"Tentative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this attitude was tentative. Everything depended on how well Thorpe lived up to his reputation at the outset,—how good a first impression of force and virility he would manage to convey,—for the first impression possessed the power of transmuting ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... PROGRAMME TO THE WORK.—Under Traditional Management the tentative calendar might cause speed, but could not direct speed. Under Transitory Management elimination of waste by prescribed methods and routing increases output. This increase becomes greater under Scientific Management. Standardized routing designs the shortest paths, the least wasteful sequence of ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... responsibility so much as thinkable? Benjamin Jowett, in his Essay on Predestination and Freewill, glanced at this problem in passing, and the remarks he made upon it more than fifty years ago, if somewhat tentative, are well ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... The choice of tools in any particular shop best comes out of long experience. Some teachers prefer to emphasize certain processes or methods, others lay stress on different ones. The following tentative list is suggested for a full equipment for twenty-four students. One bench and its tools may be added for ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... men clambered up the bank of the stream, crossed the bridge, and at his gate Barclay said: "Now, I'll sleep on this to-night,—this reorganization,—and then I'll write you a letter to-morrow, covering all that I've said, and you can fix up a tentative charter and fire it down—and say, Lige, figure out what a modest profit on all the grain and grain produce business of the country would be—say about two and a half per cent, and make the capitalization of the reorganization fit ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... interest and great historical importance, and deserves more attention than it has received from the English people, as the present ruling race in India. Dr. A. C. Burnell, an authority second to none in Indian historical questions, says in his prefatory note to A Tentative List of Books and some MSS. relating to the History of the Portuguese in India Proper: 'In the course of twenty years' studies relating to India, I found that the history of the Portuguese had been shamefully neglected.... In attempting to get better information, I found ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... But, while the magazines of the United States are hungry for good Short-stories, and sift carefully all that are sent to them, in the hope of happening on a treasure, the theatres of the United States are closed to one-act plays, and the dramatist is denied the opportunity of making a humble and tentative beginning. The conditions of the theatre are such that there is little hope of a change for the better in this respect,—more's the pity. The manager has a tradition that a "broken bill," a programme containing more than one play, is a confession ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... Number Fourteen the gravity of the case, and also the tentative character of the operation under lethodyne. At first, she shrank from taking it. "No, no!" she said; "let me die quietly." But Hilda, like the Angel of Mercy that she was, whispered in the girl's ear: "IF it succeeds, you will get quite well, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... was a mystic freemasonry between the discriminating guests of the Lotus. Perhaps they were drawn one to another by the fact of their common good fortune in discovering the acme of summer resorts in a Broadway hotel. Words delicate in courtesy and tentative in departure from formality passed between the two. And, as if in the expedient atmosphere of a real summer resort, an acquaintance grew, flowered and fructified on the spot as does the mystic plant of the conjuror. For a few moments they stood on a ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... crabbed nobleman with skin as yellow as an orange, and body like an orange squeezed dry? He surely meant him no harm, however, for flashes of kindliness had lighted the shrivelled face as he talked. His look was bent in piercing comment upon Philip, who, trying hard to solve the mystery, now made a tentative rejoinder to his strange statement. Rising from his chair and bowing, he said, with shrewd foreknowledge of the effect ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... interesting thing to have earnest people give their minds to this and seek and search out for themselves a new light on everyday ethics. As a starter here is a tentative list to think about; open to alteration and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... a tentative list. He named four: first, Farrell Kennedy, who was in town, and said nobody should go if he didn't; Frank Elpaso, the Texan; the Englishman, Tommie Meggeson; and Wickwire, if he could be located—any one of ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... past few days Jack had pushed his tentative suit boldly but lightly. He understood that Joyce was flirting with him, but he divined that there had been moments when the tide of her emotion had swept the young woman from her feet. She was a coquette, ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... aeroplane in the present stage of evolution possess no economic value. True, cross-country cruises by airship have been inaugurated, and, up to a point, have proved popularly, if not commercially, successful, while tentative efforts have been made to utilise the aeroplane as a mail-carrier. Still, from the view-point of the community at large aerial travel is as remote as ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... hand was at once withdrawn, and the tentative smile faded from his lips. The lawyer ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... no longer a mere tentative hypothesis. One by one, step by step, each division and subdivision of science has contributed its evidence, until now the case is complete and the verdict rendered. While there is still discussion as to the method of evolution, none the less, as a process sufficient to ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... she played with them, capriciously, touching one here, one there, with tentative finger to see them explode in a ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... demonstrated geometrically to all the Universities and all the Academies of Europe.[2] There are innumerable verses, French and Italian, in all stages, occasionally attaining the finality of these lines, which appear in half a dozen tentative forms: ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... prospect of an evening of uninterrupted work. He was surprised, however, after a little interval, by the sound of uncertain and shuffling steps on the half-lighted passage outside, the noise of some heavy article set down on the floor, and then a tentative knock at his door. A little impatiently ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... entirely of this strange half-caste, whose beauty was provoking, although he resolutely repelled her tentative advances, that Grantham was thinking. In that last gesture when she had scornfully tossed her head in turning aside, had lain a bitter memory. Grantham stood for a moment watching the swaying draperies. Then, dropping the end of his cigarette into a little brass ash-tray, he took ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... value was illustrated by the brilliant researches of Halley on cometary orbits. It necessitated, however, a long train of tedious calculations, and, in consequence, was not much used, astronomers generally preferring to attain the same end by a tentative process. In the year 1780, Laplace communicated to the Academy of Sciences an analytical method for determining the elements of a comet's orbit. This method has been extensively employed in France. Indeed, previously to the appearance of Olber's method, about the close ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... expansion, the increase of education, the gentler manners, the new life that has been breathed over art and literature, the achievements in science and philosophy, the drawing together of classes, the bridging over of the great gulf between rich and poor by some incipient and tentative attempts ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... back to his tentative romance. She had passed his window and disappeared into the fog, and there was a reasonable doubt of her ever returning from it. The Singer in the Fog; thus he would write it down in his book of memories and sensibly turn the page. Once down-town he would countermand his order, and that ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... of access, these communities were forced to select a settled habitation, scratch the earth for provender, settled down to the breeding of one-toed horses, and exercise the respectable virtues of thrift and industry for their preservation. Thus, laws were formulated, tentative and unsatisfactory at first, and ever tending, as to this day, to become more complex and less satisfactory. Villages took shape, straggled into towns, widened into cities and coalesced into kingdoms and empires: and so, the civilisation of which we are ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... than the shadow of good talk; but the imitation falls far short of the original in life, freedom, and effect. There are always two to a talk, giving and taking, comparing experience and according conclusions. Talk is fluid, tentative, continually "in further search and progress"; while written words remain fixed, become idols even to the writer, found wooden dogmatisms, and preserve flies of obvious error in the amber of the truth. Last and chief, while literature, gagged with linsey-woolsey, can only deal with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... insight and a recognition of the transition-nature of much of our accepted code. If for no other reason, to avoid these conflicts of ideals we must comprehend the ultimate aims of morality and take existing standards with a sort of tentative allegiance. It should be clear, then, that the individualizing of conscience, which has been going on observably in recent times, is, in spite of its dangers, a necessary and desirable process. Dewey and Tufts, ETHICS, chaps, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... rejected, and the two last were passed by the Legislative Council, but on both these occasions the principal supporters of the Bills distinctly stated that their votes were given on the understanding that the measures were to be tentative only, and limited in ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... down his first tentative offer I had quite made up my mind that he wanted to engage me as a sort of super-butler with sudden death included amongst the risks of service, and I had no intention of mixing up in other people's quarrels on such terms. When I questioned him ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... doubles its moral powers has this defect: it often leads to a one-sided development, quite at variance with the many-sidedness of actual realities, and arrests the growth of personality. Something akin to this was seen in Germany in the tentative scheme of an attack en masse. United will and action are essential to give force its greatest value. They must go hand in hand with the greatest spiritual independence and resourcefulness, capable of meeting any emergency and solving new problems ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... compressed into a few days in the former, in the latter into forty days of time. The tragedy of Arthur's reign could not so be condensed; and Tennyson chose the only feasible plan. He has left a work, not absolutely perfect, indeed, but such as he conceived, after many tentative essays, and such as he desired to achieve. His fame may not rest chiefly on the Idylls, but they form one of the fairest jewels in the crown that shines with unnumbered gems, each with its ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... Brion said, giving a tentative squeeze to one bicep. "It should be enough time, though. Tomorrow I start mild exercise and that will tighten me up again. Now—tell me more about Dis and what you have to ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... which a cursory view from the summit at noon-day was apt to obscure. Melancholy, impressive, lonely, yet accessible from every part of the town, the historic circle was the frequent spot for appointments of a furtive kind. Intrigues were arranged there; tentative meetings were there experimented after divisions and feuds. But one kind of appointment—in itself the most common of any—seldom had place in the Amphitheatre: that of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... panted. He played on the boards like a public fountain. At the back of his mind there was a flickering thought that he wanted to do something, a vague feeling that he had some sort of an appointment which he must keep; but he was unable to think what it was. Meanwhile, he conducted tentative experiments with his breath. It was so long since he had last breathed that he had lost the ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... own. Michal is Browning's first sketch of a woman. She is faint in outline and very quiet in presence, but though she scarcely speaks twenty lines, her face remains with us like a beautiful face seen once and never to be forgotten. There is something already, in her tentative delineation, of that "piercing and overpowering tenderness which glorifies the poet of Pompilia." Festus, Michal's husband, the friend and adviser of Paracelsus, is a man of simple nature and thoughtful mind, ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... idea was dawning that he meant himself, but she was thrown out by the cognomen's correspondence with that of the laird, which suggested that the boy had been merely attempting the name of the great man of the district. With this in her mind, and doubtfully feeling her way, she essayed the tentative of setting him right in the Christian name, and said: "Thomas—Thomas Galbraith." Gibbie shook his head as before, and again resumed his seat. Presently he brought her the slate, with all the rest rubbed out, and these ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... that part of the reforming party which had a definite and a reasoned creed. They tried to give logic where the popular agitators were content with declamation, and represented absolute convictions when the Whig reformers were content with tentative and hesitating compromises. They had some grounds for considering themselves to be the 'steel of the lance'; the men who formulated and deliberately defended the principles which were beginning to ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... Wise's 'Shakespere, his Birthplace and its Neighbourhood' (1861), the present writer's 'Stratford-on-Avon to the Death of Shakespeare' (1890), and Mrs. C. C. Stopes's 'Shakespeare's Warwickshire Contemporaries' (1897), may be consulted. Wise appends to his volume a tentative 'glossary of words still used in Warwickshire to be found in Shakspere.' The parish registers of Stratford have been edited by Mr. Richard Savage for the Parish Registers Society (1898-9). Nathan Drake's 'Shakespeare and his Times' (1817) and G. W. Thornbury's 'Shakespeare's England' ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... use for gold dust. Anyhow the sluice boxes were molested no more forever. But it was impossible to repress the abounding energies of such a nature as his, and he continued, possibly from habit, the tortuous courses which he had pursued for profit of Mr. Bentley. After a few tentative and resultless undertakings in the way of highway robbery—if one may venture to designate road-agency by so harsh a name—he made one or two modest essays in horse-herding, and it was in the midst of a promising ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... forward. Consequently, Howe, acting upon the discretionary powers which he possessed already, and swayed by political reasons into which it is not necessary to enter, determined to renew his attempt upon Philadelphia. A tentative advance into New Jersey, and the consequent manoeuvres of Washington, satisfied him that the enterprise by this route was too hazardous. He therefore embarked fourteen thousand men, leaving eight thousand with Sir Henry Clinton to hold New York and make diversions in favor of Burgoyne; ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... Cependant cette tentative de la Russie echoua egalement. L'Autriche-Hongrie declina un echange de vues ulterieur avec nous, et le Cabinet de Vienne se deroba a la participation a la Conference des ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... Forsyth said, more to gain time than anything else. She added, "Everything is at sixes and sevens in the flat. There wouldn't be standing-room." A sudden thought flashed upon her, which, because it was sudden and in keeping with her character, she put into tentative words. "You're more at home here than anywhere else. You were almost born here. You've played about here ever since you were a child. You first met Peter here. He proposed to you here, and you rejected ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... activity of German cruisers in the Yellow Sea brought the war to China's very doors. Vaguely conscious that this might spell disaster to his own ambitious plans, Yuan Shih-kai was actually in the midst of tentative negotiations with the German Legation regarding the retrocession of the Kiaochow territory when the news reached him that Japan, after some rapid negotiations with her British Ally, had filed an ultimatum on Germany, peremptorily demanding the handing-over of all those ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... in our time, we placidly remark that future generations must take care of themselves, and that we cannot reasonably be expected to bear their burdens. When we are obliged to legislate, we proceed in a cautious, tentative way, and are quite satisfied with any homely, simple remedies that common sense and experience may suggest, without taking the trouble to inquire whether the remedy adopted is in accordance with scientific theories. In short, there is a certain ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... town became the background for the ensuing period of deep and tentative meditations. Endless vistas opened before me in various directions. It would take years to find the right way! It seemed to take years!... Slowly the dawning conviction of Mrs. Verloc's maternal passion grew up to a ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... facts and documents. Mr. Ricardo had deduced a priori from the understanding itself laws which first gave a ray of light into the unwieldy chaos of materials, and had constructed what had been but a collection of tentative discussions into a science of regular proportions, now first standing on ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... the same features are reproduced in the prophetic books. The process is always extremely different from what it would be if the prophet arrived at his insight into spiritual things by the tentative efforts of his own genius. There is something sharp and sudden about it. He can lay his finger, so to speak, on the moment when it came. And it always comes in the form of an overpowering force from without, against ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... have been unnecessary, and, in any case, Ezekiel would hardly have ventured to contradict a code which enjoyed so venerable a sanction and bore the honoured name of Moses. It is easier to suppose that Ezekiel's programme is a tentative sketch, which was modified and improved upon by the authors of P. Again there was every inducement during and immediately after the exile to formulate definitely the ritual practice of pre-exilic times, and to modify it in the direction ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... standards of quality for butternuts, the following tentative schedule for judging has been worked out along the same lines as the schedule for judging black walnuts. Twenty-five nuts are used in a sample and the score is made up of the weight in grams of the kernels recovered on the first crack, plus total weight of kernels divided ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... at first in a humdrum and tentative way. About seventy years ago children's books were very uninteresting. In the little stories manufactured for children, the good boy ended in a Coach-and-four, and the bad boy in a ride to Tyburn. The good ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... enough, far-reaching and overwhelming enough to secure his adhesion. He was therefore forced to torpedo the Conciliation Bill, to snatch away the half-loaf that was better than no bread at all. He spoke and voted against these tentative measures of feminine enfranchisement, with tongue in cheek, no doubt, and hand linked in that of Lulu Grandcourt whose opposition to any vote being given to woman and whole attitude towards the sex ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... paralyzing it, that sometimes also it paralyzes it incompletely.[73] But, because instinct is, like intelligence, fallible, because it also shows individual deviations, it does not at all follow that the instinct of the Ammophila has been acquired, as has been claimed, by tentative intelligent experiments. Even supposing that the Ammophila has come in course of time to recognize, one after another, by tentative experiment, the points of its victim which must be stung to render it motionless, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... language under the same conditions as to pronunciation, etc., as themselves. Experts and beginners, those who from practical experience knew the great possibilities of the new tongue as a written medium, no less than the neophytes and tentative experimenters who had come to see whether the thing was worth taking seriously, they were now to make the decisive trial—in the one case to test the faith that was in them, in the other to set all doubt at rest in one sense or the other for good ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... in the air has now been brought down to the point at which the Royal Flying Corps, famous on every battle front of the world war, makes its first appearance. So far it has been a story of small things, of interrupted experiments and tentative advances; of the caution of the Government, and the boldness of the private adventurer. There is nothing new in the story; the air was attacked and mastered in the English fashion. When we are confronted ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... scarcely any discovery which science has made for human advancement and happiness which churchmen and theologians have not violently opposed. Not content with burning each other, they burnt the men who discovered the earth's motion, burnt the men who made the first tentative beginnings of physics and chemistry, burnt the men who laid the foundations of our medical knowledge.... Bad as has been the church's record in the past, it is not greatly improved in the present.... ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... lives. And so you will find that this, which is a figure, represents that which is true of most of us. We have only begun to live; and we live in the lower ranges of our nature, or perhaps we have touched life on a higher level in some tentative sort of way. But the most of us are only partly alive, have only developed a little of what is possible in us, have only come in contact with some fragments of this wonderful universe that is all around us ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... traps for her in a tentative form; that is to say, they placed suppositious propositions before her and cunningly tried to commit her to one end of the propositions without committing themselves to the other. But she always saw the game and spoiled it. The ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... that. But before the test I shall send my blueprints to Washington. Our patent attorney there has already filed tentative plans and applied for certain patents that I consider completed. Don't fret. I'll make it impossible for anybody ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... described. But as liberty and order, so conceived, imply one another, the difference between the two positions ceases to be one of ends and becomes one of means. But every problem of means is one of extreme complexity which can only be solved, in the most tentative way, by observation and experiment. And opinions based upon such a process, though they may be strongly held, cannot be held with the simplicity and force of a religious or ethical intuition. We might, conceivably, on this basis adopt the position either ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... and no more) when simplest thought and simplest word seek each other unconsciously, and blend in sweetest music. At four years old Hughie had forgotten his primitive language. The father regretted many a pretty turn of tentative speech, which he was wont to hear with love's merriment. If a toy were lost, a little voice might be heard saying, 'Where has that gone now to?' And when it was found again—'There is it!' After a tumble one day, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... Saunders's fervent protestations, he took a tentative step forward, as though inviting Miss Hartley to join him; but she ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... first rather tentative, the second brisker, netting no response, I deliberately tried the knob and felt the door promptly yield to me; then, with equal deliberation, I dropped my hand into my pocket where my revolver lay. If some one sprang at me and tried to crack my head or stab me,—stabbing was ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Polonaise in A flat, written at the age of eleven, is also included in this unique number. This tiny dance shows, it is said, the "characteristic physiognomy" of the composer. In reality this polacca is thin, a tentative groping after a form that later was mastered so magnificently by the composer. Here is the way ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... our old friend Byles the butcher was plainly audible tapping at the back door. So it had to go into the world, one part (as it does seem to me) alive, one part merely galvanised: no work, only an essay. For a man of tentative method, and weak health, and a scarcity of private means, and not too much of that frugality which is the artist's proper virtue, the days of sinecures and patrons look very golden: the days of professional literature very hard. Yet I do not so far deceive myself ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I didn't make it; I didn't deserve it; I've been easy on myself; I've got to change; so some day my people won't be ashamed of me—maybe." Slowly, painfully, he fought his way to a tentative self-respect. He might not ever be anything big, a power as his father was, but he could be a hard worker, he could make a place. A few days before a famous speaker had given an address on an ethical ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... New York market as affected by the European markets,—a species of brokerage, which, ostensibly and in the eyes of the world attended by great risk, was really a thing of specifically safe and certain profits, thanks to the telegraphic system, the secret of which we alone possessed. In our tentative efforts, we fixed upon flour as the best-adapted subject for our experiments, being a commodity simple to deal with, and requiring fewer complications in our arrangements than anything else. But, in my own ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... already made him a tentative offer to that effect, my boy, and, now that the first flush of his rage is over, he is a coyote lacking the courage to kill. He will agree to your proposal, and I shall take occasion to warn him that if he should ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... course, no question of drawing back, but I remember very plainly that I was a little aghast, for he was much taller and broader than I, and I had, into the bargain, a very bad cause to defend. But we had hardly exchanged the first tentative blows before I felt overwhelmingly superior. The poor cub! He had not the slightest notion how to fight. From my everyday school life in Copenhagen, I knew hundreds of tricks and feints that he had never learnt, and as soon ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... production. Such was the case; but literature was not the first of the arts to reach a highly refined state. The first half of the sixteenth century is a period of humanistic study, and the poetical works coming from it were still tentative. JUAN DEL ENCINA (1469-1533?) is important in the history of the drama, for his eglogas, representaciones and autos are practically the first Spanish dramas not anonymous. As a lyric poet Encina excels in the light pastoral; he was a musician as well ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... not been sufficient to enable me to engage on any very careful tests as to the sensitiveness of Lola's skin. Yet I have made certain preliminary notes as to what I hope to do in this connexion, and have also begun with a few tentative attempts. I first tried her sensibility to various degrees of warmth by teaching her the use of the thermometer. I made a drawing of a thermometer—according to its actual size—and added principal numbers ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... manifest disposition, on the part of architects everywhere, to help in this matter all they can. The danger dwells in the possibility that their advice will not be heeded, their services not be fully utilized, but through chicanery, ignorance, or inanition, we will relapse into the tentative, "expensively provisional" methods which have governed the housing of workers hitherto. Even so, architects will doubtless recapture, and more than recapture, their imperiled prestige, but under what changed conditions, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... concealed, when we pass from the activity of understanding to that of contemplation, and behold that thought either developed before us, limpid, exact, well-shaped, without superfluous words, without lack of words, with appropriate rhythm and intonation; or confused, broken, embarrassed, tentative. Great thinkers are sometimes termed great writers, while other equally great thinkers remain more or less fragmentary writers, if indeed their fragments are scientifically to be compared with ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... it afterward—with a loud thrilling note. It was what they used to call the "visitor's ring"; not the tentative tinkle of a neighbor dropping in to borrow a sauce-pan or discuss parochial incidents, but a decisive ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... rule may be considered as having "moderate muscular exercise," and it may easily be understood that the 14-year-old boy eats as much as his father who is engaged in business or professional occupation, both requiring, according to the tentative standard, 0.8 of the food needed by a man with moderate muscular work. (3) It is not assumed that any housewife will find it convenient to follow exactly the proportions suggested in the menus. The purpose is to show her about what amounts ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... Archaeological Society, and by many individuals, notably Greeks justly proud of a city which is one of the glories of their national story. The past and present directors of the museum have been enabled from time to time to carry out systematic excavations when opportunity offered; Mr D. G. Hogarth made tentative researches on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund and the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies in 1895; and a German expedition worked for two years (1898-1899). But two difficulties face the would-be excavator in Alexandria. First, since the great and growing modern city stands ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... no sooner knocked than the door was opened by Maisie. He was slightly embarrassed at being brought face to face with her thus suddenly after the last scene that they had shared. He entered in a tentative manner, only just crossing the threshold, as though he had not much ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... the third and youngest would hardly have been sufficient to characterize him; there was an uncribbed, uncabined aspect in his eyes and attire, implying that he had hardly as yet found the entrance to his professional groove. That he was a desultory tentative student of something and everything might only have been predicted ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Twice, during the remainder of the day, she faced him and opened her mouth as if to speak, and then turned away again. Calhoun shrugged. He had fairly definite ideas about her, by now. He carefully kept them tentative, but no girl born and raised on Weald would willingly go to Orede, with all of Weald believing that a shipload of miners preferred death to remaining there. It tied in, like everything else that was unpleasant, to blueskins. ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... to be done? The tentative suggestions of this chapter may appear to the reader inadequate. But the opportunity was missed at Paris during the six months which followed the Armistice, and nothing we can do now can repair the mischief ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... down at the piano. Papa Wolf opened his 'cello case. Uncle Hugo put his silver flute to his lips and played a tentative sweet note. In a moment the strains of Schubert's Serenade, exquisitely rendered, filled the quiet house. Roger relighted his pipe and let it go out. Whenever over her shoulder, Elsa cast a quick glance at him, his gaze was fastened intently ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... said, patting the neck which arched impatiently as she felt the boards hollow beneath her feet. Yet she came obediently enough on deck, arching her fore-feet high and throwing them out in an uncertain and tentative manner. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... scarcely understanding my words better than if I had spoken in my own tongue. It would not be worth while to record the next hour's conversation; I would only note the strong and painful impression it left upon my mind. There was in Eveena's language and demeanour a timidity—a sort of tentative fearful venturing as on dangerous ground, feeling her way, as it were, in almost every sentence—which could not be wholly attributed to the shyness of a very young and very suddenly wedded bride. There was enough and to spare of this ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... in the northern half of Illinois the public condemnation of Douglas's repeal was immediate and sweeping, the formation of opposition to it was tentative and slow in the central and southern counties, where, among Whigs of Southern birth, it proceeded rather upon party feeling than upon moral conviction. The new question struck through party lines in ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... always be remembered how timid, tentative, and dear the postal and telephone services of even the most civilized countries still are, and how inexorably the needs of revenue, public profit, and convenience fight in these departments against the tradition of official leisure ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... He made tentative efforts to go, but seemed awkwardly rooted to the spot. He was gazing at her with an open admiration of which he was quite unconscious, and which was drowning, along with him, in the rising sea of embarrassment in ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... separation imports a spirit of lassitude and dulness and compliance with false conditions and limited aims which would seem almost incredible in those practising what should be an inspiring art. To men so trained, so employed, all counsels of perfection are foolishness; all idea of tentative work, experiment, modification while in progress, is looked upon as mere delusion. To them work consists of a series of never-varied formulas, all fitting into each other and combined to aim at producing a definite result, the like of which they have produced a thousand times ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... of place in a city, more or less influenced by his comrades in art, and forced to follow in a degree the dictation of necessity in the choice of subject, as his brush was his only resource and his family constantly increasing, his work of this period is always tentative. In painting it is luscious in color and firmly drawn and modelled, but it lacks the perception of truth which, when once released from the bondage of the city, began to manifest itself in his work. The first indication of the future Millet is in a picture in the Salon of 1848, "The Winnower," ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... the training of men to do this work (General Staff work) is given only to officers specially selected. Certain young officers who promise well are sent to the war college. Those who show aptitude and industry are then put tentatively into the General Staff. Those who show marked fitness in their tentative employment are then put into the General Staff, which is as truly a special corps as is our construction corps. How closely this system is followed with the General Staff in the German navy, the present writer does not know exactly; ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... established for them a wide reputation for superior elocutionary discipline and accomplishments. Feeling the need of a series of reading-books harmonizing in all respects with the modes of instruction growing out of their long tentative work, they have carefully prepared these volumes in the belief that the special features enumerated will commend them to ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... instructions for Max that she chose to consider erroneous, a biting statement from him that she was deliberately making herself physically unattractive. More and more Rhoda took to going into the city while he killed time making crude, tentative adjustments on Max. What the devil, he occasionally wondered, ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... was running a slow bass scale on a sort of two-stringed horse-fiddle of a strange shape. Average Jones' still untouched glass, almost full of the precious port, trembled and sang a little tentative response. Up-up-up mounted the thrilling notes, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... From the pier where we landed, a small boy, in a long black tunic belted in at his waist, was fishing; he hooked a little fingerling. At the first tentative tug on his line he set up a shrill clamor. At that there came running a fat, kindly looking old priest in a long gown and a shovel hat; and a market woman came, who had arms like a wrestler and skirts that stuck out like a ballet dancer's; ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Museum (for most willing and valuable assistance in which I am indebted to Mr. J. Cockburn, who, in order to test my calculations, went twice over the ground); and I have adopted the following formula as a tentative measure. I quite expect to be criticised, but if the crude idea can be improved on by others I shall ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... red squirrel does not lay by a store of food for winter use, like the chipmunk and the wood-mice; yet in the fall he sometimes hoards in a tentative, temporary kind of way. I have seen his savings—butternuts and black walnuts—stuck here and there in saplings and trees near his nest; sometimes carefully inserted in the upright fork of a limb or twig. One day, late in November, I counted a dozen or more ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... his nod was not much more than tentative. He could have denied it next minute without calling much on ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... business of cross-examination, accordingly, with a few tentative questions, testing whether the ice would bear before I took the other foot off dry land. It did not seem to be very strong, I thought. Some of them were a little bewildering, perhaps, but that, doubtless, was their only fault, ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... grew more than he could bear, and he reached a hand to Maren's shoulder, a tentative hand, hesitating, as if it felt ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... experiment; essay &c. (attempt) 675; analysis &c. (investigation) 461; screen; trial, tentative method, ttonnement. verification, probation, experimentum crucis[Lat], proof, (demonstration) 478; criterion, diagnostic, test, probe, crucial test, acid test, litmus test. crucible, reagent, check, touchstone, pix[obs3]; assay, ordeal; ring; litmus paper, curcuma ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... allies' demands on Spain be postponed. Montmorency at once resigned. No notice was taken of Villele's request except by England. The King himself went over to the war party and appointed Chateaubriand his Minister of Foreign Affairs. Great Britain's tentative offer of mediation was summarily rejected by France. To Villele, King Louis XVIII. thus explained his attitude: "Louis XIV. destroyed the Pyrenees; I shall not allow them to be raised again. He placed my house on the ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... would come with the lifting leaves, no pang of mysterious pain with bird-song, star-set, dewfall. Even her love of Foxy would become a groping thing, and not any longer would she know, when her blind bird made its tentative music, all it meant and all it dreamed. This very night she had forgotten to lean out and listen as of old to the soft voices of the trees. She had said her prayer, and then she had been so tired, and pains had shot through her, and her back had ached, and she ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... and beliefs be thus tentative and provisional? Must one walk through life, never fathoming the secret? I have myself abundance of material comfort, health, leisure. I know that for one like myself, there are hundreds less fortunate. Yet happiness ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Transactions of the New Shakspere Society for 1875-76. The surviving editor of the 'Cambridge Shakspeare' does not at all feel that Spedding's criticism 'smashed' the theory which was only put forward as a tentative solution of a ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... the rounding of the handle; and now about the tool. At first, by watching, handling, and careful work, you must begin to show the quality and amount of metal you possess. Find out, as it were, by tentative trials whether it is capable of good edge or not. In other words, you want to find your bent and your abilities. To this end, if you are naturally good at mathematics and have a scientific and inquiring turn of mind, as you have, it ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"
... up a sort of tentative agreement with Tom, binding his firm to pay a large sum in case the young inventor was successful, and then the contractor left, promising to have the rock samples ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... me that his arrangement with Rogers was tentative, depending on whether he could get the charter and could carry out his ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... period, in which his chief occupation was the care of flocks and herds. This contributed much to his material support and quickened his social and intellectual movement. After a time, when he remained in one place a sufficient time to harvest a short crop, he began agriculture in a tentative way, while his chief concern was yet with flocks and herds. He soon became permanently settled, and learned more fully the art of agriculture, and then entered the permanent agricultural stage. It was during this period ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar |
