"Tangible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... coachman was driving very badly," I think she travelled in stately silence as far as Kew. Not so the other occupants of the barouche. Maud, desirous of forgetting much that was distasteful to her in the events of the morning, and indeed, in the course of her daily life, resolved to accept the tangible advantages of the present, nor scrupled to show that she enjoyed fresh air, fine weather, and pleasant company. Dick, stimulated by her presence, and never disinclined to gaiety of spirit, exerted himself to be agreeable, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... get into clear and tangible form my shadowy ideas. What is the secret of ministerial success? What is the common characteristic which gives pulpit power to such widely dissimilar characters as Chalmers, Whitefields, the Westleys, Spurgeon and Robertson in England, and ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... last was something tangible—and promising. Mr. Pulcifer's puffy lids drew nearer together to hide the gleam behind them. He took the cigar from his mouth and held it between the fingers of his right hand. During his next ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a supersensible and real cosmic medium exists, which interpenetrates, influences, and supports the tangible and apparent world, and is amenable to the categories both of meta-physics and of physics." [This of course is the astral plane, which is the container of the subtle form or framework of all that exists on the ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... the sky by the line of white smoke puffs left by our bursting archy shells. Archy seldom reckons to get a direct hit on a plane, but, by the expenditure of quantities of ammunition, he makes the Hun fly too high to see anything of value or to drop bombs with much hope of success. More tangible results were obtained by our fighting planes, which engaged the Hun in the air. A pretty little fight took place a thousand feet or so above our heads, between two of our planes and a couple of Huns. After preliminary circling ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... can they sustain a single objection against our principles or standing; the very reasons which they assign for their own secession are variable, indefinite, personal, or trivial. But the reasons which may be assigned for our position and unity are tangible, are definite, are Methodistic, are satisfactory, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... and corporeity, carrying the mind away to an ideal world, where the things of this earth obtained a new reality by virtue of their relation to an invisible and infinite Beyond, the modern arts in their infancy were thrust. There was nothing finite here or tangible, no gladness in the beauty of girlish foreheads or the swiftness of a young man's limbs, no simple idealisation of natural delightfulness. The human body, which the figurative arts must needs use as the vehicle of their expression, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... and easy melodies. The poets are read for ever; but those who resemble her do more, for they grow out upon the centuries—they themselves and not their arts continue. There is stuff in their legend. They are a tangible inheritance for the hurrying generations ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... receded from my range of vision, and I am alone on the boundless prairie. There is a feeling of utter isolation at finding one's self alone on the plains that is not experienced in the mountain country. There is something tangible and companionable about a mountain; but here, where there is no object in view anywhere - nothing but the boundless, level plains, stretching away on every hand as far as the eye can reach, I and all around, whichever way one looks, nothing ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... discovery of the murder; that here was something vastly greater than the accidental finding of a person killed by an outsider, that the crime touched Sloanehurst personally. The foreboding had been patent—almost, it seemed, a tangible thing—but, until this moment, each had steered ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... the features of the moral ideal. The definite results of such a study we cannot mark or measure. Just as sunshine and rain come to the plants and trees, and then seem to vanish, leaving no visible or tangible trace behind; yet the plants and trees are different from what they were before, and have the heat and moisture stored up within their structure to burst forth into fresher and larger life; in like manner, though we should forget every formal statement that we have read, yet we could ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... obtain from the King not only tangible pledges which would eliminate all possibility of danger from the Allies' path, but also positive reinforcements for them in arms and men; and as a price he was prepared to guarantee to Old Greece her neutrality, her liberty ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... Sixteenth Century, however, open work embroidery was the favorite decoration, and from it the tangible origin of lace seems derived. During the Renaissance period the first book of embroidery patterns and lace-work appeared. The earliest volume bearing a date was printed at Cologne in 1527; and it was during the reign of Richard III. of England that the word lace was first used in ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.
... obstacles to American entrance into the war, the more remarkable and unprecedented does the final decision become. Every other belligerent had something immediate and tangible to gain by participating and to lose by not participating. Either they were invaded or were threatened with invasion. Either they dreaded the loss of prestige or territory or coveted some kind or degree of national aggrandisement. Even Australia and Canada, who had little or nothing to gain from ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... that he who subscribes to Dr. Fillebrown's declaration that [A]"The process of singing is psychologic rather than physiologic" has nothing tangible to work with. Now tone concept and musical feeling are absolutely essential to singing, and they are definite entities to one who has them. All musical temperaments must be vitalized. Imaginations must be trained until ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... there's another, two, three, four, why a dozen has just passed; they seem to look in here rather curiously, I wonder—only look; what has stirred them up, I want to know!" the fluctuation of the Congo market completely attracted the handsome man's attention; his surprise finally assumed the most tangible shape and complexion of fear, for the niggers, one and all, looked savage as meat-axes, and began to ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... 'wife.' I'm your mistress. Wife's such an ugly word. Your 'permanent mistress' is so much more tangible and desirable.... Come into my arms," she added in a rush of tenderness; "I can sleep so well, so well with ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... staring at me through his monocle. "The rest of us get paid for taking chances. The only tangible reward you can possibly get will be a knife in your back. Better be sensible and take the ride ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... him, the figure itself is liable presently to make a movement, which will perhaps alarm him—but to which he must submit; at last the phantom's lips tremble, it opens its mouth, and a supernatural voice tells him something that is entirely real, entirely tangible, but at the same time so extraordinary (similar, for instance, to what the ghostly statue, or the page Cherubin told Mozart) that it arouses him from his dream. The vision has disappeared; but his inner ear continues to hear; an idea has occurred to him, and this idea ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... no offer to come with us, but lounged among the cushions reveling in mischievous enjoyment. Whatever the Gray Mahatma's real motive, there was no possible doubt about hers; she was looking forward to a tangible, ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... Mrs. Argenter wanted tangible presences. She had not reached so far as her child into that inner living where all feel each other, knowing that "these same tribulations"—and joys also—are accomplished among the brotherhood that is in all the earth; knowing, too,—ah! that is the blessedness ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... arrest it, and to render it permanent. Accordingly, if on the child hearing the praise given to his companion for being kind and obliging to the poor, he had at the time been asked, "What does that teach you?" the lesson suggested by Nature would instantly have assumed a tangible form; and in communicating the answer to the teacher, both the truth and the lesson would have been brought more distinctly before the mind, and the reply, "I should be kind and obliging to the poor," ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... don't know who or what you are, but I am sure you are all right. As for what you ask, I don't know much about it, although Granddaddy has confided his suspicions to me many times. Unfortunately, though, they are only suspicions, and he has never been able to get any tangible evidence, for they cover their tracks very cleverly, and especially with him, since they know that he was once in the service. I can tell you this, though, keep sharp watch of a man called Lafe Green. He is a great big red-haired ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... half advanced. That she was unhappy and hated it all, he more than divined. It was a proof of the strength of his character that he did not let the terrible thought of inevitable parting mar the bliss of the tangible now. He had promised her to live while the sun of their union shone, and he had the force to ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... now arrive at a higher division of masonic symbolism, which, passing beyond these tangible symbols, brings us to those which are of a more abstruse nature, and which, as being developed in a ceremonial form, controlled and directed by the ritual of the order, may be designated as the ritualistic ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... trickeries of his life were becoming very odious to him; they were for the most part worn out, and had ceased to pay. Of course he had great hopes, in any event, from Gustave Lenoble; but those hopes were dependent on Gustave's inheritance of John Haygarth's estate. He wanted something more tangible than this—he wanted immediate security; and his daughter's marriage with Gustave would have given him that security, and still grander hopes for the future. He had fancied himself reigning over the vassals of Cotenoir, a far more ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... be silenced, however, in this fashion. I had yet something to say, and I would say it. It was to this effect: that dreams were not usually productive of tangible results, and that I requested to know in what way the chairman conceived I had evolved from my dream so substantial and well-made a delusion as the cigar-case which I had had the honor to place before him at the commencement ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... tangible happens, Antoine," I said kindly, "anything we can really put our hands on, we'll certainly deal with it. But you mustn't get nervous or allow yourself to suspect everybody who turns up here of evil designs against the Republic. I've come here for quiet, you ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... because they do not move. They are like... They are like no tangible thing in all the world. They are like faint, beautiful songs of an unseen singer; they are like temptations to some unknown sin. They make me think of the tigers that slip through ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... course in demonology and folk-lore. We hired and fitted up large rooms, and the cause seemed to be flourishing until the second month's rent fell due. It was then discovered that the treasury was empty; and with this discovery the society ended its existence, without having accomplished any tangible result other than the purchase of a number of sofas and chairs, for which Judge Methuen and I had ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... eyes, all delicacy, strength, reserve; the other and last, daring, cold, beautiful, with irresistible charm, silent and compelling. And these are the three women who have influenced my life, who fought in me then for mastery; one from out the unchangeable past, the others in the tangible and delible present. Most of us have to pass through such ordeals before character and conviction receive their final bias; before human nature has its wild trouble, and then settles into "cold rock and quiet world;" which ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a sigh of relief. "Then now we have something tangible, and can easily lay our course for Groenfontein." The sergeant coughed a little, short, sharp, dry cough, and said nothing. "Well, don't you ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... which is tangible, extended, and divisible; by mind, that which perceives, reflects, wills, and reasons. These properties are wholly dissimilar and admit of no comparison. To pretend that mind is matter, is to propose a contradiction in terms; and is just as absurd, as to pretend ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the guard seemed a joke. Not one of the natives could be induced to approach the dark "spirit-whale" which some of their comrades had seen rise from the water. Even after the steel shaft had been brought ashore as tangible evidence that the craft was a thing of metal, they could not be induced to ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... think, the public sympathy. The better to manifest our sincere respect for your liberal example in prosperity, as well as exhibit our honest admiration of your fortitude under overwhelming reverses, we propose to give that sympathy a tangible expression by soliciting your acceptance of a series of benefits for your family, the result of which may possibly secure for your wife and children a future home, or at least rescue them from the more ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... each side of which were the red and white bungalows, residences of the dozen officials of the island. They were screened by hedges of high growing bushes, bearing brilliant, exotic flowers which gave out a heavy, sweet perfume, and the perfume hung in clouds, invisible yet tangible, pervading the soft, warm air. How he had dreamed of such perfumes—long ago. Yet how sickening in reality. And how dull they were, the interiors of these sheltered bungalows, how dull and stupid the monotonous life that went on inside them—dejected, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... royal prerogative, of tangible and consumable homage—is due to the proprietor on account of his nominal and metaphysical occupancy. His seal is set upon the thing; that is enough to prevent any one else from ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... tinkle of Jag Ear's bells floating away into space. If a precipitate were taken from her forehead, in keeping with Jack's suggestion to Dr. Bennington, it would have been mercury, which is so tangible to the eye and intangible to the touch. Press it and it breaks into little globules, only to be shaken together in a coherent whole. If there is joy or pain in the breaking, either one must be ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... to all men. I was awakening a crushed nature, and absorbing influences that made the mottoes of "Unity of man with man," "Unity of man with God," "Unity of man with the universe," seem like real, tangible things. But who can say how much was also due to the low, soothing harmonies that floated out of those graceful windows with parting sashes that opened like doors down to ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... from the cast to Ninitta. He had only seen her at the studio, and he experienced a faint feeling of surprise at detecting a subtle difference in her here at home. It was nothing so tangible that he could have told by what means he received the impression, yet it was sufficiently definite to make him lose something of the freedom with which he had always addressed her. She was no longer simply the model, she was an Italian ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... thought of the Phaedo. It is pursued with much subtle argumentation, of which the essential residuum is this: the soul's action is purest and most intense when farthest withdrawn from the visible and tangible world,—and hence we guess that her true and eternal home is in that invisible realm of which all this material universe is but the ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... gentle-faced woman making pinafores near me, a cradle close by, and one or two chaps reading stories, or playing checkers with beans and buttons. But this gentle maker of pinafores had never yet assumed a tangible shape. She had only floated before me, in my lonely moments, enveloped in mist, and far too indistinct for revealing the color of the eyes and hair. So I could not be in love with Rachel,—her name was Rachel Lowe,—only a sort of magnetism, as it would be called in these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... week of the Rochester convention, the Paris International Congress opened it sessions, sending us a telegram of greeting to which we responded with two hundred and fifty francs as a tangible evidence of our best wishes. The two remarkable features of that congress were the promise of so distinguished a man as Victor Hugo to preside over its deliberations, though at last prevented by illness; and the fact that the Italian government sent Mlle. Mozzoni as an official ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the sacrament of penance, he found a not altogether usual difficulty in preparing for it. Perhaps it was in the counsel he received there that he got courage to gird himself for his renewed attack upon the languages, for his delinquencies in this respect have the air of being the most tangible of ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... in the early morning, in that chill (p. 296) hour which precedes the dawn one can almost see the smell ooze from the earth of the firing line. It is penetrating, sharp, and well-nigh tangible, the odour of herbs, flowers, and the dawn mixed with the stench of rotting meat and of the dead. You can taste it as it enters your mouth and nostrils, it comes in slowly, you feel it crawl up your nose and sink with a nauseous slowness down the back of the ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... through his faithfulness to a single outlook upon human life and destiny. And in this brief and burning play, more than in much of his later writing, I find the reflection of that unique temperament, to which real things are so abstract, and abstract things so coloured and tangible; a temperament in which there is almost too much poetry for a poet—as pure gold, to be worked in, needs to ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... language," she said, smiling to herself, "but it can be translated into bread and butter and apple sauce, and even into shoes and stockings, when you know how to interpret it. But wouldn't it be dreadful if she had no one to express it in the tangible things of life for her. Think of her talking about proper diet and aids to digestion to that little hungry girl. Well, it seems to be my mission to step into the gap—I'm a miss with a mission"—she was slicing some cold ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... for you, to awaken a very disobliging old Echo who refuses to repeat anything more than twice. What a magic there is in hands—in some hands! Lynde could have held Mrs. Denham's hand a fortnight without getting anything so tangible as that ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... character, but certainly with the very varied class of persons represented in these volumes. It may be congruous with this, perhaps, that her success should be more assured in dealing with the characters of women than with those of men. The men who pass before us in her pages, though real and tangible and effective enough, seem, nevertheless, from time to time to reveal their joinings. They are composite of many different men we seem to have [58] known, and fancy we could detach again from the ensemble and from ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... is unique, too, in Wharfedale for the variety of its contents. Desperately poor though Kettle might be on many of his returns from his unsuccessful ventures, he never came back to his wife without some present from a foreign clime as a tangible proof of his remembrance, and because these were usually mere curiosities, without intrinsic value, they often evaded the pawn-shop in those years of dire distress, when more negotiable articles ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... Mr. Gregory said shortly, and the man turned aside with a muttered exclamation, but Bertie seized his hand and thanked him warmly, and Mr. Murray just then contrived to slip a more tangible reward into his other hand. Then the old gentleman turned to Bertie, and patted him kindly on the shoulder. "Why, dear me, boy! you are quite wet," he cried, starting back, "and you are as white as anything. Had you any dinner? of course ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... that you cannot judge of an author's personal character from his writings. It may be that you cannot. I think it very likely, for many reasons, that you cannot. But, at least, a reader will rise from the perusal of a book with some defined and tangible idea of the writer's moral creed and broad purposes, if he has any at all; and it is probable enough that he may like to have this idea confirmed from the author's lips, or dissipated by his explanation. Gentlemen, my moral creed—which is a very wide and comprehensive ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and even upon the still larger scale of international action, she has exhibited her power by mere moral influences and the inspiration of great purposes, without the aid of legal penalties or even of tangible inconveniences, to mold and direct the discordant thought and action of thousands and millions of people scattered over separate States, and sometimes even living in countries hostile to each other to the accomplishment of great earthly or heavenly ends, it is unreasonable to deny ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... Ayre's chance was slow in coming. He knew very well that the fact of a young lady, deserted by him who ought to have been in attendance, consoling herself with a flirtation with somebody else, was not enough for him to go upon. He must have something more tangible than that. He did not, indeed, look for anything that would compel Eugene to act; he had no expectation and, to do him justice, no hope of that, for he knew Eugene would act on nothing but an extreme necessity. His hope lay in Kate herself. On her he was prepared to have ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... I may have to return to this point by and by; but having dealt thus far with our logical methods, I must now turn to something which, perhaps, you may consider more interesting, or, at any rate, more tangible. But in reality there are but few things that can be more important for you to understand than the mental processes and the means by which we obtain scientific conclusions and theories. [Footnote: Those who wish to study fully the doctrines of which I have endeavoured to give ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... external signs—not on the parties' having meant the same thing but on their having said the same thing. Furthermore, as the signs may be addressed to one sense or another—to sight or to hearing—on the nature of the sign will depend the moment when the contract is made. If the sign is tangible, for instance, a letter, the contract is made when the letter of acceptance is delivered. If it is necessary that the minds of the parties meet, there will be no contract until the acceptance can be read; none, for example, ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... and the sense of reassurance which his presence gave her was merged in the relief of not being able to speak of what was between them. But there it was, inevitably, and whenever they looked at each other they saw it. In her dread of giving it a more tangible shape she tried to devise means of keeping the little girl with her, and, when the latter had been called away by the nurse, found an excuse for following Madame de Chantelle upstairs to the purple sitting-room. ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... of man. In other words, man still dominated the machine, and there was still full play for his physical and mental faculties. Moreover, all the inventions of preceding ages, from the first fashioning of the flint to the spinning-wheel and the hand-lever press, were all conquests of the tangible and visible ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... recent past doubtless weighed strongly, as in France did also the sympathy of the salons and philosophers with the colonists' struggle for freedom; but powerfully as sentimental considerations affect the action of nations, only the tangible means by which it is expected to gratify them admit of statement and measurement. France might wish to regain her North American possessions; but the then living generation of colonists had too keen personal recollection ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... imbued with the narrowness of their age, branded us as pagans and devil-worshipers, and demanded of us that we abjure our false gods before bowing the knee at their sacred altar. They even told us that we were eternally lost, unless we adopted a tangible symbol and professed a particular form of ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... awakened and passed from passiveness into violence. "Let me but start again in the race," said this something, "let me but stand once more on my feet." The despondency, which had been at first formless and vague as mere darkness, leaped suddenly into a tangible shape, and I felt that the oppressive weight of the debt on my shoulders was the weight, not of thought, but of metal. Until that was lifted—until I had struggled free—I should be crippled, I told myself, not only in ambition, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... the attention of his countrymen. Everything of an objectionable kind, whether the author would have it so or not, stands out more prominently and distinctly than matter of the opposite description. The social sin is a more tangible thing than the social virtue. Pertinaciously to insist upon the charities and graces of life, is to outrage their quiet and unobtrusive character; but we incur the danger of extending the vulgarities ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... advantages he could not conceal from himself that he had once sat down and dreamed beside this second inlet, thinking it to be the channel. The doubt arose whether, if he was so easily misled in such a large, tangible, and purely physical matter, he might not be deceived also in his ideas; whether, if tested, they might not fail; whether the world was not right and ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... Genoa is at once the more wonderful and more credible; for it contains the elements of the other. Walls and floors and a roof, a place to eat and sleep in, a place to work and found a family, and give tangible environment to a human soul—there is all human enterprise and discovery, effort, adventure, ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... long-range theater nuclear forces. Also, during 1980 we initiated and carried out a withdrawal from our nuclear weapons stockpile in Europe of 1,000 nuclear warheads. This successful drawdown in our nuclear stockpile was a further tangible demonstration of our commitment to the updating of our existing theater ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... declined. He went to New Brunswick immediately after that, and Col. Rutger's money went with him to that place, which, it was understood, would go to whatever place Dr. Milledoller would go. (Lutheran Observer, Sept., 1881.) The fact that nothing tangible resulted from the movement of uniting the Lutheran and Reformed synods and of establishing a union seminary was not due in the least to a growing confessionalism on the part of the Pennsylvania Synod, for at that time such was not in ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... makes a success of anything that he goes at in a listless, spiritless way. To build up a business you must see it expanding in your mind before it actually takes tangible shape. Every great task that has ever been accomplished has first been merely a vision in the mind of its creator. Detail after detail has had to be worked out in his mind from his first faint idea of the enterprise. Finally a clear idea was formed and then the accomplishment, ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... Clemenceau's escape, though wounded, from the Anarchist assassin who had attempted to translate Trotsky's threat into action. But it did not help on the proposed Conference with the Russians at Prinkipo or encourage the prospect of any tangible results from the deliberation of the Prinkipotentiaries. The plain man could see no third choice beyond supporting Bolshevism or anti-Bolshevism. But according to our Prime Minister, we were committed to a compromise. The Allies were not prepared to intervene in force, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... work accumulates its destined momentum in its voyage down the years, a power of arousing our imagination to issues that seem larger than those which can naturally be explained as proceeding inevitably from their tangible work. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... good as to lend me his hat?" for the stalls to rise as one man and rush towards the platform. But greater things were in store for her. She was engaged at two halls in the West End. Her horizon was fast receding and expanding. Homage became nightly tangible in bouquets, rings, brooches—things acceptable and (luckier than their donors) accepted. Even Sunday was not barren for Zuleika: modish hostesses gave her postprandially to their guests. Came that Sunday night, notanda candidissimo calculo! when she received certain ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... already so far beneath the surface as to be entirely beyond my reach; and the water was coming in fast, too, for even as I stood there I could feel it creeping insidiously up my legs. The scoundrels had evidently followed their usual custom and had scuttled the ship, in order that no tangible evidences of their crime ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... to Stephen Guest, that conflict assumes specific and tangible form; and it has emphatically to be fought out alone. All external circumstances are against her; even Lucy's sweet unjealous temper, and Tom's bitter hatred, combining with Philip's painful self- consciousness to keep the safeguard ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... life came to her in the round of habit, wearing the garment of accustomed use. But of the world she knew nothing except what she had been able to body forth from her reading, and that had merely given her imagination something tangible with which to ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... was sent home. Mrs. Dickens acted the part of the peacemaker on the next day, probably feeling that amid the shadowy expectations on which she and her husband had subsisted for so long, even six or seven shillings a week was something tangible, and not to be despised. Yet in spite of this, he did not return to the business. His father decided that he should go to school. "I do not write resentfully or angrily," said Dickens, in the confidential communication made long afterwards ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... herself with peering irritatingly through her spectacles at the dusty places after that, because Miss Ethel's statement admitted of no argument; for Mr. Bradford left his widow the honour and glory of the conjugal state and practically nothing more tangible. But to Miss Ethel's generation the mere fact of being married meant more than the present one can understand, and she was accustomed to acquiesce in her sister's air of heavy superiority, though she knew herself to be much the ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... was Viner's impression when he walked out of the coroner's court next day. After having endured its close and sordid atmosphere for four long hours, he felt, more from intuition than from anything tangible, that things had gone well for Hyde. One fact was plain—nothing more could be brought out against Hyde, either there, when the inquest was resumed a week later, or before the magistrate, or before a ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... thoughts I have in my mind—one of the things that has tortured me. I have fancied—I may be wrong—but I have fancied that during the last few months you have been slipping away from me. I have felt it, somehow. There has been nothing tangible, and yet I have felt it. Answer me, honestly. Is this true? Is what I have told you, after all, ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... be helped," said Tom, bravely, not translating the loss of a large sum of money into any tangible results. "But my father's very much vexed, I dare say?" he added, looking at Maggie, and thinking that her agitated face was only part of her girlish way ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... I said firmly, "so please don't try to dissuade me. I have been feeling quite uncomfortable at the thought that, all the time I have been in your employ, I seem to have done nothing but idle about and amuse myself. The opportunity of doing something tangible for my wage is too precious ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... nothing tangible but this shrinking from the encounter of our eyes. I said he was kind as usual. He was even more so. But there was this new sign of our silently repellant natures. Dislike it could not be. He knew ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... that Margaret was connected with the burglaries; and that when she was still far from guessing that the proceeds of one of them were actually locked up in her trunk. Hilary's suspicions were founded upon nothing more tangible than the fact that Margaret's cheeks were unusually pink that morning when the burglaries were being discussed. And she forgot that Margaret had just come in from playing croquet in the sun ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... light was thrown on this, as on every other morphological question, as soon as Darwin in 1859 had once more put into our hands the torch of the doctrine of descent. The inquiry as to the origin of the skull now assumed a real and tangible form. Since all vertebrate animals, from fishes up to man, agree so completely as to their essential internal structure that they can be rationally conceived of no otherwise than as branches of one stock and as descendants of one parent-form, ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... spoiling the harmony, conquers and overcomes the horrid monsters, and however much he may swerve, he easily returns to himself[B] by means of those inward instincts that, like the nine Muses, dance and sing round the splendours of the universal Apollo, and under tangible images and material things, he comes to comprehend divine laws and counsels. It is true that sometimes, having love for his trusty escort, who is double, and because sometimes through occasional impediments he finds himself defrauded of his strength, then, ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... out to sea through eyes grown misty, better cling to her religion. It was better—she hardly noticed the reprehensibleness of her thought—than nothing. But oh, she wanted to cling to something tangible, to love something living, something that one could hold against one's heart, that one could see and touch and do things for. If her poor baby hadn't died . . . babies didn't get bored with one, it took them a long while to grow ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... caravel, Porras had little difficulty in persuading his credulous followers that it was merely an apparition which Columbus had conjured up by magic arts; and such was the reputation for sorcery which the admiral had acquired by his astronomical observations, that even the sight and taste of some tangible bacon (half of that present from Ovando of which we have heard) which he sent as a peace offering to the mutineers, failed to convince them of the material character of ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... religious sentiment and personal honour, is the sole noteworthy influence. He finds no worth in a religion which seeks to work from within to without, which aims at transforming character, and thus transforming the world. In its headlong quest of tangible results his eager spirit scorns so tardy a method: he will "compel men to be happy," and for this result there is but one practicable means, the Social Contract, the State. Everything which mars the unity of the Social Contract shall be shattered, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... was at that time bent upon three distinct efforts: he was carrying on a campaign in Moldavia; his Suez fleet—a novelty in Ottoman history—was invading the Indian Ocean, with no very tangible result, it is true (unless a trophy of Indian ears and noses may count), save the conquest of Aden on the return voyage, but still a notable exploit, and disturbing to the Portuguese in Gujerat; and his High Admiral was planning the destruction of ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... their course, for more than an hour and a half more, and when they returned, Emily knew more of love than ever could be learned from books. Marlow drew her feelings forth and gave them definite form and consistency. He presented them to her by telling what he himself felt in a plain and tangible shape, which required no long reverie—none of their deep fits of thoughtfulness to investigate and comprehend. From the rich store of his own imagination, and the treasury of deep feeling in his breast, he poured forth illustrations that brightened as if with sunshine every ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... of the ten millions of piasters, which are terrene and tangible. It remains now to see whether Turkey will keep silence or Russia will speak! In either case, the peace of all Europe now lies in Austria's hands. We will preserve or destroy it as is most ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... underground and suburban railways of this metropolis would lose no time in making experiments on their own lines—if only by converting some of their old engines into those of the fireless system—and assist a little in the development of an invention, in the success of which they have a tangible interest which is much greater than that of any railway on the Continent, but there is no sign yet of their having done ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... of fame, how ephemeral for example was that reputation which depended upon the living presence of the artist to make good its claim; how an actor, an orator, a singer, was bound to enjoy his glory while it lasted, since at the instant of his death all tangible evidence of greatness disappeared; he could not be proven great to one who had never seen and heard him. Having reached this point in his philosophizing the Bibliotaph's player-friend became sentimental and quoted ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... was, therefore, chiefly that of the non-military classes. The trustfulness of the samurai sprang from their distinctive training. As already mentioned, when drawing up a bond in feudal times, in place of any tangible security, the document would read, "If I fail to do so and so, you may laugh ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... the blotch of blood upon his shoulder from a wound so fresh that the stain still was damp; nor for the sword which Joseph had buckled about his waist within Blentz's forbidding walls; nor for the arms and ammunition he had taken from the dead brigands—all of which he had before him as tangible evidence of the rationality of the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... strong as the one tangible thought, born of his ruling passion. It was inconceivable that so vast an ambition should fail. Failure! He defied it! He burst into the main staff room, where the tired officers regarded him with a glare, or momentary, weary wonder, and continued packing ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... one's family that must be considered," urged Mr. Forbes. "A man cannot rightfully ignore the fact that he is of the earth, earthy, and that there is something tangible needed before ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... stupor; the sense of his words was not tangible to her; she had had no hope, no thought, that they would ever deal thus with her; all she had ever dreamed of was so to touch their hearts and their generosity that they would spare one from among their troop to do the errand of mercy ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... and not to exhaust myself in the meantime to no purpose. And so I concerned myself no longer with the mystery that lay hidden in a form or a perfume, quite at ease in my mind, since I was taking it home with me, protected by its visible and tangible covering, beneath which I should find it still alive, like the fish which, on days when I had been allowed to go out fishing, I used to carry back in my basket, buried in a couch of grass which kept them cool and fresh. Once in ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... from sheer excitement and the relief of finding some tangible thing to go on, for the oculist's argument struck me ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... contrary their minds. It has all been, so to say, a continuous blossoming of human vanity, a passionate desire to set one's name on an imperishable wall, and, after being master of the world, to leave behind one an indestructible trace, a tangible proof of one's passing glory, an eternal edifice of bronze and marble fit to attest that glory until the end of time. At the bottom the spirit of conquest, the proud ambition to dominate the world, subsists; and when all has crumbled, and a new society has sprung up from the ruins of its predecessor, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... coming from loving relatives of those who have suffered from hysteria, have been couched in such earnest and pathetic words that they could not be left unanswered, and this has caused me great inconvenience. I have therefore determined to give the reader some tangible data upon this subject. The extract from the Daily Telegraph which appears on page 465 is a real extract, and records a real case of transmission of hysteria. Upon the same subject I take the following admirable remarks from an article in the Quarterly Review ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... all this was framed in the frame of the open porthole. It was a pale, dim world outside that dark and tangible rim. All night he had clutched at that rim, jumped and quivered at explosions, and watched phantom events. Now he had been high and now low; now almost beyond hearing, now flying close to crashings and shouts and outcries. He had seen airships flying ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... from far—from Warsaw," said the stout man, breathing hard, as if to illustrate the length of his journey. "Let us hope that there is something tangible this time." ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... hair-cloth, bound themselves with no belts of spikes and nails, yet in their inmost souls were marked and seared with the red cross of a life-long self-sacrifice,—saints for whom the mystical terms self-annihilation and self-crucifixion had a real and tangible meaning, all the stronger because their daily death was marked by no outward sign. No mystical rites consecrated them; no organ-music burst forth in solemn rapture to welcome them; no habit of their order proclaimed to themselves and the world that they were the elect of Christ, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... and bring home to himself in the most undoubted shape? To the man of business all the world is a fable but the Stock Exchange: to the money-getter nothing has a real existence that he cannot convert into a tangible feeling, that he does not recognise as property, that he cannot 'measure with a two-foot rule or count upon ten fingers.' The want of thought, of imagination, drives the practical man upon immediate realities: to the poet or philosopher all is real ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... these establishments began as an apprentice something over thirty years ago, and in giving these details and many others not included, expressed her own surprise that the amount of agitation as to over-time had produced so little tangible result. ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... we have observed the pilgrims by themselves, in loneliness, in obscurity, in the hidden life and experience of the people of God. The allegory thus far has been that of the soul, amidst its spiritual enemies, toiling towards Heaven; now there comes a scene more open, tangible, external; the allurements of the world are to be presented, with the manner in which the true pilgrim conducts himself amidst them. It was necessary that Bunyan should show his pilgrimage in its external as well as its secret ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the stranger's form had been swallowed by the flood of misty light, which, by this time, rolled along the sea like drifting vapour, semi-pellucid, preternatural, and seemingly tangible. The ocean itself appeared admonished that a quick and violent change was nigh. The waves ceased to break in their former foaming and brilliant crests, and black masses of the water lifted their surly summits ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the realism of the Renaissance. Erasmus is certainly a realist in the sense of having an insatiable hunger for knowledge of the tangible world. He wants to know things and their names: the particulars of each thing, be it never so remote, such as those terms of games and rules of games of the Romans. Read carefully the description of the decorative painting on the garden-house ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... Mrs. White, was a born leader. Whether she made any particular effort to influence her neighbors or not, they could not but feel the difference in her attitude toward all the various tangible things that make a woman's life. She was essentially maternal, wanted to mother all the little living and growing things in the world, wanted to be with children, and talk of them and study them. And she was simple and honest in her tastes, and entirely ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... lying here on very tangible rock and soil, and nothing about him in the shadow-hung landscape of Topaz had changed in the slightest. But that blow had left behind it a quivering residue of panic buried far inside him, a tender spot like an ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... the vastness, and grandeur, and magnificence of the universe, and of the power and glory of which the created universe is but the symbol and shadow. There is the felt apprehension that, beyond and back of the visible and the tangible, there is a personal, living Power, which is the foundation of all, and which fashions all, and fills all with its light and life; that "the universe is the living vesture in which the Invisible has robed his mysterious loveliness." There is the feeling of an ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... "I have nothing tangible—only my feelings. I fear I must admit that my father had enemies, though who they are I cannot tell you. No, it is all in my heart—not in my head. There are those whom I dislike—and there are those whom I like and trust. You ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... do," said Hing, "is to get the heir to the Throne on our side. He has often been suspicious at certain things in the conduct of his supposed father, one of which is that for three years he has never been allowed to see his mother. All that is needed now is to get some tangible evidence to convince him that there is some mystery in the palace, and we shall gain him ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... any superstitions. In common with nearly all races of Barsoom he clung, more or less inherently, to a certain exalted form of ancestor worship, though it was rather the memory or legends of the virtues and heroic deeds of his forebears that he deified rather than themselves. He never expected any tangible evidence of their existence after death; he did not believe that they had the power either for good or for evil other than the effect that their example while living might have had upon following generations; he did not believe ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... authorities, and could have any of them he chose to point at taken up. This was mere bluster, I suppose. There does seem no reason why the poor man should be cut off in the midst of his days by a guilty hand, for there is no record of any tangible injury which he had done to any man. Here on the spot where he fell, among the common people, I did not hear anything that seemed to give a reason for any hatred that would lead to murder being ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... machines, formed by his hands and brain, doing the work that had been done by the hands of men. He had come to Bidwell, not only in the hope that there he would at last find companionship, but also because his mind was really aroused and he wanted leisure to begin trying to do tangible things. When the citizens of Bidwell would not take him into their town life but left him standing to one side, as the tiny dwelling place for men called Pickleville where he lived stood aside out from under the invisible roof of the town, he decided to ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... on guard in a way that gained him an advantage. Experts in the art of killing, know that, of two antagonists, the ablest takes the "inside of the pavement,"—to use an expression which gives the reader a tangible idea of the effect of a good guard. That pose, which is in some degree observant, marks so plainly a duellist of the first rank that a feeling of inferiority came into Max's soul, and produced the same disarray ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... haunting the house in very tangible form. Neither the butcher nor the baker was willing any longer to deliver goods on credit. It was quite impossible for Eleanore to support five people with her clerical work, to say nothing of keeping them in clothes and paying the rent. However hard she ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... idyllic scene below him, and with most particular appreciation, the dainty white-clad person of the girl on the balustrade. He was wondering—anxiously—how he might make his presence known. For no very tangible reason he had suddenly become conscious that the matter would be easier if he carried in his pocket a letter of introduction. The purlieus of Villa Rosa in no wise resembled a desert island; and in the face of that ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... told her of the theft of the papyrus, and explained the few details he possessed with regard to von Kerber's declared enemy, he would only add fuel to the distrust already planted in her heart. That would achieve no tangible good, while no casuistry would wipe away the stain on his own honor. So here was he, burning with desire to assure her of his devotion, forced into silent pact with the very conspiracy ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... together. A common interest, consciously cast into oblivion, but perfectly tangible and not to be denied, was the unspoken ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... night, when we leaned on the railing to look at the Southern Cross, he was less apt to tell tales of his hard and stormy past than he was to speak of the mysteries which lie behind courage, and fear, and love, behind animal hatred, and animal lust for the pleasures that have tangible shape. He had keenly enjoyed life, and he could breast its turbulent torrent as few men could; he was a practical man, who knew how to wrest personal success from adverse forces, among money-makers, politicians, and desperadoes alike; yet, down at bottom, what seemed to interest ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... died with a suddenness even greater than that of its onset. Like a tangible flock of evil birds or of the spirits Victor Hugo has painted in Les Djinns, the sand-storm blew itself out to sea and vanished. The black sky opened its eyes of starlight, once again; gradually calm descended on the desert, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... had become intense since my blindness. That share of his presence, which my eyes had lost, my other senses craved. When he was absent from my side, I would feel as if I were hanging in mid-air, and had lost my hold of all things tangible. ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... was possible to realise the true perspective of the history of South Africa during the closing years of the last century." Another of Kruger's sweeping assertions—and one which he never backed by anything tangible—was when he further wrote that Rhodes was "one of the most unscrupulous characters that ever existed, whose motto was 'the end justifies the means,' a motto that contains a creed which represents the whole man." Rhodes by nature was not half so unscrupulous as Kruger himself, but he was surrounded ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... carriage window, harangued them for full half an hour on their "disgusting avarice." This was not a very wise proceeding on his part. Hisses and shouts of laughter resounded from every side, and jokes without number were aimed at him. There being at last strong symptoms that something more tangible was flying through the air in the direction of his head, Marshal was glad to drive on. He never again ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... among most primitive races awaits those older earth-gods, whose manifestations are usually too vague and shadowy to admit of their being grasped or represented by any precise imagery without limiting and curtailing their spheres. New deities had arisen of a more definite and tangible kind, and hence more easily understood, and having a real or supposed province which could be more easily realized, such as the sun, the moon, and the fixed or wandering stars. The moon is the measure of time; it determines the months, leads the course of the years, and the entire life of mankind ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... might not comprehend his doctrines, malignity might torture them; the purest sages have been accused of immorality, the most pious philosophers have been denounced as blasphemous: but, 'a traitor to his king,' that was a tangible, an intelligible proposition, one with which all might grapple, which could be easily disproved if false, scarcely propounded were it not true. 'False to his God!' How false? Where? When? What mystery involved her ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... that Brenton was struggling with some half-forgotten memory, striving to bring it forth to light, to link it with the present; or, failing that, at least with something tangible in his past life. And yet, the blurring of his memory was not too inexplicable. Reed Opdyke still remembered Brenton clearly, still regretted the apparent waste of some of his more brilliant possibilities. Scott Brenton, on the other hand, had totally dismissed Reed Opdyke from ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... sternness clouded his brows, and I began to be afraid—yet afraid of what? Not of him—but of myself, lest I should unwittingly lose all I had gained. But then the question presented itself—What had I gained? Could I explain it, even to myself? There was nothing in any way tangible of which to say—"I possess this," or "I have secured that,"—for, reducing all circumstances to a prosaic level, all that I knew was that I had met in my present companion a man who had a singular, almost compelling attractiveness, ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... all sharp lines of character and anything specific, we feel for the moment a sort of surprise, as though the epithet were singularly happy and unusual, or as though we had made our escape from cloudland into something tangible and sure. The measure of Charles's indifference to all that now preoccupies and excites a poet is best given by a positive example. If, besides the coming of spring, any one external circumstance may be said to have struck his imagination, it was the despatch of fourriers, while ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time, and with the least chance of errors and omissions. A considerable degree of imagination is required, an almost infinite patience, and a perfect willingness to work indefinitely without any reasonable expectation of getting tangible results. A more hopeless task can hardly be given any man or body of men than that of working out plans, general and detailed, day after day, for contingencies that will probably never happen, and to guard against dangers that will probably never come; preparing tables, ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... any sort had possessed itself of his spirit. He was in deadly peril, he believed. What could be more natural than to mount the staircase, lift the curtain, and confront his difficulty at once? At least he would be dealing with something tangible; at least he would be no longer in the dark. He stepped slowly forward with outstretched hands, until his foot struck the bottom step; then he rapidly scaled the stairs, stood for a moment to compose his expression, lifted the arras ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson |
