"Superficial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but it is impossible for any student of Irish history or of Irish politics to believe Mr. M'Carthy. Facts are too strong for him. Mr. Lalor showed a prevision denied to our amiable novelist. Gustave de Beaumont understood political philosophy better than the lively recorder of the superficial aspects of recent English history. Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt, and the whole line of witnesses before the Special Commission, tell a different tale. The very name of the Land League is significant. Home Rule was a mere theme for academic discussion in the mouth of Mr. Butt. ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... world of the imagination. Of human passions he sang little. He wrote oftener of amorousness than of love, as in The Ballad of the Student of the South. His passion for fairy tales, his amorousness of the East, stirred his imagination from idleness among superficial fancies into a brilliant ardour. It was these things that roused him to a nice extravagance with those favourite words and colours and images upon which Mr. ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... their children.—I say, I do not only expect to be held up to the public as an ignorant, impudent and restless disturber of the public peace, by such avaricious creatures, as well as a mover of insubordination—and perhaps put in prison or to death, for giving a superficial exposition of our miseries, and exposing tyrants. But I am persuaded, that many of my brethren, particularly those who are ignorantly in league with slave-holders or tyrants, who acquire their daily bread by the blood and sweat of their ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... discontent, when discontent has engendered the belief that great and widespread economic and social changes are needed, there is a risk that men or States may act hastily, rushing to new schemes which seem promising chiefly because they are new, catching at expedients that have a superficial air of practicality, and forgetting the general theory upon which practical plans should be based. At such moments there is special need for the restatement and enforcement by argument of sound principles. To such principles so far as they relate to education ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... to fill, by a tidal wave of reactionary public feeling, and of the blind selfishness of a decadence born of long freedom from any form of national discipline; of liberties too easily won and but half-understood; of superficial education as to rights, and abysmal ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... of Russian literature, an autochthon plant, nourished by his natal sap. His humor is completely Russian; we hear Tolstoyan notes in his democracy; the "failures" of his stories are distantly related to the "superficial characters" of Turgenev; finally, the theory of the redemption of the past by suffering which he puts in the heart of the hero of the "Cherry Garden" makes us think of Dostoyevsky. The qualities which call to mind all these great names in Russian literature ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... afterwards, I have taken up an analogous design, in the contemplation of our positive life through a spiritual medium; and I have enforced, through a far wider development, and, I believe, with more complete and enduring success, that harmony between the external events which are all that the superficial behold on the surface of human affairs, and the subtle and intellectual agencies which in reality influence the conduct of individuals, and shape out the destinies of the world. As man has two lives,—that ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... hastily replied her husband; "this is merely superficial. Your case demands a remedy ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... only earned eighteen shillings a week, replied with only superficial politeness that a dress-suit was out of the question; he had already taken more orders than he could execute without killing himself. The whole town had uprisen as one man and demanded ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... gazing fixedly out into the glowing sky, his tall, meagre figure half supported upon his staff, his lips firmly compressed, his brow slightly frowning, and his attitude firm and motionless, the most superficial observer must have felt immediately that he looked on no ordinary being. The history of a life of deep thought—perhaps of long sorrow—seemed written in every lineament of his meditative countenance; and there was a natural dignity ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... her. If there was a more perfect dress, Madeleine knew nothing of dressing. On these points she felt the confidence of conviction. Her calm would have been complete, had she felt quite sure that none of Sybil's gaiety was superficial and that it would not be followed by reaction. She watched nervously to see whether her face changed its gay expression, and once she thought it became depressed, but this was when the Grand-Duke came up to claim his waltz, and ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... later Satires he has recourse to republican times and to foreign history. His historical examples Friedlaender thinks he took mostly from Valerius Maximus. Juvenal's knowledge of philosophy was very superficial, and was probably got from his rhetorical training. Errors occur; thus in 13, 121-2, Stoics and Cynics ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... forcibly driven from this convenient, but untenable, post, I am ashamed, with the Grabes, Caves, Tillemonts, &c., to discover Mr. Addison, an English gentleman, (his Works, vol. i. p. 528, Baskerville's edition;) but his superficial tract on the Christian religion owes its credit to his name, his style, and the interested applause of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... of that peculiar charm, the characteristic of all "charming" egoists, in which there is neither poetry nor real sensitiveness, but which is often full of superficial gentleness, sympathy, sometimes even tenderness. But these charming egoists must not be thwarted. They are very domineering and cannot endure independence in others. Women like Madame Sipiagina excite and disturb people of inexperienced and passionate natures, but are fond of ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... American statesmen have fallen into the same error as the European—id est, to believe that without them the people could never prosper, and still live in the belief that home-happiness hangs on them, their theories and arts of governing; but the most superficial glance teaches that if wise laws are able to effect more for the happiness of man than they can bring about, still no one should there attempt to draw happiness from such a source when popular and private life have combined to bestow ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... made but superficial studies in the natural history of the human mind, have been taught to look on religious opinions as the only cause of enthusiastic zeal and sectarian propagation. But there is no doctrine whatever, on which men can warm, that is not capable of the very same effect. ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... churches; to visit each of them in turn would take weeks at least. Hephzy had given me three days. I must join her at Interlaken in three days or there would be trouble. And how was I to make even the most superficial search in ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... soundings of the sherry, he numbered the remainder biscuits; painful scenes took place over the weekly bills, and the cook was frequently impeached, and the tradespeople came and hectored with him in the back parlour upon a question of three farthings. The superficial might have deemed him a miser; in his own eyes he was simply a man who had been defrauded; the world owed him seven thousand eight hundred pounds, and he intended that ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... which the interest, as well as the duty, of the public writer lies. Certain it is, that even in the United States those books circulate most freely, which lash most vigorously the vices of the Republic. Honest Von Raumer's dull encomium fell almost still-born from the press, while the far more superficial pages of Dickens and Trollope were eagerly devoured by a people who are daily given to understand, by their own authors, that they are the greatest, the wisest, the most virtuous nation under the sun. Let a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... did he really know his uncle? Between them there had never been any very close bond of sympathy—such, for instance, as always had existed between Phil and his aunt. His uncle's share in the growing lad's up-bringing had been of the superficial sort—a pat on the back, a "run along now, my boy; I'm busy." Always it had been Aunt Dolly to whom he had taken his childish difficulties for sympathetic adjustment. It had been that way from the first when the sudden loss of both father and mother had thrown ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... certain morning Morgan overtook Joe Lynch, driving toward town with his customary load of bones. Morgan walked his horse beside Joe's wagon to chat with him, finding always a charm of originality and rather more than superficial thinking about the old fellow that was refreshing in the intellectual stagnation of ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... effort; it is never our portion until earned. It does not come unsought like pain and suffering. The Fourth Symphony is lighter than the "Eroica" which preceded it, or the C minor which comes next. The language of joy is always more or less superficial. The tragedies of life have to be told in stronger language, since they go deeper. Happiness is negative, pain positive. The comedies of Shakespeare, in which the note is usually buoyant and felicitous, do not stir us as ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... gripsack. It was still on his back. He was convinced that what had happened was a dream till he felt for his revolver and found it gone. Next he became aware of a sharp stinging of his thigh, and after investigating, he found his hand warm with blood. It was a superficial wound, but it was incontestable. He became wider awake, and kept up the lumbering run to ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... by the pint at the nearest wineshop. The table-napkins had seen a week's use. In short, everything betrayed undignified penury, and the equal indifference of the husband and wife to the decencies of home. The most superficial observer on seeing them would have said that these two beings had come to the stage when the necessity of living had prepared them for any kind of dishonor that might bring luck to them. Valerie's first words to her husband will explain the delay that had postponed the dinner by the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... By means of a plausible prospectus, he, with other ritualistic brethren, induced the parents and guardians of a number of young ladies, tempted by the moderate expense and advantages offered, to send them to the college, where, with the usual superficial accomplishments they received, their minds were thoroughly imbued with ritualistic principles. General Caulfield and Mr Lennard prevented several of their friends from being thus taken in. A good many people were staggered when they heard ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... curious contradiction between the superficial consequences of the crisis, as described by Bagot, and the fundamental changes the beginnings of which he was able to trace in the months which followed. On the face of it, Bagot's policy of frank expediency had saved Stanley and his party from a crushing defeat and ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... nothing; he knew, of course, the exact state of the wound I had received, that the superficial injury was of no account, that the shock had left me sound as a silver franc though a trifle weak in the hips ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... and were protesting against it. Where in Germany were the intellectual enemies of Prussian Czarism? They were either holding their peace, or breaking forth into adulation of the anointed of the Lord—a musician and comedian like Nero, of a sharp and superficial intelligence, who believed that by merely skimming through anything he knew it all. Eager to strike a spectacular pose in history, he had finally afflicted the world ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... To the superficial observer, the great mass of the people seemed carried away with a monomaniac frenzy. Democratic societies were founded in imitation of Jacobin clubs; everything that was respectable in society was ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... extensive and deeply seated, may require deep excision, but usually cure results from superficial removal. Usually no cauterization of the vessels at the base is necessary, either to arrest hemorrhage or to lessen the tendency to recurrence. A diffuse telangiectasis, should it require treatment, may be gently touched with a needle-pointed galvanocaustic ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... his Majesty's deeply considered plot, on a superficial view, breaks down, since Ruthven (for reasons best known to himself) summons neither Lennox nor Erskine. James, observing this circumstance, rapidly and cleverly remodels his plot, and does not begin ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... of fine powers of mind, but not fully progressed in thought. As far as he knew, at the time of this writing, he was appreciative of your suggestions, and of scientific progress. He was a cool-headed man,—not a light or superficial thinker, but thought on deep subjects. He was a brain worker; it makes my brain tired. I think he published books—poems. I think he was more a poet than a prose writer. He was not like Tom Moore—there was nothing light or superficial—his ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... a good deal hurt, but his injuries were of a temporary and superficial kind, and, as he stood listening, so little importance did he attach to his injuries that a broad grin began to gather upon his frank young face, and he uttered a low, chuckling laugh; for, as he stood wiping his brow and listening, ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... a small face peering down over the coping of the roof. It was a face that was very frightened, under a superficial covering of soot. It ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... "He has a fair knowledge of Latin, reads French with facility, and knows something of German. He has also made considerable progress in the Mathematics, having, as far as he has advanced, a thorough not a superficial knowledge of the subject." The document ends in the following ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... the great truths of the Gospel as divine. And even Max Mueller testifies that, while making every allowance for whatever is good in the ethnic faiths, he has been the more fully convinced of the great superiority of Christianity. Really, those are in danger who receive only the superficial and misleading representations of heathenism which one is sure to meet in our magazine literature, or in works like "Robert Elsmere" and "The Light ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... characters are surrounded; when, to borrow a lawyer's phrase, he condescends to particulars, then it is that close and intimate acquaintance with the scenes and persons he describes is requisite; and that a superficial critic falls, at every step into errors the most glaring and ridiculous. There are many passages of this description in Gil Blas to which we shall presently allude; in the mean time let us follow the advice of Count Hamilton, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... would be admired and praised for that which is nowise admirable or laudable; for the casual hits and emergencies of roving fancy; for stumbling on an odd conceit or phrase, which signifieth nothing, and is as superficial as the smile, as hollow as the noise it causeth. Nothing certainly in nature is more ridiculous than a self-conceited wit, who deemeth himself somebody, and greatly pretendeth to commendation from so pitiful and worthless a thing as ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... have the slightest doubt about the magnitude of the evils which accrue from the steady increase of European armaments; but because I think that this regrettable fact is merely the superficial expression of social forces, the operation of which cannot be sensibly affected ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... only be more confused if we call imagination to our aid, and place the forms which are found near one another, according to a real or fancied resemblance, in a certain series of development. All those statements on the sphere of form and connection, which have for their basis such a superficial work, and are not based on the clear exposition of the continuity of development, as by the origin of the connection of the Mucor with Penicillium, Oidium lactis and Mucor, Oidium and Penicillium, are ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... impossible without good manners, and good manners are a convention, though a supremely good one, the society by which I surrounded myself was conventional; superficially, of course, for it is the business of a convention to be not more than superficial. Some persons after knowing my drawing-room were astounded by my books, others after reading my books were astounded by my drawing-room; but these persons lacked perception. Given elegance, with or without beauty itself, I had naturally sought, ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... taken in the exposition by Great Britain was exemplified strikingly in the amount of space which she occupied in the various exhibition buildings, amounting in the aggregate to no less than 206,642 superficial feet, of which only 8,000 feet was occupied by the Royal Pavilion. An idea of the vast scope of the exhibit may be learned from the following table, which gives the amount of space in each of the various exhibit palaces occupied ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... We shall understand them better directly; meanwhile they appear to be direct consequences of the inertia of electricity; and certainly if electricity were a fluid possessing inertia it would behave to a superficial ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... belong to him.[151] These "treasures" are of a first-rate character; both as to Drawings and Prints. He has no rival in the former department, and even surpasses the Emperor in the latter. I visited and examined his collection (necessarily in a superficial manner) twice; paying only particular attention to the drawings of the Italian school—including those of Claude Lorraine. I do not know what is in our own royal collection, but I may safely say that our friend ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... essay on the 'Eight Hour Day.' Lordie thinks you will ask the professor-man intelligent questions; and show him that St. Ursula's is not a common boarding-school where only superficial accomplishments are taught, but one in which the actual ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... dinner, and a well-digested abundance of succulent food) gets red and mottled, and develops at least one additional chin, with a promise of more; so that, finally, a stranger recognizes his animal part at the most superficial glance, but must take time and a little pains to discover the intellectual. Comparing him with an American, I really thought that our national paleness and lean habit of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an aesthetic point of view. It seemed to me, moreover, that the English tailor had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... than Justice; he alone recommends it unconditionally and for its own sake, while all the other philosophers make a happy life—vita beata—the aim of all virtue; and it is acquired through the medium of moral behaviour. Christianity released European humanity from its superficial and crude absorption in an ephemeral, uncertain, and ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... was reasonable, according to the general import of the word, for it savoured a good deal of what is usually called common sense: passionate characters are much more capable of folly than cool and superficial ones; but so far was the Count d'Erfeuil's mode of feeling from exciting the confidence of Lord Nelville that he would gladly have convinced him he was the most happy of men in order to avoid the pain which ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... childhood and his youth, and recalls to his mind the strange notions and false opinions that swayed his actions at that time, that he may wonder at them; so should society, for its edification, look back to the opinions which governed the ages fled. He is but a superficial thinker who would despise and refuse to hear of them merely because they are absurd. No man is so wise but that he may learn some wisdom from his past errors, either of thought or action; and no society has made such advances as to be ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... critical a time, that unless they obtain relief in the short period of three days, they must be considered out of the service, has very much that aspect; and the seeming relaxation of continuing until the state can have a reasonable time to provide other officers, will be thought only a superficial veil. I am now to request that you will convey my sentiments to the gentlemen concerned, and endeavour to make them sensible that they are in an error. The service for which the regiment was intended will not admit of delay. It must at all events march on Monday morning, in the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and hardened into usage, they form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... not discovered a trace of sentiment, or even of sentimentality. The notion that there is any refinement of passion or morality in the sexual relations of the American aborigines has been fostered chiefly by the stories and poems of the whites—generally such as had only a superficial acquaintance with the red