Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Superstructure   /sˈupərstrˌəktʃər/   Listen
Superstructure

noun
1.
Structure consisting of the part of a ship above the main deck.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Superstructure" Quotes from Famous Books



... speedy improvement, was some small insight into the primer, which she had acquired at a day-school, during the life of her father, who was a day-labourer in the country. Upon this foundation did Peregrine build a most elegant superstructure; he culled out choice sentences from Shakespeare, Otway, and Pope, and taught her to repeat them with an emphasis and theatrical cadence. He then instructed her in the names and epithets of the most celebrated players, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... mere help in people's houses and hotels, before they are either able to support or capable of properly appreciating the services of professional men among them. This has been one of our great mistakes—we have gone in advance of ourselves. We have commenced at the superstructure of the building, instead of the foundation—at the top instead of the bottom. We should first be mechanics and common tradesmen, and professions as a matter of course would grow out of the ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... I done so than the scene in the studio—Wilderspin's story of the model's terror on seeing my mother's portrait—came upon me, and 'Dead! dead!' rang through me like a funeral knell: all the superstructure of Hope's sophisms was shattered in a moment like a house of cards: my imagination flew away to all the London graveyards I had ever heard of; and there, in the part divided by the pauper line, my soul hovered over a grave newly made, and then dived down from coffin to coffin, one piled above ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... Public. The Critic will doubtless find in them much to condemn; he may likewise possibly discover something to commend. Let him scan my faults with an indulgent eye, and in the work of that correction which I invite, let him remember he is holding the iron Mace of Criticism over the flimsy superstructure of a youth of seventeen; and, remembering that, may he forbear from crushing, by too much rigour, the painted butterfly whose transient colours may otherwise be capable of affording a moment's ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... of the pauper burial-ground, and in the rear of the former Alms-House, once stood a building used successively as a cider-mill, a barn, and a kind of chapel for paupers. Long ago, from neglect and bad weather, the frail wooden superstructure had fallen into pieces and been gradually carted off; but a sturdy stone foundation remained underground; and, although the flooring over it had for many years been covered with debris and rank growth, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various

... distributed in no recognizable system, from twelve to twenty feet in diameter and from two to four in depth. They were excavated in the chalky soil, and from each a small drainage channel ran for a yard or two down the gentle slope on which the settlement stood. Obviously a superstructure of thatch and wattle would convert these pits into quite passable wigwams, corresponding to the description of Pytheas. This whole village was covered by several feet of top-soil in which were found numerous ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare

... Chamber of Deputies in the reign of Louis Philippe, and who was, by no means, over partial to Rome, wrote in 1860 on the system of legislation which obtained in the States of the Church, and gave utterance to the opinion that it was a solid basis on which Pius IX. was endeavoring to raise such a superstructure of improvement as was adapted to the wants of modern society. Criminal law was regulated according to the wise codes of Gregory XVI., which were a real progress. Civil legislation had for its groundwork the old Roman law, which the Popes, at various times, had wisely ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... single century, more than had all the forces of matter and mind together in the whole previous history of the world. Newcomen laid down a foundation beneath our whole economic system, out of sight, almost, but the essential base, nevertheless, on which Watt and his successors have carried up the great superstructure which seems to us to-day so imposing; which is so tremendous in magnitude, importance, and result. If to any one man could be assigned the credit, it is Newcomen who is to be considered the inventor of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various

... break away from northern Ellesmere Island; icebergs calved from glaciers in western Greenland and extreme northeastern Canada; permafrost in islands; virtually ice locked from October to June; ships subject to superstructure icing ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... MICH.—The breakwater extends out from the shore and consists of a prism of concrete resting on timber cribs filled with stone. Originally the cribs carried a timber superstructure; this was removed to give place to the concrete work. A typical cross-section of the concrete prism is shown by Fig. 77; the prism is 23 ft. wide on the base. Farther in shore the base width was reduced to 20 ft., and in the shore section the prism ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... should run out and so give them the slip. Thus they place the pleasure of the body (as Epicurus says) upon the complacent joy in the mind, and yet conclude again with the good hopes that complacent joy hath in bodily pleasure. Indeed what wonder is it if, when the foundation shakes, the superstructure totter? Or that there should be no sure hope nor unshaken joy in a matter that suffers so great concussion and changes as continually attend a body exposed to so many violences and strokes from without, and having within it the origins of such evils as human reason cannot avert? For if it could, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... Lord Hungerford, in 1429, and removed from the nave in 1778 by his descendant, the Earl of Radnor, who converted it into a family pew. It has been re-decorated, and new emblazonments added. The arms of its founder and his two wives appear on the base. The superstructure is of iron, and a fine example of its class, which includes among the few still extant the chantry of Edward IV. (died 1483) at Windsor, and that of Henry VII. at Westminster Abbey (died 1509). The Audley and Hungerford chantries are the most important left in a cathedral ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White

... overthrown thereby that the most learned Tacquet has been forced to reject that principle, as false and uncertain, on which alone he had built almost his whole CATOPTRICS; and consequently by taking away the foundation, hath himself pulled down the superstructure he had raised on it. Which, nevertheless, I do not believe he would have done had he but considered the whole matter more thoroughly, and examined the difficulty to the bottom. But as for me, neither this nor any other difficulty shall have so great an influence on me ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley

... buildings should be of stone or brick, both below and above the ground, if they are to be of a permanent character. The superstructure should be of the best white pine and thoroughly painted. In building curvilinear roofs the rafters and sash bars should be sawed out in pieces to the regular curve. The rafters being put together in sections, breaking ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward

... "but credit is the ornament of its front. This is a corner-stone; that the pilasters and carvings, by which the building is rendered pleasant; sometimes, when age has undermined the basement, it is the columns on which the superstructure rests, or even the roof by which the occupant is sheltered. It renders the rich man safe, the dealer of moderate means active and respectable, and it causes even the poor man to hold up his head in hope: though I admit that ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... one did not know the date of Little Eyolf, one could confidently assign it to the latest period of Ibsen's career, on noting a certain difference of scale between its foundations and its superstructure. In his earlier plays, down to and including Hedda Gabler, we feel his invention at work to the very last moment, often with more intensity in the last act than in the first; in his later plays he seems to be in haste to pass as early as possible from ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen

... its harmony and its grammatical forms, and increased its copiousness and power. What he did was improved upon, but was never undone; and upon the foundations he laid, the taste of succeeding ages erected an elegant and beautiful superstructure. His great epic poem, the "Annals," gained him the attachment and admiration of his countrymen. In this he first introduced the hexameter to the notice of the Romans, and detailed the rise and progress of their national glory, from the earliest legendary period down to his own times. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... idea was adopted in the infancy of the science, when all formations, whether stratified or unstratified, earthy or crystalline, with or without fossils, were alike regarded as of aqueous origin. At that period it was naturally argued that the foundation must be older than the superstructure; but it was afterwards discovered that this opinion was by no means in every instance a legitimate deduction from facts; for the inferior parts of the earth's crust have often been modified, and even entirely changed, by the influence ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... "supernature"—"The present incarnation of the spirit of the Renascence," he writes, "differs from its predecessor in the eighteenth century, in that it builds up, as well as pulls down. That of which it has laid the foundation, of which it is already raising the superstructure, is the doctrine of evolution," a doctrine that "is no speculation, but a generalisation of certain facts, which may be observed by any one who will take the necessary trouble." And in a short dozen pages he sketches out that "common body of established truths" to which it is his ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... government systematically built up from the foundation of the many,—a government drawing its being from, and dependent for its continued existence on, the will and the intelligence of the governed. The foundation had first been laid deep and strong, and on it a goodly superstructure of government was erected. Yet, even to this day, the very subjects of that government itself do not realize that they, and not the government, are the sources of national prosperity. In times of national emergency like the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... the head of the spiral staircase the professor paused for a moment to direct the attention of his companions to a long passage which extended apparently along the middle of the ship to the fore-end of the superstructure. The passage was about five feet wide, and the ceiling was of ground glass, through which a flood of ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... celebrated Pulpit in the Baptistry of Pisa, the date of which is 1260. The pillars are supported by lions, which, instead of being introduced heraldically into the design, as would be the case some two hundred years later, are bearing the whole weight of the pillars and an enormous superstructure on the hollow of their backs in a most impossible manner. The spandril of each arch is filled with a saint in a grotesque position amongst Gothic foliage, and there is in many respects a marked contrast to the casts of examples of the Renaissance ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... indebted to the Collection of Purchas. By this first English East India Company, with a capital or joint stock of about 70,000l. at least for the first voyage, were laid the stable foundations of that immense superstructure of trade and dominion now held by the present company. Their first joint stock did not exceed the average of 325l. or 330l. for each individual of 216 members, whose names are recorded in the copy of the charter in Purchas his ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... necessary technical training, and it does not appear that he had much opportunity to distinguish himself as a war correspondent. The writing of fiction was his proper work, and his success at it seemed always to be in proportion to the amount of personal experience which he employed to support the superstructure of his somewhat reckless fancy. Those of Kingsley's friends who contribute to the brief memoir of his life bear unanimous testimony to the personal brightness and kindness of which he has left so worthy a memorial in his ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... liable, nor have you yet had any experience of its strength; it has yet sustained no shocks; the first whirlwind may scatter its component members in the air; the first earthquake may shake its foundation; the first inundation may sweep the superstructure from the surface of the earth. I hope no accident will happen to your house, but I am ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... foundation for the superstructure which our author builds on the silence of Eusebius. But the real question, after all, is not what this historian professes to do, but what he actually does. The original prospectus is of small moment compared with ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... then prescribes that, whenever ten miles of railroad was graded so as to be ready for the superstructure, it should receive $100,000 of the bonds, and when ten miles should be completed with the cars running, the company so completing should receive another $100,000 of the bonds until each company had received its quota. The bonds were to be denominated "State Railroad Bonds," for the ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... determine what is the true definition of [Greek: aion]. If it can be shown that the essential meaning of the word is that of limited duration, then the case is very clear; the translators were not justified in foisting into it the idea of unendingness; and this being so, a huge superstructure of doctrine, reared upon the mistranslation, will totter and fall, and an awful nightmare will be lifted ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio

... "The mind of this great man may perhaps be taken as a representation of the general characteristics of the English intellect. Its groundwork was solid, practical, and conversant with the details of business; but upon this, and secured by this, arose a superstructure of imagination and moral sentiment. He saw little, because it was painful to him to see anything beyond the limits of the national character. In all things, while he deeply reverenced principles, he chose to deal with the concrete rather than with ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... front in due time. They cannot be selected in advance of the actual trial in war. Even West Point, though one of the best schools in the world, can at the most only lay the foundation of a military education. Each individual must build for himself upon that foundation the superstructure which is to mark his place in the world. If he does not build, his monument will hardly appear above the surface of the ground, and will soon be covered out ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... suddenly, with a burst of tears, Captain Eulate kissed his hand and bade fond farewell to the burning hulk and said with impassioned voice, 'Adios Viscaya.' As he did this the very same instant there came a tremendous roar and the Vizcaya's magazine blew her superstructure hundreds of feet into the air. Had the incident occurred that way on the stage anybody would have said it ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... which my respected progenitor has recently favored the English public having been received with unusual favor, and the series having been suddenly terminated, to the great regret of the literary public, it becomes, I conceive, my duty to carry on the work so nobly begun, even though the superstructure be far inferior in beauty and solidity to the foundation. In pursuing these, my filial labors, I shall always keep in view the two pole stars which ever guided the senior Mr. Ashburner—first, that these letters are designed for ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... effulgence, that he had within him the making of a great pulpit orator. He set to work now, with resolute purpose, to puzzle out and master all the principles which underlie this art, and all the tricks that adorn its superstructure. He studied it, fastened his thoughts upon it, talked daily with Alice about it. In the pulpit, addressing those people who had so darkened his life and crushed the first happiness out of his home, he withheld himself from any oratorical display which could afford them gratification. He ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... known. And when this peculiar conformation and expression is coupled with delicacy of health, and obvious suffering, the attractive influence becomes irresistible. Let us thank God that such is the case. Blind, unreasoning affection is a grand foundation on which to build a mighty superstructure of good offices, kindly acts, and tender feelings, mingled, it may be, with loving forbearance, and occasional suffering, which shall be good to the souls of the lover, as well ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne

... we are, that it is thus alone that crime in the end is to be arrested, and that the efforts now making in this respect in all parts of the British empire, are laying the only foundation whereon in future times the superstructure of a moral and orderly society are to be laid. But, as every system must be tested by its fruits, and these fruits in the present forced and artificial state of society are so rapidly brought forth—it is worse than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... studied, and deeply sounded for their solid worth, it will be found that they consist merely of beautiful imagery, elegantly turned phrases, a sort of flash of sentiment, which catches the ear, but appeals not to the understanding, a gorgeous superstructure, as it were, without a firm foundation for its basis. As for example, in his preface to Attila, alluding to Napoleon, he observes "Qu'il etait envoye par la Providence, comme une signe de reconciliation quand elle etait ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... Protestant sects, who form the most important element in the community; but to them also, in a large measure, it owes its political and social stability, and all those standard moral qualities which are the only safe foundation for a superstructure of intellect. ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... the part an air of Spanish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like an old Castilian. He was starch, spruce, opinionated, but his superstructure of pride seemed bottomed upon a sense of worth. There was something in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big and swelling, but you could not be sure that it was hollow. You might wish to see it taken down, but you felt that it was upon an elevation. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... the subject.... No one can read your book without at least gaining a high ideal of the study of expression. You have laid a deep and strong foundation for a scientific system. And now we wait for the superstructure.—Professor Alexander ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry

... before-hand Taught, as to make it a reasonable Presumption that they should have it. Whence all the Endeavours of making them Vertuous in consequence of their Christianity, are but attempting to raise a real Superstructure upon an only imaginary Foundation; for Truths receiv'd upon any other Ground than their own Evidence, tho' they may, perhaps, find entertainment, yet will never gain to themselves a sure hold upon the Mind; and so soon as they become troublesome, are in great danger of being question'd; whereby ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham

... James's Park. The substructure, containing the kitchens and domestic offices, forms a terrace about 50 feet wide, adorned with pillars of the Paestum Doric Order, surmounted with a balustrade. The superstructure consists of three stories, ornamented with Corinthian columns. The houses at each extremity have elevated attics. Only small portions of these superb elevations are shown in the Engraving, with the Athenaeum Club House ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various

... and efficient cause; and these conditions I find in the character of the times and in his own character. The age in which the foundations of his mind were laid, was congenial to it as one golden era of profound erudition and individual genius;—that in which the superstructure was carried up, was no less favourable to it by a sternness of discipline and a show of self-control, highly flattering to the imaginative dignity of an heir of fame, and which won Milton over from the dear-loved delights of academic ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... a instant, comprehending his brother's request; and, flying back, in and out of the hut as if he had been galvanised, he quickly placed the old door on top of the wheelbarrow as a sort of platform, with a mattress on top. He then lifted Fritz on the superstructure as if he were a child, the excitement having given him tenfold strength; and, wheeling the barrow down at a run, the two arrived on the beach almost sooner than a boat could have pulled ashore from the point where the catastrophe to the vessel ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... state of proficiency with their weapons, they resumed their journey, fortified with a hearty breakfast, the foundation of which was fish, the superstructure willow-grouse interspersed with rabbit, ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

... and miracles naturally find no place. Thus system is opposed to system, although the one is not able to overcome the other. For the last and deepest power of conviction lies, neither for one nor the other system, in its chains of conclusions, in its superstructure, but in its foundation, its standpoint, and its principles; and the choosing of one or the other standpoint, the theistic or atheistic, is an ethical action which precedes methodical reasoning—or if it takes place at the same time or precedes it, has still deeper motives than those ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... a long gallery or aisle, are suspended from these arches by wrought-iron vertical rods, with horizontal tie-bars to resist the thrust. The suspension-bolts are enclosed within spandril pillars of cast iron, which give great stiffness to the superstructure. This system of longitudinal and vertical bracing has been much admired, for it not only accomplishes the primary object of securing rigidity in the roadway, but at the same time, by its graceful arrangement, heightens the beauty of the structure. The arches consist of ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... the gloom and consequent humidity of the town that the sides of the streets were connected, at the height of two or perhaps three stories, by thin arches—mere jets of stone from the one house to the other, with but in rare instance the smallest superstructure to keep down the key of the arch. Whatever the intention of them, they might seem to serve it, for the time they had straddled there undisturbed had sufficed for moss and even grass to grow upon those which Mr. Porson now regarded with curious speculation. A bit of an architect, and foiled, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... Cincinnati, the foundation of an hereditary order, whose base, from associating with the military the chiefs of the powerful families in each state, would acquire a degree of solidity and strength admitting of any superstructure, he portrayed, in the fervid and infectious language of passion, the dangers to result from the fabric which would be erected on it. The ministers of the United States too in Europe, and the political theorists who cast their eyes towards the west for support to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... impression given by Phil. to the hasty reader is, that, according to Newmanism, the Scriptures make a good beginning to which we ourselves are continually adding—a solid foundation, on which we ourselves build the superstructure. Not so. In the course of a day or a year, the sun passes through a vast variety of positions, aspects, and corresponding powers, in relation to ourselves. Daily and annually he is developed to us—he runs a cycle of development. Yet, after all, this practical result does not argue any change ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... before—I couldn't," Lorne went on, "but I'm afraid it's rather futile, the kind of thing we've been trying to do. It's fiddling at a superstructure without a foundation. What we want is the common interest. Common interest, common taxation for defence, common representation, domestic management of domestic affairs, and ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... characters are also peculiar. A drunken constable was not uncommon; but he makes folly a vehicle for wit, as in Dogberry: everything is a sub-stratum on which his genius can erect the mightiest superstructure. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... flight, the view of her relation to those surrounding her. Make it predominantly a view of THEIR relation and the trick is played: you give the general sense of her effect, and you give it, so far as the raising on it of a superstructure goes, with the maximum of ease. Well, I recall perfectly how little, in my now quite established connexion, the maximum of ease appealed to me, and how I seemed to get rid of it by an honest transposition of the weights in the two scales. "Place the centre of the ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... for the two million bushel grain elevator, Calumet K, had been let to MacBride & Company, of Minneapolis, in January, but the superstructure was not begun until late in May, and at the end of October it was still far from completion. Ill luck had attended Peterson, the constructor, especially since August. MacBride, the head of the firm, disliked unlucky men, and at the end of three months his patience ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster

... was building a vast superstructure upon the foundations furnished by the recognised facts of geological and biological science. In Physical Geography, in Geology proper, in Geographical Distribution, and in Palaeontology, he had acquired an extensive practical training during the voyage of the "Beagle". ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... life come by its own. In the beginning it lies, a little thing, in some dark under-vault, and ends by overthrowing the whole superstructure. The real tragedy is, that man does not know himself for what ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... natural objects were insufficient for his purposes, he made artificial tools to supplement them. Slowly he became an inventor. Slowly he mastered the art of living. Thus physical needs were gradually satisfied, and the foundation for the superstructure of civilization ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... the salaries of office; and they gradually disappeared as their offices became filled with Muhammadans and Hindoos. The duties of the artillery, its arsenals, and foundries, were the chief foundation upon which the superstructure of Christianity then stood in India. These duties were everywhere entrusted exclusively to Europeans, and all Europeans were Christians, and, under Shah Jahan, permitted freely to follow their own modes of worship. They were, too. Roman Catholic, and spent the greater part ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... destructive to wood foundations. If wood is used, only the most durable kinds should enter into the construction of the house. The under structure of masonry or of wood should be low, not higher than 18 inches or 2 feet before the superstructure of glass begins. The grapery must be well ventilated. There must be large ventilators at the peak of the house and small ones just above the foundation walls or in the foundation walls themselves. The ventilation should be such that the ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... therefore, that any account of Titian's life based solely on such flimsy evidence as to his age as is found in this letter to Philip the Second is, to say the least, open to grave doubt. The whole superstructure raised by modern writers on this uncertain foundation is full of flaws and incongruities, and I am fully persuaded the future historian will have to begin de novo in any attempt at a chronological ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... the beginning of the nineteenth century the courses in college mathematics did not usually presuppose a mathematical foundation carefully prepared for a superstructure. According to M. Gebhardt, the function of teaching elementary mathematics in Germany was assumed by the gymnasiums during the years from 1810 to 1830.[5] Before this time the German universities ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... tribunal. His whole conversation, conduct, and spirit, showed the ennobling effect which that sublime test of character had upon him. In fine, he perceived that the basis of his own character had been false and therefore frail. The superstructure he had raised upon it, had been fair and imposing to the world, but, when its strength came to be tried, it had given way and fallen. He felt that he had neglected his true interests, and had been wholly indifferent to the just claims of the ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... poor relying on another's fame, For, take the pillars but away, and all The superstructure ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... trained to delight in TRUTH,—not in comic rhymes, in sentimental tales, and skeptical poetry. The truth revealed in God's Holy Word, should constitute the firm basis of education; and the works of Creation and Providence the superstructure while the Divine blessing can alone ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer

... the body social, the dynamics of civilization. A great nation of Atheists is a practical impossibility, because the basic principle of such a society must needs be selfishness, and from such a foundation no mighty superstructure can ever rise. "Ye cannot gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles." War is but an incident in the history of a nation, while religion is its very life. In the latter it moves and breathes and ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... used to invite conflicts, nor for oppression, but for the more effective maintenance of those principles of equality and justice upon which our institutions and happiness depend. Let us keep always in mind that the foundation of our Government is liberty; its superstructure peace. ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... desolate space, at one part red with the broken pottery of all periods, thrown out from the sebakh-digger's sieve, at another white with the salt that everywhere permeates the soil. A few great brick walls remain, and the foundations of the temple, but no part of the superstructure. Outside this town, but inside the great square of the walls, the character of the ground is quite different. There are no great masses of pottery, hardly any brick walls; in the lower parts little parallel ridges in the soil show that cultivation ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell

... sharing at once Time and Eternity—time as outward form, and eternity as its essential quality. Sleep is a special relaxation, relieving a special strain. As daily we build with effort and design an elaborate superstructure above the living foundation, so must this edifice nightly be laid in ruins. Sleep is thus a disembarrassment, the unloading of a burden wherewith we have weighted ourselves. Here again we are brought into a kind ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... thick clustering stars of our confederacy in one glorious constellation forever! Let the column which we are about to construct, be at once a pledge and an emblem of perpetual union! Let the foundations be laid, let the superstructure be built up and cemented, let each stone be raised and reverted, In a spirit of national brotherhood! And may the earliest ray of the rising sun—till that sun shall set to rise no more—draw forth from it dally, as from the fabled statue of antiquity, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... the train around a curve makes little difference, as the clerks in a short time learn to follow every motion of the train. A quick decision, ready eye, and economy of movement as a superstructure to a good knowledge of his duties, are the invaluable qualities of a successful railway postal-clerk; and one so equipped soon outstrips his lagging seniors and associates in grade. As the train approaches a junction, preparations ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various

... one time attached. It was apparently founded on the circumstance that Thomas Chaucer, the supposed son of the poet, quartered the Roet arms with his own. But unfortunately there is no evidence to show that Thomas Chaucer was a son of Geoffrey; and the superstructure must needs vanish with its basis. It being then no longer indispensable to assume Chaucer to have been a married man in 1366, the Philippa Chaucer of that year MAY have been only a namesake, and possibly a relative, of Geoffrey; for there were other Chaucers ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... heart, built up with nice and dexterous contrivance, so as to shew to the greatest advantage. Need we say what was the consequence of this rude assault on the legs of the aforementioned dresser, supporting, as it did, this huge superstructure of shelves and crockery? Scarcely. But we will. Down, then, came the dresser; and down, as a necessary corollary, came also the shelves, depositing their contents with an astounding crash upon the floor, not a jug out ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... written upon the same principles with Absalom and Achitophel, but upon a narrower plan, gives less pleasure, though it discovers equal abilities in the writer. The superstructure cannot extend beyond the foundation; a single character or incident cannot furnish as many ideas, as a series of events, or multiplicity of agents. This poem, therefore, since time has left it to itself, is not much read, nor, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... which concern the dearest interests and most sacred charities of private life, are all congenial to the American character; and, in fact, are all intrinsically excellent: for it is in the moral feeling of the people that the deep foundations of British prosperity are laid; and however the superstructure may be timeworn, or overrun by abuses, there must be something solid in the basis, admirable in the materials, and stable in the structure of an edifice that so long has towered unshaken amidst the ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... respects from her sister ship. The Olympic has a lower promenade deck, but in the Titanic's case the staterooms were brought out flush with the outside of the superstructure, and the rooms themselves made much larger. The sitting rooms of some of the suites on this deck were 15 x ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various

... only one smokestack on any battleship and no bridge or superstructure or any inflammable material above the waterline, and the officers and men eat at the same tables and partake of the same food. If any officer or private objected to it or violated this rule, he was dismissed the service, for it was considered injurious to the service on board ship ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans

... at the pit of the stomach. Then as the support beneath is really gone, there is what is often called "a feeling of goneness." This is sometimes relieved by food, which, so long as it remains in a solid form, helps to hold up the falling superstructure. This displacement of the stomach, liver, and spleen interrupts their healthful functions, and dyspepsia and biliary difficulties not unfrequently are ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... They assumed a sort of state of nature in the minds of the people with whom the lawgiver had to deal. Saint Just made the same assumption afterwards, and trusted to his military school to erect on these bare plots whatever superstructure he might think fit to appoint. A society that had for so many centuries been organised and moulded by a powerful and energetic church, armed with a definite doctrine, fixing the same moral tendencies in a long series of successive generations, was not in the naked mental state which the Jacobins ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... all-important matter of education received the attention of the Assembly. What had been done before was, most significantly, to make provision for higher education by establishing 'grammar schools' in the different districts, as foundations for the superstructure of a university. It might have been called a provision for aristocratic education. Now a measure became law for the better support of the common schools. This was provision for democratic education, a necessary corollary to popular ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... Education itself, which many had thought quite a 'finished' thing, well and happily disposed of, or at least so far perfected as to leave no work further save upon the veriest outskirts of details, is in truth a giant superstructure with foundations in sand, or so almost visibly lacking underneath it, that it threatens to fall. For, in the name of the simplest of all common sense, how are we to educate to the best, not yet knowing—and that is now acknowledged—what are ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... And, to cheer thy solitary labor, remember, that the secret studies of an author are the sunken piers upon which is to rest the bridge of his fame, spanning the dark waters of Oblivion. They are out of sight; but without them no superstructure can ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... sometimes rise so high, neither doth it ever sink below; and it has not met with the approbation it deserves, only because it has not been more read and considered. His subject indeed is confined, and he has a narrow foundation to build upon, but he has raised as noble a superstructure, as such little room, and such scanty materials would allow. The great beauty of it is the contrast between the two characters of the tempter and Our Saviour, the artful sophistry, and specious insinuations of the one, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... mind." It is, in reality, the social nature which gives morality its form and meaning. It is a creation of the social organism. Its basis is found, indeed, in the invariable order of nature, but the superstructure is erected out of and by society. "Man's individual functions," says Lewes, "arise in relations to the cosmos; his general functions arise in relations to the social medium; thence moral life emerges. All the animal impulses become blended ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... and the system of this Session have laid the foundation of much improvement to the country, on solid grounds; and seeds which should blossom hereafter, are planted in the fertile soil; but whether the superstructure is to be raised, or them seeds are to spring, depends not on those who have laboured on the foundation, or who have provided the means that may quicken the process. Whether the Savings' Bank Bill, or ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher

... become of the American newspaper men, and it was just about this time that the pontoon bridge which had been the way of the Belgian retreat was blown up to prevent pursuit by the Germans. The boats and woodwork of the superstructure burnt fiercely and in less than twenty minutes ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... relate what Spinoza was, and leave others to form their own conclusions. But one lesson there does seem to lie in such a life of such a man,—a lesson which he taught equally by example and in word,—that wherever there is genuine and thorough love for good and goodness, no speculative superstructure of opinion can be so extravagant as to forfeit those graces which are promised, not to clearness of intellect, but to purity of heart. In Spinoza's own beautiful language,—'Justitia et caritas unicum et certissimum verae fidei Catholicae signum est, et veri Spiritus Sancti fructus: et ubicumque ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... turn by the tall Lieutenant with the telescope. "You're Standish, aren't you?" he asked, turning to the India-rubber Man. "The Commander wants to see you—you're an old shipmate of his, it seems?" He led the way as he spoke towards a door in the after superstructure. ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... Christianity. There is something grand in the bravery of the bullet-headed Yorkshireman, now contending with the brutality of the convicts and their masters, now sleeping among the cannibals of New Zealand. His foundations, too, have received a superstructure on which we cannot dwell; because, happily, the first Bishop of New Zealand is not yet a subject for biography, and the Melanesian Mission, which has sprung out of it, has not yet ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... ideas and opinions, no regular social foundation of men of intellectual or literary calibre ensuring a perennial flow of conversation, and which, if it existed, would derive strength and assistance from the light superstructure of occasional visitors, with the much or the little they might individually contribute. The reason of this is that the woman herself, who must give the tone to her own society, and influence its ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... reasonings; but I had not as yet a precise knowledge of their true use; and thinking that they but contributed to the advancement of the mechanical arts, I was astonished that foundations, so strong and solid, should have had no loftier superstructure reared on them. On the other hand, I compared the disquisitions of the ancient moralists to very towering and magnificent palaces with no better foundation than sand and mud: they laud the virtues very highly, and exhibit them as estimable far above anything on earth; ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes

... seems to us to be founded on an entire mistake. There are branches of knowledge with respect to which the law of the human mind is progress. In mathematics, when once a proposition has been demonstrated, it is never afterwards contested. Every fresh story is as solid a basis for a new superstructure as the original foundation was. Here, therefore, there is a constant addition to the stock of truth. In the inductive sciences again, the law is progress. Every day furnishes new facts, and thus brings theory nearer and nearer to perfection. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... had not shot their bolt. The roof had not yet fallen on him. They had discharged but a petard, but a mine to effect a breach. The timbers of the superstructure had but bent and cracked ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... stern of the Nequasset, a biscuit-toss away. The mighty surge of her roaring passage lifted the freighter's bulk aft, and the huge wave that was crowded between the two hulls crowned itself with frothing white and slapped a good, generous ton of green water over the smaller steamer's superstructure. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... from the India Company's expenditure, circulates through the country in an equal stream, returning chiefly, like the water exhaled in vapours from the sea, to its original source. The custom of giving jujurs had most probably its foundation in polygamy; and the superstructure subsists, though its basis is partly mouldered away; but, being scarcely tenantable, the inhabitants are inclined to quit, and suffer it to fall to the ground. Moderation in point of women destroying their principle, the jujurs appear to be devoid of policy. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... all Protestants in general, and cause them to recommend it to be read by their Children, that there is no Book fitter for them to read, which does in so delightful and instructing a Manner utterly overthrow almost all the Popish Opinions and Superstitions, and erect in their Stead, a Superstructure of Opinions that ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... meagre records of the life of the composer, who carved and laid the foundation of the superstructure of Italian music; who, viewed in connection with his times and their limitations, must be regarded as one of the great creative minds in his art; who shares with Sebastian Bach the glory of having built an imperishable base for the ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... speeches. The brutal Illo repeatedly talks language which belongs to the Countess, &c. (2) Astrology (an undramatic superstition because it inspires no terror, and its foundation of imagination is overbuilt and concealed by its scientific superstructure, with other cause from the imagery, is thus unpopular or swallowed up in more general and pleasing associations, as the Sun and Moon) is made prophetic, and yet treated ludicrously: the author as philosopher is in compleat discord with himself as Historian. This ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... forms of the letters are derived from the shapes of the constellations, of which twelve are zodiacal, six northern and six southern. This implies a superficial intimacy with the heavens such as would result from a life spent in hot countries with little or no superstructure to shut out the view. The wise among them would sit beneath the stars in the cool night air and figure out the language of ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial

... yet never weak. 'Strength,' he said, 'valor, truth, they are the foundations; better be dead than without them. Yet one can have them, in crude form, and still better be dead. The noble, the humane, the chaste, the beautiful, 'tis with them we build the superstructure, the temple, of life—Mr. Chester, if you knew French I could tell ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... secure it when he comes to mechanics in the higher: each section has its own sufficient work. He may be a good philosopher or a good historian, but a bad arithmetician he remains for life; for he cannot lay the foundation at the moment when he must be building the superstructure. The regiment which has not perfected itself in its manoeuvres on the parade ground, cannot learn them before the guns of the enemy. And just in the same way, the young person who has slept his youth away, and become idle, and selfish, and hard, cannot make up for that afterwards. He may ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... through an elliptical ante-room, beyond the sacristy, was probably a relic chapel, and is of the sixth century—a mosaic of that date was found here five feet below the surface; but the vaulted passage by which it is approached is of the thirteenth century, while the superstructure of the chapel is Venetian, added to assist in the defence of the place from this side, for the sea is quite close. To the east of the city towards Torre Nuova a Christian cemetery was discovered in 1893 close to the road, consisting of three little ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... dedicated to the exaltation of human nature in that way in which God had best fitted me to promote so great an object, it was likely to stand a memorial to my children of hopes defeated, of baffled efforts, of materials uselessly accumulated, of foundations laid that were never to support a superstructure, of the grief and the ruin of the architect. In this state of imbecility I had for amusement turned my attention to political economy. In 1819 a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo's book; ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... something that we must have in some shape or other, and, if fairly treated, it would become as decidedly American as business is. It is susceptible of great variety, but care must be taken that it harmonizes with the superstructure. How often we see massive structures of marble, five stories or more, supported on basements of plate glass, apparently; while the real supports are carefully concealed! The best method, so far tried, seems to be that in which the columns are made sufficiently prominent to show their ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... broadest outline. Even to catalogue in detail, the improvements of Edison and Brush, Gramme and Wheatstone, and a host of others who have contributed to the work, would require a volume. One fact, however, should ever be kept in mind: Whatever may be the extent of the superstructure of electrical science, it is all built upon the foundation of electro-magnetic induction laid by Michael Faraday. The little "magnetic spark" he first produced, and the trembling of his galvanometer-needle, were but signals of the birth of ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... let respect be the foundation, affection the first floor, love the superstructure; Mdlle. Reuter is ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... Republic, and the equality of the citizens, both in the States and the Territories, constitute the true and only bond of union for the American people. This equality is the foundation stone upon which our whole social and political superstructure rests. To call this in question is to menace the very existence of the Union which is founded upon it. The sovereignty of the Union, extending over the Territories, where no other sovereignty exists, is the panoply of protection to all the inhabitants of the Territories. There ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit

... origin, unverified and unverifiable, is too weak to support the superstructure which has been erected upon it. This hypothesis discarded, it may be presumed that the earth was never in a fluid or wholly ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers

... "A sound," or "A touch." Thus does the mind come to know the universe of the senses. Thus does it get the material out of which memory, imagination, and thought begin. Thus and only thus does the mind secure the crude material from which the finished superstructure is finally built. ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... which would perhaps be worse, to the partial or narrow views of the first settlers. The plan of a whole state might be arranged there like that of an edifice before the foundation is laid, and a solid one seems necessary where a large superstructure is likely to be built. The accompanying sketch of the limits which I would propose for the colony of New South Wales is intended to show also how the deficiencies of such a region might be compensated and the advantages ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... continued life of a republic such as ours is to be. It is in this self-evident truth that is found a sure ground of confidence. Upon this bed-rock of America's boasted pride for interest in her humblest citizen may be built the superstructure of the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... equitable right to some toll or duty on merchandises carried through that part of your dominions, towards defraying the expense you are at in ships to maintain the safety of that carriage." This was a rather narrow basis on which to build the broad and weighty superstructure of the British Custom House; but it was not to be expected that Franklin should supply any better arguments upon that side of the question. It was obvious that Grenville's proposition might lead to two conclusions. He said: External and internal ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... superstructure into the room. He was outwardly all that was bland and unperturbed, but there was a wary look in the eye that cocked itself at Jimmy, and he did not move far from the door. His fingers rested easily on the handle behind him. He did not think it probable that Jimmy could have heard ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... go, was not a large vessel. Cylindrical of body, forty feet maximum beam, and two hundred and seventy-five feet in length. The passenger superstructure—no more than a hundred feet long—was set amidships. A narrow deck, metallically enclosed, and with large bull's-eye windows, encircled the superstructure. Some of the cabins opened directly onto the deck. Others had doors to the interior corridors. There were half a dozen small ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... directly to the people, and were further restrained by a council of seven members. This political basis is that upon which our present form of government rests; but it is strange to see what Daedalian complications, and wheels within wheels, we have contrived to work into the superstructure. A modern ward heeler in New York could have taken up the whole frame of government in Seventeenth Century New England by the butt end, and cracked it like a whip—provided of course the Pilgrim fathers had allowed him to ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... crew of the bow gun narrowly escaped being carried overboard to a man. Blue with cold, soaked to the buff despite oilskins, they stuck stubbornly to their posts. Perched beyond reach of shattering wavecrests, the passengers on the boat-deck huddled unhappily in the lee of the superstructure—and snarled in response to the cheering information that better conditions for baffling the ubiquitous U-boat could hardly have been brewed by an indulgent Providence. Sheeting spindrift contributed to lower visibility: two destroyers ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... consequence of the same causes, what ground can there be for predicting whether or when any such event will occur again? What possibility is there of constructing a science of history, when history supplies no materials for either foundation or superstructure? ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... of malice, he can say, devil. A few gleams of happiness having fallen athwart the gloom of his life, he can say, heaven. Pain, in its numberless forms, having been experienced, he can say, hell. Yet all these ideas have a foundation in fact, and only a foundation. The superstructure has been reared by exaggerating, diminishing, combining, separating, deforming, beautifying, improving or multiplying realities, so that the edifice or fabric is but the incongruous grouping of what man has perceived through the medium of the senses. It is as though ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... greasy wall to keep the dinghy close to it, I received in succession our stores, and stowed the cargo as best I could, while the dinghy sank lower and lower in the water, and its precarious superstructure grew higher. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... not doubting, in reference to God, but believing, that is the foundation of knowledge. But Christ is both the foundation and the superstructure, by whom are both the beginning and the end. And the extreme points, the beginning and the end, I mean faith and love, are not taught. But knowledge, which is conveyed from communication through the grace of God as a deposit, is intrusted to those who show themselves worthy of it; ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... do this christianly scientific work? By intrenching ourselves in the knowledge that our true temple is no human fabrication, but the superstructure of Truth, reared on the foundation of Love, and pinnacled in Life. Such being its nature, how can our godly temple possibly be demolished, or even disturbed? Can eternity end? Can Life die? Can Truth be uncertain? Can Love be less than boundless? Referring to this ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy

... grasp of his readers a conception of the universe which was not lost in the immensity associated with the Copernican view of things. Besides, it also furnished him with a distinctly defined basis upon which to erect the superstructure of his poem. Above the circumscribed universe was Heaven or the Empyrean; underneath it was Chaos, from which it had been reclaimed, and in the lowest depth of which Milton located the infernal world called Hell. These four regions embraced ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... or the beard, may speak of the heart and soul, only, however, by distant hints. But just as the representation is less distinct and detailed, is it a mightier lever for imagination to use in raising again to life centuries which had long slept in the dust. The superstructure of history, indeed, which we should rear upon such a basis, would be wide of the truth on one side, just as the narratives and philosophical disquisitions which come to us under that name are on the other. History generally relates ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... correspond with definite degrees of development of their material productive forces. The totality of these relations of production constitute the economic structure of society, the true basis from which arises a juridical and political superstructure to which definite social forms of consciousness correspond. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of mankind that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... the mountain gorges of California the gold-hunters knew nothing of all this for many a day, and our adventurers continued to dig, and wash, and pile up the superstructure of their fortunes, all ignorant of the event which had crumbled ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne

... as if a man should undertake to supply an account of a building, and be so intent upon what he had discovered of the foundation, as to conclude his task without once looking up at the superstructure? Here, as in other instances throughout the volume, the judicious Author's mind is enthralled by Etymology; he takes up the original word as his guide and escort, and too often does not perceive how soon he becomes its prisoner, without liberty to tread in any path but that to which it confines ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... seems the fashion nowadays to ignore Hartley; though, a century and a half ago, he not only laid the foundations but built up much of the superstructure of a true theory of the Evolution of the intellectual and moral faculties. He speaks of what I have termed the ethical process as "our Progress from Self-interest to Self-annihilation." Observations on Man ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... of the present tower that it was the original intention to surmount it by some other erection, probably a spire. Each interior angle contains strong and massive squinches which are of no constructive use at present, and must have been originally inserted to carry some superstructure. The buttresses at the angles are also carried up to the parapet, which would seem to point to the same conclusion. Why this project was never carried out cannot be said, but probably it would not have added to the artistic effect of the tower. The belfry contains ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate

... society. They are bad enough. They are a festering mass at the foundation of all the greatness of the nation; they are a mass which, if not corrected in their tendencies, may at any time be quickened into an activity that will utterly wreck the entire superstructure of all that as Christians and as Englishmen we hold dear. But higher up, where there is no profaneness or criminality, or gross and disgusting visible intemperance, what other evils are there? There is decency, ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King



Words linked to "Superstructure" :   structure, construction, deck-house, ship



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com