diffidently toward the same opened, lowered door. There were some rather nice people waiting for ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... gained in stability, especially in the lower sections. The sacrum, for instance, is created by the fusing together of several vertebrae into one bone for the sake of greater strength and stability. The sacrum in man is much broader than in animals, for it must supply solidity and strength to the lower part of the spine, thus adapting it to the vertical position, and in the same way the lower vertebrae generally are comparatively broader and heavier, gradually decreasing in size ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... the surface. My lords, I tell you that the people are as I am. To-day you oppress them; to-day you hoot at me. But the future is the ominous thaw, in which that which was as stone shall become wave. The appearance of solidity melts into liquid. A crack in the ice, and all is over. There will come an hour when convulsion shall break down your oppression; when an angry roar will reply to your jeers. Nay, that hour did come! Thou wert of it, O my father! That hour of God did come, and was called ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... There exists unquestionable evidence to prove that the Princess Palatine was a person of large intelligence, who was able to hold her own with men of the greatest capacity. De Retz and Bossuet tell us so. Some letters of the Palatine, however, are extant in which, whilst there is no lack of solidity, refinement, and ingenuity of thought, it will be seen that they often abound with errors, obscure phraseology, and not unfrequently outrageously violate even the commonest rules of orthography. It must not, however, by any means be inferred from this that the Palatine ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... and an inspiration for continued struggle. But monuments are not created after the death of those they commemorate, although they may seem to be; they are but memorials of the structure already built, the solidity of whose base and symmetry of whose lines were projected and fashioned by intensity of conviction and the unswerving courage of their prototypes in ameliorating conditions while they lived. Bereft of this, ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... was the picture on the wall, in this composition the group of mounted guardsmen on the left gives a circle's unity to it, helps to join the middle distance with the foreground, becomes the third point in the triangle, which gives pyramidal solidity to the composition and is altogether quite as important to the picture as the right wing ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... which none relished more than Sylvia and her father, incapable themselves of achieving it. "'Most likely the bear would have gone away of his own accord anyhow. They don't attack people unless they're stirred up." Arnold bit deeply into the solidity of this unexaggerated presentation, and was silent for a moment, saying then: "Well, anyhow, she didn't know he'd go away! She was a sport, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... motive and end but also the form of moral action depend on that which in every circle of society and at every time proves to be the most successful form. It is the proof of success or failure which gives this form a certain traditional authority and a relative solidity—but only a relative one, and only until it is displaced by a still ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... adventure that we encountered a continent of immense extent and prodigious solidity, but which, nevertheless, was supported entirely upon the back of a sky-blue cow that had no fewer than ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to convey ideas of your truthfulness and honor. Show your courtesy and kindness with the heart pitch; use it to manifest your real desire to be of service to your prospect. But suggest your solidity and capacity for good judgment by employing the pitch of power. With its aid you can convince your prospect of the enduring quality of your best characteristics; you can deny disparagement or doubt of your ability; you ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... something else. If people watched her a good deal, she also returned their contemplation, and her charming eyes had several times encountered those of Basil Ransom. But they wandered mainly in the direction of Mrs. Farrinder—they lingered upon the serene solidity of the great oratress. It was easy to see that the girl admired this beneficent woman, and felt it a privilege to be near her. It was apparent, indeed, that she was excited by the company in which she found herself; a fact to be explained by a reference to that recent period of exile ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... proof," cried Paragot, "of the solidity rerum agrestium. Look at him! Shew me a horse of his age in Paris. The Paris horses, like Youth in the poem, grow pale and spectre thin and die of premature decay. Here, mon petit," said he giving a sou to a blue bloused urchin who was restraining the impetuous Bucephale from ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... inches square of English gold leaf of good ordinary quality is from 1s. 3d. to 1s. 6d., whereas the cost of a book of double thick pure gold leaf is 3s. to 3s. 6d. For tooled work it is worth paying the increased price for the sake of the advantages in colour and solidity; but for lines and edges, which use up an immense amount of gold, the thinner and cheaper gold ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... then amazing things are done on this great stage of ours: lights go down; the back drop, which had given the illusion of solidity, reveals itself transparent. A sort of fairyland transformation takes place. Beyond the once solid wall strange figures move on—a new mise en scene, with the old blotted out in darkness. The lady, whom we left knitting by the fire, becomes a fairy—Sara Lee became a fairy, of a sort—and ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the work is not so much in its vastness or its beauty as in its tremendous solidity and duration. A portion of it had been cut away by barbarous armies during the fifteenth century, and in the reign of Isabella the Catholic the monk-architect of the Parral, Juan Escovedo, the greatest builder of his day in Spain, repaired it. ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... and rubbing noses were the consequence. Our beach presented a most interesting and busy scene. A dozen superb war canoes were lying ready to convey the forces; and, considering their limited means, the solidity of their structure and the carved work on them are surprising. None but men of rank are allowed to work upon them, and they labour like slaves. Some canoes were to be lengthened; others patched; others were condemned to be broken up, and the fragments taken to complete the new ones. ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... settling there, became an accession of matter, as well as cement, to the rubbish, insomuch that the violence of the waters could not remove it, but forced and compressed it all together. Thus its bulk and solidity gained it new subsidies, which gave it extension enough to stop on its way most of what the stream brought down. This is now a sacred island, lying by the city, adorned with temples of the gods, and walks, and is called in the Latin tongue inter duos pontes. Though some say this did not happen ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... consider the Reef as a solid, massive structure throughout. The compact kinds of Corals, giving strength and solidity to the wall, may be compared to the larger trees in a forest, which give it shade and density; but between these grow all kinds of trailing vines, ferns and mosses, wild flowers and low shrubs, that till the spaces between the larger trees with a thick underbrush. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... upon his head while asleep in bed: and one of them, in accordance with this conjecture, acknowledged that the devil had sent her with a sledge-hammer to drive a nail into the temples of the obnoxious clergyman. The solidity of his skull saved him; and the only result was, as stated, a severe pain in ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... reached the factory the stranger knew that there were three rows of cabins in the post, that the factory was a mighty fortress in its low solidity, and that the small log structure to the right of it with the barred window ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... room about him made the beam of light seem a tangible, material thing. Its brilliance was unwavering—it extended from the ceiling to the surface of his face with the solidity, almost, of some huge, glittering icicle. He felt as though, were his hands but free, he could brush it aside, fling it off bodily into ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... door. Lastly, my attention was especially attracted, not so much to the scene, as to the mirrors that produced it. These mirrors were broken in parts. Yes, they were marked and scratched; they had been "starred," in spite of their solidity; and this proved to me that the torture-chamber in which we now were HAD ALREADY SERVED ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... proposal you will show that you are as convinced of the solidity of your arguments as I am of ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... distinguishes them widely from the picturesque but sometimes trivial buildings of the Arabs and Moors. Less dependent on color than the Moorish or Persian structures, they are usually built of marble, or of marble and sandstone, giving them an air of permanence and solidity wanting in other Moslem styles except the Turkish. The dome, the round minaret, the pointed arch, and the colossal portal-arch, are universal, as in Persia, and enamelled tiles are also used, but chiefly ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... era. The Babylonians, the Persians, the Hindoos, and the Chinese early turned their attention to astronomy. Many of their observations were accurately recorded; and their tables extend to a period of three thousand years before the birth of Christ. Does not all this strongly argue the solidity of the science to which they belong? Who, after this, will have the presumption to question, that the men who profess astronomy proceed on real grounds, and have a profound knowledge of these things, which at first sight might appear to be set at a distance ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... Moreover he had long since ceased to give voice to the intelligence of his party or even fairly to represent it. How far it had ever been proper to call the Abolitionists a party may be doubted; before the war they had been compressed into some solidity by encompassing hostility; but they would not have been Abolitionists at all had they not been men of exceptional independence both in temper and in intellect. They had often dared to differ from each other as well as from ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... manner, by constructing fortresses in all directions, by seizing upon the most powerful cities, whence it was easy to branch off into the interior of the country, by rendering himself master of the keys of the straits, and thus ensuring with much less risk, and more solidity, the monopoly of the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... negatives. Wherever there has been a settled community in the United States—in New England of the 'forties and again in the 'nineties, in the Middle West and California to-day—one is sure to find a literature with some depth and solidity to it. The New England civilization of the early nineteenth century, now materially altered, was a definable culture, with five generations behind it, and strong roots in the old world. From it came the most mature school of American literature that ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... from one of the windows of the keep, but testing the balance of the heavy stone steps, he decided to investigate, and so lowering his legs into the dark aperture he let himself hang from his waist and found that his toes encountered solidity. He tested his footing with his weight, and then let go, descending into the hole, which seemed to be a stairway, leading from the tower into the bowels of the rock. With a touch of fingers upon the efflorescent ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... it the diameter of the earth, we get the diameter of the circle, or orbit, in which the moon moves around the earth. In other words the diameter of this orbit is about 480,000 miles. Now could the sun be brought in contact with this orbit, and had the latter solidity to mark its circumference, it would be found that this circumference would include but a little more than half the surface of one side of the sun, the diameter of which orb is calculated to be 882,000 miles! The sun is one million three hundred and eighty-four thousand four hundred and seventy-two ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... author,' though he may not be aware in his own mind of the existence of any other premiss, he will readily understand, if it be denied that 'whatever exhibits marks of design must have had an intelligent author,' that the affirmative of that proposition is necessary to the solidity of the argument. An argument thus stated regularly and at full length, is called a syllogism; which, therefore, is evidently not a peculiar kind of argument, but only a peculiar form of expression, in which every argument may ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... been decomposed into their constituent elements, amounting to little more than fifty substances, which are either the primary or the proximate bases of all existing bodies, and the marvellous transformations which these elementary principles undergo, in respect alike of form, of density, of solidity, and of magnitude, under the action of natural laws,—may serve to make it credible that there is no a priori impossibility in the assumption on which the Atomic Theory depends. Had it been the will of God to call into being the various vegetable and animal races in the way of ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... courage came into my heart. My uncle had sent me here, certainly to run great risks, perhaps to die. I swore I would settle that "perhaps," if I should break my neck for it; got me down upon my hands and knees; and as slowly as a snail, feeling before me every inch, and testing the solidity of every stone, I continued to ascend the stair. The darkness, by contrast with the flash, appeared to have redoubled; nor was that all, for my ears were now troubled and my mind confounded by a great stir of bats ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... though thousands of miles away, behind a vast curve of water on a tiny piece of earth, came before their eyes. They who had had no solidity or anchorage before seemed to be attached to it somehow, and at once grown more substantial. Perhaps they had been in the drawing-room at the same moment; perhaps they had passed each other on the ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... the table cups and saucers of an unbelievable thickness. She set them down on the marble surface with a crash as one who knows well that no mere marble or granite could shatter the solidity of those stout earthenware receptacles. Napkins there were none. I was to learn that fingers were rid of any clinging remnants of cream or crumb by the simple expedient of ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... for a woman accustomed to the choice solidity of a Dutch house, and the well-sustained intimacy of a Dutch landscape, where man and nature through long-continued symbiosis have grown together ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... "kept out of the papers," having a rooted and growing prejudice against this form of vulgarity, could at any time, on five minutes' notice, establish the solidity of his foundation by simply unlocking his safe-deposit boxes. His foundation was as ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... Cecil Rhodes undoubtedly possessed were weakened by contact with inferior people. It is impossible to create real politicians and sound ones at the same rapid pace as financial magnates sprang up at the Cape as well as in the Transvaal. The class who entered politics had as little real solidity about them as the houses and dwellings which were built at a moment's notice from corrugated iron and a few logs. They thought that they understood how to govern a nation because they had thoroughly mastered the mysteries of bookkeeping ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... which the crowning wisdom of statesmen must consist,—qualities which experience alone can give,—excited considerable attention by their bold eloquence and hardy logic. They were suited to the time. But John Ardworth had that solidity of understanding which betokens more than talent, and which is the usual substratum of genius. He would not depend alone on the precarious and often unhonoured toils of polemical literature for that distinction on which he had fixed his ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... more remarkable for solidity than for brilliancy. Many generals may have been better qualified to complete a campaign by one decisive blow; few probably have laid the scheme of a campaign with more judgment, or shown more skill and patience in carrying their plans into effect. And it is remarkable ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various |