men. "The less we see and know of real Indians," wrote G.E. Ellis (111), "the easier will it be to make and read poems about them." General Custer comments on Cooper's false estimate of Indian character, which has misled ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... demure attitude, something which reminds us of the religious significance of the Greek athletic service? It was a [295] sort of worship, you know—that department of public life; such worship as Greece, still in its superficial youth, found itself best capable of. At least those solemn contests began and ended with prayer and sacrifice. Their most honoured prizes were a kind of religiously symbolical objects. The athletic life certainly breathes of abstinence, of rule and the keeping under of one's self. And ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... than that of any Abolitionist, so far as its social and military aspects went; in that direction I could teach him nothing, and he taught me much. But it was his methods of thought which always impressed me chiefly: superficial brilliancy he left to others, and grasped at the ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... and with the premeditated naivete of her manner, she was always astonishing people by her penetration and general ingenuity; she was at once very quick and very deep—quick especially to perceive and enjoy incongruities, and deep in understanding them; extremely observant, and not in the least superficial. Almost her greatest interest was the study of character; she had an intellectual passion for going below the surface, and finding out the little coins inedits of the soul. She was rather unpractical, but only in execution, and she had the gift of getting the practical side ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... succeeded by direct experiments in placing in evidence this heterogeneous character of matter when taken in small mass. Thus, for example, the superficial tension, which is constant for the same liquid at a given temperature, no longer has the same value when the thickness of the layer of liquid becomes extremely small. Newton noticed even in his ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... uncommon grimaces, and altogether the extraordinary exhibition I made of myself sends me to bed very unhappy. And I often think to myself that, although all the world is a stage and men and women but actors upon it, after all, the external appearance of things are very superficial indeed." ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... and superficial manner in which religion is passed over when provision has been made for two great principles,—first, that religion shall be based on the highest conception of the gods, secondly, that the true national or Hellenic type ...
— The Republic • Plato
... it worth noting how this optimist was acquainted with pain. It will seem strange only to the superficial. The disease of pessimism springs never from real troubles, which it braces men to bear, which it delights men to bear well. Nor does it readily spring at all, in minds that have conceived of life as a field of ordered ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... modern conceptions of social honor. The externals of good breeding cannot be over-estimated, if honestly come by, nor is it necessary to examine too deeply into the prime motives of those who urge them upon a generation in whose eyes matter is more important than manner. Superficial refinement is better than none, but the Chesterfield pulpit cannot afford to shirk the duty of proclaiming loud and far that the only courtesy worthy of respect is that 'politesse de coeur,' the politeness of the heart, which finds expression in consideration ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the agency of personal considerations in the production of great national events, either foreign or domestic, according to their direction, would be an unnecessary waste of time. Those who have but a superficial acquaintance with the sources from which they are to be drawn, will themselves recollect a variety of instances; and those who have a tolerable knowledge of human nature will not stand in need of such lights to form their opinion either of the reality or extent of that agency. Perhaps, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... never lasted long, and again the frosty air and quick motion set her blood tingling with life. In order to escape De Forrest's whispered sentimentalities, she began to sing. Her naturally good voice had been somewhat injured by straining at difficult music, under superficial instruction, instead of thorough training for it, but within a moderate compass, and in simple music, was ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... who knew them both well this idea was absurd. It was true they were of the same height and their hair and eyes of the same color, their noses and mouths of somewhat the same shape, but with these superficial likenesses the resemblance ended. Anybody should have been able to see that in each detail Polly was the more intense; her hair was blacker and longer, her eyes bluer, her cheek bones a little higher ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... the State is concerned. If we cut out the whole tribe of bookmakers and betting-agents, and applied such cautery as would prevent any similar growth from arising in the place wherefrom we excised them, we should do very little good; for the life-blood of Britain is tainted, and no superficial remedy can cure her now. I shut my eyes on the bookmakers, and I only spare attention for the myriads who make the bookmakers' existence possible—who would evolve new bookmakers from their midst if we exterminated the present tribe to-morrow. It is not the professional ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... attitude is supported and enforced by the inevitable democratic tendency of civilization which, although it by no means destroys the idea of class, undermines that idea as the mark of fundamental human distinctions and renders it superficial. Prostitution no longer makes a woman a slave; it ought not to make her even a pariah: "My body is my own," said the young German prostitute of to-day, "and what I do with it is nobody else's concern." When the prostitute was literally a slave moral duty towards her was by no means necessarily identical ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... order, the self-control instilled as a virtue by their education, and standing now in the place of all virtues, enabled them to maintain a superficial calmness that conducted them safely through the trying ordeal of ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... the best educated among modern men-of-letters; his knowledge was not superficial and fragmentary, it was solid and accurate. Of all modern novelists, he is the best exponent ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... exceptions, as they themselves gladly admit. For my own part I have found the curato in the small subalpine villages of North Italy to be more often than not a kindly excellent man to whom I am attracted by sympathies deeper than any mere superficial differences of opinion can counteract. With monks, however, as a general rule, I am less able to get on: nevertheless I have received much courtesy at the ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... read it with a little attention, we shall perceive in every page philosophical and astronomical errors, unpardonable in an inspired author, and such as we should consider ridiculous in any man, who, in the most superficial manner, should have studied ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... of entirely contemptible attainments make a suggestion in this assemblage of scintillating wit and beauty?" inquired the Celestial Sister. "My superficial opinion is that it would be well to prepare a single paper to which all names should be appended, stating that His Majesty in his Dragon Divinity comprises all ideals in his ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... matter-of-fact man, I should like to explain to the reader, before we get on any farther. In order, however, to do this effectually, I must go back to an earlier period in the history than has been yet called to his attention. I make no doubt, that by the superficial and impatient novel-reader, certain portions of what has gone before, and which could not fail of attracting the attention of long-headed people, as not likely to have been thrown in for nothing, (and therefore requiring to be borne in mind with ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... has read but little. He knows the elements of spelling, writing, and number, but has small skill in any of them. He knows little of history or literature, less of music, nothing of art, and has but a superficial smattering of science. Of matters relating to his life and activities on the farm he has heard almost nothing. The rural child is not illiterate, but he is too close to the border of illiteracy for the demands of a ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... that have no white stroma. The stem is slender and carbonous and bears the carbonous fruit bodies, superficial, but sessile and globose. Fries proposed for these species, the generic name Rhizomorpha, which Saccardo united with Thamnomyces as a section of Xylaria. In my view it is an entirely different idea from Thamnomyces and should form a section in itself ...
— Synopsis of Some Genera of the Large Pyrenomycetes - Camilla, Thamnomyces, Engleromyces • C. G. Lloyd
... salt. How does the Parsnip obtain its mineral food in a soil which for other crops appears to be exhausted? Simply by pushing down for it into a mine that has hitherto been but little worked, though Cabbage might fail on the same plot because the superficial stratum ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... ceased (in consequence of the REPRESSIVE FORCE, consisting of the weight of its fluid envelope, having reached an equilibrium with the EXPANSIVE FORCE, consisting of the caloric of the heated nucleus), the rapid superficial evaporation of the ocean continued; and, by gradually reducing its temperature, occasioned the precipitation of a proportionate quantity of the minerals it held in solution, particularly its silex. These substances falling to the bottom, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... tale—the poor little "quiet," psychological, conversational modern tale, which I often think the artist invited to represent it to the eye must hate, unless he be a very intelligent master, little, on a superficial view, would there appear to be in it to represent. The superficial view is, after all, the natural one for the picture-maker. A talent of the first order, however, only wants to be set thinking, as a single word will often make it. Mr. Reinhart at any rate, ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... Relation of it was drawn-up, from his own Mouth, by Friar William of Solanga, in 1330. Ramusio has inserted it in Italian, in the second Volume of his Collection; as Hakluyt, in his Navigations, has done the Latin, with an English Translation. This is a most superficial Relation, and full of Lies; such as People with the Heads of Beasts, and Valleys haunted with Spirits: In one of which he pretends to have entered, protected by the Sign of the Cross; yet fled for Fear, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Such differences are only superficial—the real ones go deeper. We are not so much interested in how they originated in the world as in how they do come about in the individual. At least, we can come a good deal nearer ascertaining the latter than the former. In either case, our real purpose is to determine ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... afterward, is an additional indication of the scantiness of their religious knowledge; and the confessed backsliding of many of the nobility into the most scandalous immoralities and the blackest crimes, even during the lifetime of Durtad, proves how superficial was ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... its continuance dependent upon the President's good will. If any one should think this description of conditions in the Transvaal and of the President's policy to be unduly harsh, let him satisfy himself by an investigation of those matters which appear on merely superficial examination to support opinions contrary to those expressed by the writer. Let him examine the terms of the closer union with the Free State, the circumstances leading to the closing of the Vaal River drifts, the condition of the Dutch ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... they would thus have maintained their self-respect; and if, at first, separation brought no progress nor shadow of change, it would have at least induced no evil, and education and enlightenment would in time have modified these caste institutions, which, to a superficial observer, seem to be productive of nothing ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... opinion, profound minds are the most likely to think lightly of the resources of human reason; and it is the pert, superficial thinker, who is generally strongest in every kind of unbelief. The deep philosopher sees chains of causes and effects so wonderfully and strangely linked together, that he is usually the last person to decide upon the impossibility of any two series of events being ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... not even the ignorance and stolidity of the past are allowed the final grace of being forgotten; and omniscience is becoming at once more and more impossible and more and more fashionable. Whoever reads only the books of his own time is superficial in proportion to the thickness of the ages. But neither the genius of man, nor his length of days, has had an increase corresponding to that of the realm of knowledge, the requirements of reading, and the conditions of intelligence. The multiplied attractions only crowd and obstruct ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Portuguese town, about one hundred miles to the north of Bombay. Its superficial area is eighty-two square miles, comprising the pargana of Nagar Haveli. The population consists of about 40,980 souls. The settlement is composed of two distinct parts; Damman and the pargana of Nagar Haveli, separated ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... human being was obviously susceptible to personality beyond all other things. And beauty moved that absurd creature preposterously. There, at least, the woman who chanced to be born with these superficial attractions, had a royal territory, so long as she could prevent her clamorous fellows from harassing and wearing those attractions away. By no direct attack could the jealous powers dethrone her. They could only do it indirectly, by appealing ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Latin word, either from abdere, to hide, or from a form adipomen, from adeps, fat), the belly, the region of the body containing most of the digestive organs. (See for anatomical details the articles ALIMENTARY CANAL, and ANATOMY, Superficial and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was no other influential literature in the West except the Latin. Greek literature had long ago retired to the East. The traces of Greek upon Anglo-Saxon literature are rare and superficial. Practically the one external influence with which we shall have to reckon is that of Latin literature, and as the points of contact with this literature are numerous, it will be convenient to say something of the Latin literature in a ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... that he says is just in sentiment, and most eloquent in the expression; but in leaving some of the finest points altogether untouched, he has also left us in doubt whether he even felt or perceived them; and this masterly criticism stops short of the whole truth—it is a little superficial, and a ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... we grant that the East has a right to its difference, it is not realised in what we differ. That nursery tale from nowhere about St. George and the Dragon really expresses best the relation between the West and the East. There were many other differences, calculated to arrest even the superficial eye, between a saint and a dragon. But the essential difference was simply this: that the Dragon did want to eat St. George; whereas St. George would have felt a strong distaste for eating the Dragon. In most of the stories he killed the Dragon. In many of the stories he not only ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... with the conclusions of observation and experiment, and care must be taken that the work of exposition do not fall into foolish and ignorant hands. It must be remembered that there are very few men capable of understanding both the sacred Scriptures and science, and that there are many with a superficial knowledge of the Scriptures and with no knowledge of science who would fain arrogate to themselves the power of decreeing upon all questions of nature. As St. Jerome writes: "The talking old woman, the dotard, the garrulous sophist, all venture upon, lacerate, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... is already a novelist. They record the strokes of finesse and the subterfuges necessary to the attainment of the vain ambitions which are the preoccupation of human genius in superficial levels of Society in all ages. We realise the waste of energy and diplomacy expended to score small points in the social game. His art is a mirror to weed-like qualities of human nature which enjoy a spring-time with every generation. ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... humility, as well as that habit of speaking his own mind, not only without fear or favour, but also, it must be admitted, with considerable disregard for the feelings of others, became intensified, and the most noticeable of his superficial characteristics. ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... you can get the best company; though you get less wages, yet you will get the more grace. Then he made him hold up his hand, and promise before God so to do.—And to two young serving-men, who came to him weeping to get his last blessing, he said, Content not yourselves with a superficial view of religion, blessing yourselves in the morning only for a fashion, yea though you would pray both morning and evening, yet that will not avail you, except likewise ye make your account every day. Oh! ye will find few to direct or counsel you; ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... grinder to Sir Thomas Lawrence, and while colouring (on his own account) some anatomical drawings for a medical London school, picked up a slight and imperfect knowledge of anatomy. This stimulated him to further superficial research; and after a few months' probation, his confidence enabled him to pretend that he possessed a cure for every disease ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... act? My own casual observation inclines me to hold that the opposite is true, that the lungs are actually collapsed in a pseudo-asthmatic spasm. Again, what is the ground for arguing that the lips are "full, ripe and red?" The real effect of the emotions that accompany kissing is to empty the superficial capillaries and so produce a leaden pallor. As for such salient symptoms as the temperature, the pulse and the rate of respiration, the learned pundit passes them over without a word. Mrs. Elsie Clews Parsons would ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... and that, their little superficial ideas about themselves, and of their circumstances and tastes, and always there was something, something that was with them unspoken, unacknowledged, which made all these ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... fashionable life, after a month's ablution at Margate, where he gave her masters of every description. Her understanding was ready, and at his death, which happened, luckily for her, before satiety had extinguished appetite, she was left with an annuity of twelve hundred pounds—improved beauty—superficial accomplishments—and an immoderate share of caprice, insolence, and vanity. As a proof of this, I must tell you that at an elegant entertainment lately given by this dashing cyprian, she demolished a desert service of glass and china that cost five hundred guineas, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... has called attention in his interesting letter on p. 77, is the position assigned Lucernaria among his Radiaires molasses near what are now Ctenophora and Medusae, though one would have supposed he would, from its superficial resemblance to polyps, have placed it among the polyps. To Lamarck we are also indebted for the establishment in 1818 of the molluscan group ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... the Christian world would reply without hesitation that the existence of the modern sects is due to these two things: the principle of religious liberty and the limitations of human knowledge. Such an answer reveals a superficial view of the whole subject. Religious liberty among Christians existed in the primitive church before the rise of ecclesiastical tyranny over the conscience, and the masses of men in those days were at least as limited in knowledge as are ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... philosophies are found logically at the end of a long study of life, if anywhere. If one is found or adopted, it furnishes leading for the notions of ways to be employed in all details of life. This is equally true if it is reached on a slight, superficial, or superstitious view of life. The ascetic philosophy produces contradiction and confusion in the acts of men, because some of them work for expediency and others for inexpediency at the same time. Therefore also the mores, if they are affected by asceticism, are inconsistent and contradictory. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... which indeed he scarce could have said how beautifully he mightn't once more have named it and urged it if she hadn't, at a given moment, blurred, as it were, the accord. They had soon seated themselves for better talk, and so they had remained a while, intimate and superficial. The immediate things to say had been many, for they hadn't exhausted them at Euston. They drew upon them freely now, and Kate appeared quite to forget—which was prodigiously becoming to her—to look about for surprises. He was to try afterwards, and try in vain, to remember what speech or what ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... good fellowship with his acquaintance, and, with much reason, accounted to be rich. He was a widower, but lived in a kind of surly, patriarchal state, in the midst of three sons and a daughter; the former being dissipated and sensual, the latter of a showy person, but in character, superficial, vain, vindictive, proud. ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... woman, then I should turn sadly homeward, for I should see that her jewels were flashing scorn upon the object they adorned, that her laces were of a more exquisite loveliness than the woman whom they merely touched with a superficial grace. It would be like a gaily decorated mausoleum,—bright to see, but silent and ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... concern for what might become of me. Bitter were the tears, but it roused me. I determined to rely upon myself. My father had been a thorough scholar, and I was educated according to his system. There was nothing superficial, and the extent of my reading, both in English and the classics, was far more than the course usually prescribed for ladies. I also inherited a talent for music which had been carefully cultivated, so that I was well able to teach any branch that might ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... for any intellectual repast; Prodicus, who finds an opportunity for displaying his distinctions of language, which are valueless and pedantic, because they are not based on dialectic; Hippias, who has previously exhibited his superficial knowledge of natural philosophy, to which, as in both the Dialogues called by his name, he now adds the profession of an interpreter of the Poets. The two latter personages have been already damaged by the mock heroic description of them ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... 'an absolute disqualification' for whist-playing, or that he was very fond of quoting the Bab Ballads, or that he once said that if he could live by writing poetry he would see painting d—-d! For our part, however, we cannot help expressing our regret that such a shallow and superficial biography as this should ever have been published. It is but a sorry task to rip the twisted ravel from the worn garment of life and to turn the grout in a drained cup. Better, after all, that we knew a painter only through his vision and a ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... whole mental life as it exists, on the life of men that lies in them apart from their learning and science, and that they inwardly and privately follow, we have to confess that the part of it of which rationalism can give an account is relatively superficial. It is the part that has the prestige undoubtedly, for it has the loquacity, it can challenge you for proofs, and chop logic, and put you down with words. But it will fail to convince or convert you all the same, if your dumb intuitions ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... different authorities. By some, it is praised in terms of the highest admiration, as a great achievement in wide and wise political or juridical philosophy. By others, it is dismissed very lightly, as the ambitious, or, rather, pretentious, effort of a superficial man, a showy mere sciolist. It acquired great contemporary fame, both at home and abroad. It was promptly translated into English, the translator earning the merited compliment of the author's own hearty approval of his work. Horace Walpole, who was something ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... breathe away his life. Such is the lot, we believe, that many imagine as the condition of a humorist; but which the humorist, less than most men, has ever enjoyed. All great humorists have been men grave at heart, and often men of more than ordinary trials. None but the superficial can fail to recognize the severity of Rabelais's genius. The best portion of poor Moliere's manhood was steeped in sorrow. The life of Swift was a hidden tragedy. The immortal wit of "Hudibras" did not save Butler ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... sometimes took a turn together in the garden, or had a little chat in the drawing-room. Eveline, although she recognised the attraction that Visire had for women, had hitherto displayed towards him only an intermittent and superficial coquetry, without any deep intentions or settled design. He was a connoisseur and saw that she was pretty. The House and the Opera had deprived him of all leisure, but, in a little villa, the grey eyes and rounded figure of Eveline took on a value in his eyes. ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... now at issue is: Shall we have a practical, spiritual Christianity, with its healing power, or shall we have material medicine and superficial religion? The advancing hope of the race, craving health and holiness, halts for a reply; and the reappearing Christ, whose life-giving understanding Christian Science imparts, must answer the constant inquiry: "Art thou he that should come?" Woman should not ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... Imlac, "happen much more often than superficial observers will easily believe. Perhaps, if we speak with rigorous exactness, no human mind is in its right state[a]. There is no man, whose imagination does not, sometimes, predominate over his reason, who can regulate his attention wholly ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... eleven; I suppose it was two when, some point arising and some particular picture being instanced, an adjournment to the Louvre was proposed. I paid the score, and in a moment we were trooping down the Rue de Renne. It was smoking hot; Paris glittered with that superficial brilliancy which is so agreeable to the man in high spirits, and in moods of dejection so depressing; the wine sang in my ears, it danced and brightened in my eyes. The pictures that we saw that afternoon, as we sped briskly and loquaciously through the immortal galleries, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... regular method of procedure was not suited to hard stone: the latter had to be first chiselled, but when by dint of patience the rough hewing had reached the desired stage, the work of completion was not entrusted to metal tools. Stone hatchets were used for smoothing off the superficial roughnesses, and it was assiduously polished to efface the various tool-marks left upon its surface. The statues did not present that variety of gesture, expression, and attitude which we aim at to-day. They were, above all things, the accessories of a temple or tomb, and their ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... see if his expression matched the apparent gravity of his words. Reassured by the entire absence of banter in his face, she answered him sincerely. She was too guileless to analyze his possible mental attitude save by these superficial indications. "A demigod like our ancient sovereign, ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... Book, the more we will become convinced of the marvellous accuracy of the words used to express the thought. Very often the solution of an apparent difficulty is found in studying the exact words used. The accuracy, precision and inerrancy of the exact words used is amazing. To the superficial student, the doctrine of verbal inspiration may appear questionable or even absurd; any regenerated and Spirit-taught man, who ponders the words of the Scripture day after day and year after year, will become convinced that ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... first; in Op. 106 and Op. 109, connection is clear between the first and last movements. Such an experiment was safe in the hands of Beethoven, and Brahms has never allowed it to become a mannerism; but second-rate composers, and superficial listeners run the danger of mistaking the shadow for the substance. To this matter we shall, however, soon return. Many references have been made to the composers who have influenced Brahms, yet we cannot resist naming one more. The opening section of ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... of remorse, but of apprehension, overwhelmed her for a time. But Angelique's mind was too intensely selfish, hard, and superficial, to give way to the remorse of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the placid hour before the world wakes to its daily comedy and tragedy; and yet, with all its superficial serenity, this summer carried certain undercurrents of emotion that hardly rose to the dignity of discontent, but which, nevertheless, troubled the still waters of the soul. At first Madeline half resented the continual presence of Norris at these sacred conclaves. He seemed ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... intelligence from parochial ministers, and others not the best qualified or most impartial narrators, whose ungenerous prejudice against the house of Stuart glares in misrepresentation; a writer, who at best treats merely of superficial objects, and shews no philosophical investigation of character and manners, such as Johnson has exhibited in his masterly Journey, over part of the same ground; and who it should seem from a desire of ingratiating himself with the Scotch, has flattered the people ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... of my superficial mannerisms . . . but she can't quite do my things as if they were her own, you know . . . there is where the accent ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... or by the gayety of their own prattle to chill the fire which burns away their hearts. The merriest faces may be sometimes seen in mourning coaches; and so, the most melancholy souls, pinched and pining, sometimes stare at you out of the midst of superficial smiles ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... as well as in the acceptance of hearsay truths as ultimate verities—we do not see any fundamental disparity in these regards between the mind of the Northwest and that of the Southeast; and what superficial difference exists goes to the credit of Buddhism. For if one must have dogma it is something to have system, and while precedent theosophy was based on the former it knew nothing of the latter. Moreover, in Buddhism there is a greater intellectual vigor than in any phase of Brahmanism ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... The conversion of the surface of iron into steel by applying a proper carbonaceous material to it while it is heated by an electric current. It is a superficial cementation process. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... in compassion. Placed under the care of the most skilful practitioners in Paris, great hopes of Cesarini's recovery had been at first entertained. Nor was it long, indeed, before he appeared entirely restored, so far as the external and superficial tokens of sanity could indicate a cure. He testified complete consciousness of the kindness of his relations, and clear remembrance of the past: but to the incoherent ravings of delirium, an intense melancholy, still more deplorable, succeeded. In this ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... That word irritates a German, because he is conscious that he is not a subject, but a citizen of the empire. Yet he will not infer from the English King's use of the term in formal utterances that an Englishman is a churl, a "servant of his King." That would be a superficial political conception. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... wild, free nomad whom experience and direct contact with nature had early taught to recognize the simple underlying truths and realities of life and their relations to one another, was not to be measured by the conventions or limited standards of a tamer race of men hedged about by superficial traditions and born and reared remote from the heart of nature beneath the roofs of houses. It was the cold, hard earth and equally cold and unrelenting stars that had nurtured Chiquita from earliest ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... think nothing is more superficial or belittling to him than the idea that while he might have liked the real country he could not like Beaconsfield, as it developed into a dormitory town while he lived there. His sympathies were far too wide. He liked to tell how he had had to ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... absorbed in my sensations—overcome by them, perhaps dissolved in tears. But in Helen there appeared no symptoms of real sensibility—nothing characteristic—nothing profound—nothing concentrated: it was all superficial, and evaporated in the common way. I was provoked to see Leonora satisfied. She assures me that Helen has uncommonly strong affections, and that her character rather exceeds than is deficient in enthusiasm. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... are discussed; and J. A. Fabricius (Delect. Argument. 1725.) has devoted a chapter to the literature of the subject (c. 36. p. 653.) Dr. Ogilvie wrote in 1783 a separate work on the causes of the recent unbelief; but the causes alleged by him, though well treated in the details, are superficial. A satisfactory discussion of this and cognate topics connected with unbelief is given in a popular but instructive book, Infidelity, its aspects, causes, and agencies, a Prize Essay (1853) of the Evangelical Alliance, by the Rev. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... which is pretended to be the definition of matter, is only an hypothesis of careless naturalists, a gross conclusion deduced from a superficial judgment. Experience shows that matter possesses infinite divisibility, infinite expansibility, porosity without assignable limits, and permeability by heat, electricity, and magnetism, together with ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... positively pronounced superfluous, omitting nothing which can be positively pronounced necessary, shall produce no more effect than an advertisement of a capital residence and a desirable pleasure-ground. To take another example: the great features of the character of Hotspur are obvious to the most superficial reader. We at once perceive that his courage is splendid, his thirst of glory intense, his animal spirits high, his temper careless, arbitrary, and petulant; that he indulges his own humour without caring whose feelings he may wound, or whose enmity he may provoke, by his ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... choice of the muse of the era, and the early flights of our author were not different. There was nothing in them to betray the future poet of merit. A little later he took up the study of German, but his knowledge of the language was never more than superficial. Haunted by the fame of Schiller, he devoted himself to poetry, and imitated the German poets, or tried to imitate them, for he never succeeded in grasping the true meaning of German poetry, nor in understanding erotic literature. To the Rabbinical student, with his puritanic spirit ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz |
