"Algebraical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Delegate of the United States. For although one rule would answer, by having regard to the algebraical sign affecting the longitude, it must be remembered that this rule is to be applied by many who are not accustomed to distinguishing east and west longitudes by a difference of sign, and who would therefore require one rule when the longitude is east and ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... calamities of life overtook their friends, these last were spoken of as being a GOOD DEAL CUT UP. Nine-tenths of human existence were summed up in the single word, BORE. These expressions come to be the algebraic symbols of minds which have grown too weak or indolent to discriminate. They are the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy;—you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes no difference, for there are no funds in the treasury upon which they are drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Theresa was considered a possible match for my grandfather in my youth. She and I are hardly contemporaries. And the other lady with the fascinating algebraic climax to her name,—she, too, is impossible; it seems that I can’t get the money by marrying her. I’d better let her take it. She’s as poor as the ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... divide, extract roots. algebraize^. check, prove, demonstrate, balance, audit, overhaul, take stock; affix numbers to, page. amount to, add up to, come to. Adj. numeral, numerical; arithmetical, analytic, algebraic, statistical, numerable, computable, calculable; commensurable, commensurate; incommensurable, incommensurate, innumerable, unfathomable, infinite. Adv. quantitatively; arithmetically; measurably; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... what may be called Long Measure. League is a vague term, and, like x in an algebraic equation, stands for an unknown quantity. It may mean ten miles, more or less,—any distance, in fact, over five miles. The unit of measure, as fixed by law, is estamos aqui, (here we are,) which is a mile and a half; hay no masita (a little less than nothing) is five miles; ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... observing, that it furnishes us with the means of analysing sugar and every vegetable fermentable matter. We may consider the substances submitted to fermentation, and the products resulting from that operation, as forming an algebraic equation; and, by successively supposing each of the elements in this equation unknown, we can calculate their values in succession, and thus verify our experiments by calculation, and our calculation by experiment reciprocally. I have often successfully employed this method ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... pains each one of the first six items ought in strictness also to be calculated. Then sum up all the pleasures which stand to the credit side of the account; add the pains which are the debit items, or liabilities, on the other; then take their algebraic sum, and the balance of it on the side of pleasure will be the good tendency of the act upon the whole." (Dewey and Tufts: ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... similar work. The closeness and brevity of his descriptions make it one of the dryest productions ever issued on geological science, scarcely omitting the work of Humboldt, in which he sought to represent the whole of geology by algebraic symbols. Percival's work actually demands, and would richly repay, a translation into the vernacular of descriptive geology,—the language and mode of illustration employed by Murchison and Hitchcock. In its present form, it is safe to say, it has never found a single reader ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... him of—him, so extremely regular, so punctual! The other day, when he was at the Observatory, where he now spends all his evenings, only coming home in the small hours, I took it upon myself to enter his room and examine his papers. I was terrified, madame, at finding a paper covered with algebraic calculations which, by their vast extent appeared to me to go beyond the ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Being, whose Nature may be explained by deduction, and by means of algebraic equations. When, setting out with a primary attribute, the attributes of God are deduced one from the other, after the manner of the Geometricians and Scholastics, we have nothing but abstractions. We must emerge from this empty dialetic, to arrive at a true and living ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Antagonism. If upon receiving a writer's terms of argument in the sense—however unusual or mistaken—which he chooses they should bear, we may without further error follow his course of thought, it is as unkind as unprofitable to lose the use of his result in quarrel with its algebraic expression; and if the reader will understand by Lord Lindsay's general term "Spirit" the susceptibility of right moral emotion, and the entire subjection of the Will to Reason; and receive his term "Sense" as not including the perception of Beauty either ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... though she was nearing the dignity of graduation. She had no special taste for study, but she cherished the Yankee reverence for education, and although it was not quite clear to her how Latin declensions and algebraic symbols were to help her in after-life, she committed them to memory with a very good grace, and enjoyed all the satisfaction of work ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... education and effort it can be made so. One may doubt whether in the sense required by Godwin's argument any human action ever is or can be absolutely "voluntary," rational or self-conscious. To attain it, we should have to reason naked in a desert with algebraic symbols. To use words is to think in step, and to beg our question. But Godwin is well aware that most men rarely reason. He is here framing an ideal, without realising its remoteness. The mischief of his faith in logic as a force, was that it led him to ignore the aesthetic ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... disciples knit their brows O'er algebraic signs; They build their byres, they milk their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... his algebraic problem, with a desperate plunge at its solution. The unknown quantity remained unknown; and, a moment later, he was gratified to see how he had finally caught and expressed, with his pencil, a look of Julia, that had always eluded him before. But ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... part in the aggression and hence may act as a mediator to avert the final tragedy, residence in China forces upon one the realization that Asia is, after all, a large figure in the future reckoning of history. Asia is really here after all. It is not simply a symbol in western algebraic balances of trade. And in the future, so to speak, it is going to be even more here, with its awakened national consciousness of about half the population ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... incoherence of his language, the flux of words in which he drowned his thought, his apparent lack of logic, attributed to defects of education, were in reality assumed, and will be sufficiently explained by certain events in the following history. Four sentences, precise as algebraic formulas, sufficed him usually to grasp and solve all difficulties of life and commerce: "I don't know; I cannot; I will not; I will see about it." He never said yes, or no, and never committed himself to writing. If people talked to him he listened coldly, holding ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... hob below. High on a three-legged stool uncushioned, he Sits glowering through his goggles painfully, Nagging his brain with all a grinder's might Till one sounds on the drowsy ear of night. Like Sibyl's leaves the papers strew his floor Wrought-out examples, 'wrinkles' by the score, Conundrums algebraic, 'tips' on Conics And thorny 'props' remembered by mnemonics. Betweenwhiles as the slow time lagging goes, He takes the spectacles from off his nose, Removes the damper from his aching head, Pours ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... feel that the evidence presented to him is bewildering, indecisive, and obscure; and it may occur to him that the author is very like an individual who proposes to determine the value of two or three unknown quantities from one simple algebraic equation. His principal witness, Aristides, were he now living and brought up in presence of a jury, would find himself in rather an odd predicament. He is expected to settle the date of the death of Polycarp, ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... had been only a matter of hearsay to her. Yet she had apparently taken him, as women will, for better, for worse, till death, as trustfully as if he and men generally were as knowable as A B C, instead of as unknown as the algebraic X. Only once had she faltered in her trust of him, and then but for a moment. How far had her love, and the sight of Peter's misery, led her blindly to renew that trust? And would it hold? She had seen how little people thought of that scurrilous article, and how the decent papers had ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... geometer is perhaps better understood from the assertion made respecting him by a modern mathematician, that he came as near to the discovery of the Differential Calculus as can be done without the aid of algebraic transformations. Among the special problems he treated of may be mentioned the quadrature of the circle, his determination of the ratio of the circumference to the diameter being between: 3.1428 and 3.1408, the true value, as is now known, being 3.1416 nearly. He also wrote on Conoids ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... secondary schools, since the interests of the former seemed to be best met by restricting most of the energies of the secondary teachers of mathematics to the thorough drilling of their students in dexterous formal manipulations of algebraic symbols and the demonstration of fundamental abstract theorems ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... talk of matters examinational once more. Notwithstanding protests, she brought forth from their hiding-place sundry arid little manuals and black-covered notebooks; her thoughts were divided between algebraic formulae and Nancy's relations with Lionel Tarrant. Perhaps because no secret was confided to her, she affected more appetite for the arid little books than she really felt. Nancy would neither speak of examinations, nor give ear when they were talked about; she, ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... pure well of official English undefiled was to count for anything, he ought to be pretty safe. But poor Minusex was ill, and sent a certificate. He had so crammed himself with unknown quantities, that his mind—like a gourmand's stomach—had broken down under the effort, and he was now sobbing out algebraic positions under ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... bird may that be? Is it the ornithorynchus paradoxus? Mr. Schlosser was not wide awake there. The reference is evidently to Kant's essay upon the advantages of introducing into philosophy the algebraic idea of negative quantities. It is one of Kant's grandest gleams into hidden truth. Were it only for the merits of this most masterly essay in reconstituting the algebraic meaning of a negative quantity [so generally misunderstood as a negation of quantity, and which ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... not for the sake of living. The very language with which we think prevents us from so doing. Language, the substance of thought, is a system of metaphors with a mythic and anthropomorphic base. And to construct a purely rational philosophy it would be necessary to construct it by means of algebraic formulas or to create a new language for it, an inhuman language—that is to say, one inapt for the needs of life—as indeed Dr. Richard Avenarius, professor of philosophy at Zuerich, attempted to do in his Critique of Pure Experience (Kritik der reinen Erfahrung), in order to ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... those and other works of note He was not at all a "people's man," Though public, for the works he wrote Were not that sort the people can Admire or read; they were Mathematic The most part, some were Hydrostatic; But Algebraic, in the main, And full of a, b, c, and n— And other letters which perplex— The last was full of double x! In fact, such stuff as one may easily Imagine, didn't go down greasily, Nor calculated to produce Such heat as "cooks the public goose," And ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... to hear it—there are axioms in probity, in honesty, in justice, as there are axioms in geometry; and moral truth is no more at the mercy of a vote than is algebraic truth. ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... in algebraic formulae, it is easy to see that repetition of the materials designated a, or a and b together, is the source of unity in the period, and the third element introduced, here designated as c, has its only use in serving as variety. The normal dimensions for the two-period ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... the two students were diligently at work, Sarah in the role of preceptress, hearing Amanda's French verbs, or helping to discover the perplexing value of X in an algebraic equation. Only occasionally did ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... milk-white skin and high color which characterize young English women doomed sooner or later to the consumptive curse,—an appearance of health that deceives the eye. Following a sign by which Henriette, after showing me Madeleine, made me look at Jacques drawing geometrical figures and algebraic calculations on a board before the Abbe Dominis, I shivered at the sight of death hidden beneath the roses, and was thankful for the self-deception of ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... infinitesimally small numeral in a mathematical formula. But let me see a child abused, and the red blood will rush to my head from rage. And when I look and look upon the labour of a moujik or a labourer, I am thrown into hysterics for shame at my algebraic calculations. There is—the devil take it!—there is something incongruous, altogether illogical, but which at this time is stronger than human reason. Take to-day, now ... Why do I feel at this minute as though I had robbed a sleeping man or deceived a three-year-old child, or hit ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... certain of all facts,—that the Power which the universe manifests is utterly inscrutable." (p. 46). "The ultimate of ultimates is Force." "Matter and motion, as we know them, are differently conditioned manifestations of force." "If, to use an algebraic illustration, we represent Matter, Motion, and Force, by the symbols x, y, z; then we may ascertain the values of x and y in terms of z, but the value of z can never be found; z is the unknown quantity, ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... back a moment to the shining isle, the green sward, the singing waves, the sunlight on the green jalousies, but strangely his mind could see nothing. He could no longer make a picture for himself. Symbols were barren algebraic formulae. Not enchanters' words. No light. No glamour. Only strange sounds reverberating in the gray caverns of his head.... Once in the dead past he could see the Isle of Pipers—no more! It wasn't his past that was dead. The past lived. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... be weighed on the left pan of the balance, the weights on the right; count the divisions of the scale from the centre to right and left, marking the former and the latter -; thus -5 is the fifth division to the left. Then the position of rest is half the algebraic sum of two readings. For example, let the readings be 7 to the right and 3 to the left, then (7-3)/2 2. The mean division is the second division to the right. If the student will place himself in front of a balance and repeat the following observations and replace ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... racing. [Talking of that, how annoying it is—or was—when one cared about things of great moment, to take up an evening newspaper's last edition and read in large type "Official Scratchings," with a silly algebraic formula underneath about horses being withdrawn from some race, when you thought it was a bear fight in the Cabinet.] Vivie gathered from her guide that to-day would be rather a special Derby, because it did not often ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... up all the essential forms which can affect the organism. This is a universal algebraic formula, by which we can solve all organic problems. We apply it to the hand, to the shoulder, to the eyes, to the voice—in a word, to all the agents of oratorical language. For example, it suffices to know the eccentro-eccentric form of the hand, of the eyes; and we reserve ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... be algebraic in all cases. Thus when the degrees are minus or below zero the rules for conversion might be put thus: To convert degrees F. below zero into centigrade to the number of degrees F. add 32, multiply by 5/9 and place a minus sign (-) before it. (b) To convert degrees ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... the conscience, the reason, the imagination and the senses. Without going so far as this, it is possible to see in these and in Hawthorne's other creations something typical and representative. He uses his characters like algebraic symbols to work {467} out certain problems with: they are rather more and yet rather less than flesh and blood individuals. The stories in Twice Told Tales and in the second collection, Mosses from an Old Manse, 1846, are more openly allegorical than his later work. Thus the Minister's Black ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... steps during their irradiation, and twenty-five during their eclipse. Everything is based on the focal plan, and on the rotation of the octagon drum, formed of eight wide simple lenses in range, having above and below it two series of dioptric rings; an algebraic gear, secured from the effects of the beating of winds and waves by glass a millimetre thick[6], yet sometimes broken by the sea-eagles, which dash themselves like great moths against these gigantic lanterns. The building which encloses and sustains ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... impulses and emotions seem to be in all respects like our own. It is true that they are very unlike the typical civilised man of some of the older philosophers, whose every action proceeded from a nice and logical calculation of the algebraic sum of pleasures and pains to be derived from alternative lines of conduct; but we ourselves are equally unlike that purely mythical personage. The Kayan or the Iban often acts impulsively in ways which by no means conduce to further his best interests or deeper purposes; but so do we also. ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... some tea-things out of range of the ring of light thrown by the double reading-lamp, "you often blame me for jumping to conclusions; but what does it matter, provided they are right? The whole secret is that I used the equivalent algebraic formula, but suppressed the working in order to puzzle you," and the ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... the Italian scholar and physician, the father of algebraic science (you all recollect Cardan's rule,) believer in dreams, prognostics, astrology; who died, too, miserably enough, in ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... in the history of mathematics are the calculations published by the weather-prophet of the Express. Arithmetic turns pale when she glances at them, and, striking her multiplication table with her algebraic knuckles, demands to know why the Express does not add a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... shine: Attendant slaves with eager strides advance, And, after homage paid, bawl out aloud Words unintelligible, noise confus'd: She knows the jargon sounds, and straight describes, In characters mysterious, words obscure: More legible are algebraic signs, Or mystic figures by magicians drawn, When they ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... has appeared in every age to be so nearly the same that it may always be considered in algebraic language as a given quantity. The great law of necessity, which prevents population from increasing in any country beyond the food which it can either produce or acquire, is a law so obvious and evident to our understandings ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... "They are humorous all, and so each furnishes something suitable for the saddened mind. Wisdom comes through understanding your alphabet properly. For instance, first there was Gilbert, and that gave us G; then came Kipling, and he gave us K; thus we get an algebraic formula, G.K., which are the initials of Chesterton, a still later arrival, and as the mind increases in despondency it sinks lower and lower down the alphabet until it comes to S, and thus we have Barn-yard Shaw, an improvement on the Kail-yard school, who takes the O pshaw view of life. And ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... be so in the examples given by the bending osier and the waving grain,—also by the few who have seen full drawings of all the forms. And the mathematician finds in it a new beauty, from its marvellous correspondence with the motions of a pendulum,—the algebraic expression of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... facts—namely, two lines (or areas) which are opposite IN SPACE give ALWAYS a positive product—ever come into anybody's head till I was led to it in October, 1843, by trying to extend my old theory of algebraic couples, and of algebra as the science of pure time? As to my regarding geometrical addition of lines as equivalent to composition of motions (and as performed by the same rules), that is indeed essential in my theory but not peculiar to it; ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... certain value of this ratio; it varies inversely with the refractive index (the power of the lens remaining constant). The total aberration of two or more very thin lenses in contact, being the sum of the individual aberrations, can be zero. This is also possible if the lenses have the same algebraic sign. Of thin positive lenses with n1.5, four are necessary to correct spherical aberration of the third order. These systems, however, are not of great practical importance. In most cases, two thin lenses are combined, one of which has just so strong a positive aberration ("under-correction,'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... precisely the same condition which it at present preserves. Of the date of this origin, however, I grieve that I can only speak with that species of indefinite definiteness which mathematicians are, at times, forced to put up with in certain algebraic formulae. The date, I may thus say, in regard to the remoteness of its antiquity, cannot be less than any ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... had confused and sickened him. But now he worked with indefatigable industry on an imaginary slate; put his postulate, counted probabilities, allowed for chances, added, deducted, multiplied, and unknowingly performed algebraic feats, till his brows were stiff with frowning, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... relations. The conception of quantity, therefore, if rigorously analyzed, will indicate a priori the natural and impassable boundaries of the science; while a subsequent examination of the quantities called infinite in the mathematical sense, and of the algebraic symbol of infinity, will be seen to verify the results of this a ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... strictly farcical play, The Comedy of Errors. There are few intellects keen enough to extract all the humor from Shakespeare. For literal minds the full comprehension of even a slight display of his humor, such as the following dialogue affords, is better exercise than the solution of an algebraic problem. Dogberry, a constable in Much Ado About ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... policeman. You stare at him, and you never see anything but a policeman—an indivisible phenomenon of blue cloth, steel buttons, flesh resembling a face, and a helmet; "a stalwart guardian of the law"; to you little more human than an algebraic ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... courage, brother, courage, at the ghastly deathbed, and strike down the infidel with the lance of evidence and the shield of reason!' In a pecuniary point of view I am confident, nay, the calculations may be established as irresistibly as an algebraic equation, that I can realise, as incumbent of Lady Whittlesea's chapel, the sum of not less than one thousand pounds per annum. Such a sum, with economy (and without it what sum were sufficient?), will enable me to provide amply for my wants, to discharge my obligations to ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... conception. That we are conscious of them, however, in their character of things, and not of mere signs, is evident from the fact that our whole process of reasoning is carried on by predicating of them the properties of things. In resolving an algebraic equation, by what rules do we proceed? By applying at each step to a, b, and x, the proposition that equals added to equals make equals; that equals taken from equals leave equals; and other propositions founded on these ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... appear a pigeon-pie. That would not be in the nature of an [Greek: eranos]. Now not only Hobbes and Rousseau, but Locke and a great multitude of modern Englishmen with him, hold that the power of the State is an aggregate, the algebraic sum of the powers whereof the component members would have stood possessed, had they lived in what is called, by a misleading phrase, "the state of nature," that is, the condition of men not subject to civil authority. These powers,—either, as Hobbes and Rousseau virtually ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... of this nature, or that many another girl, besides myself, had first begun to chase some "unknown" phantom through the intricate stages of life at the same time that she was puzzling over the hidden meaning of an algebraic equation. ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... her beginning of landscape gardening. Later she saw the rise of Constable, Ruskin, and Turner, and their iridescent successors. Still to-day in England the average leading citizen matches word against word,—using them as algebraic formulas,—rather than picture against picture, when he arranges his thoughts under the eaves of his mind. To step into the Art world is to step out of the beaten path of British dreams. Shakespeare is still king, not Rossetti, nor yet Christopher Wren. Moreover, it ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... "Enter!" answered me. I did so and found Captain Nemo busy with calculations in which there was no shortage of X and other algebraic signs. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... promenade or the proper place to put a sofa. This logic is extremely simple, inasmuch as it consists in never expressing but one idea, that which contains the expression of their will. Like everything pertaining to female nature, this system may be resolved into two algebraic terms—Yes: no. There are also certain little movements of the head which mean so much that they may take ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... college education was just a beginning—that beyond the campus of his alma mater spread a workaday world which scoffed at dead languages and went in for a living wage, which turned from isoceles triangles and algebraic conundrums to solve the essential problems of food and clothing and shingled roofs. It was a new viewpoint which planted doubts where what he had supposed to be certainties ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... writes: "Or, if one will, he may also betake himself in fancy to a still, green, dusky forest, and listen in profound solitude to the mysterious rustling and whispering of the foliage. What, indeed, despite the algebraic character of the tone-language, may not a lively fancy conjure out of, or, rather, into, this etude! But one thing is to be held fast: it is to be played in that Chopin-like whisper of which, among others, Mendelssohn ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... plume themselves as upon this very name. Why? Its origin went back to old times; and being venerable they gloried therein; though they disclaimed its present applicability to any of their race; showing, that words are but algebraic signs, conveying no meaning except what you please. And to be called one thing, is ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the sexes has appeared in every age to be so nearly the same that it may always be considered, in algebraic language, as a given quantity. The great law of necessity which prevents population from increasing in any country beyond the food which it can either produce or acquire, is a law so open to our view, so obvious and evident to our understandings, and so completely confirmed ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... universe of our experience. In the religion of the once-born the world is a sort of rectilineal or one-storied affair, whose accounts are kept in one denomination, whose parts have just the values which naturally they appear to have, and of which a simple algebraic sum of pluses and minuses will give the total worth. Happiness and religious peace consist in living on the plus side of the account. In the religion of the twice-born, on the other hand, the world ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... view the result of the polarization test is not a single value, but consists of at least two different factors. It may be equal to the algebraic sum of these, or to their difference, according to whether the external conditions on the field were locally and individually favorable or unfavorable. A large amount of sugar may be due to high individual value, with slight subsequent ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... sense of the words, continually wrapped up in wools and worsteds. The earl was always equally ponderous, and the specific gravity of Lady Selina could not be calculated. It was beyond the power of figures, even in algebraic denominations, to describe her ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... chemical equations are quantitative, it must be clearly understood that they are not algebraic. A glance at ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... you an idea of the scenes of the highest comedy that lay behind this algebraic statement of his career; his useless patience dogging the footsteps of fortune, which presently took wings, his long tramps over the thorny brakes of Paris, his breathless chases as a petitioner, his attempts to win over fools; the schemes laid only to fail through the influence ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... romanticism." One has but to go to the various definitions of these to know that. If you go to a classic definition you know what a true classic is, and similarly a "true romantic." But if you go to both, you have an algebraic formula, x x, a cancellation, an apercu, and hence satisfying; if you go to all definitions you have another formula x > x, a destruction, another apercu, and hence satisfying. Professor Beers goes to the dictionary (you wouldn't think a college professor would be as reckless as that). And ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... represent everything. Provided that good society knows the amount of your fortune, you are classed among those figures which equal yours, and no one asks to see your credentials, because everybody knows how little they cost. In a city where social problems are solved by algebraic equations, adventurers have many chances in their favor. Even if this family were of gypsy extraction, it was so wealthy, so attractive, that fashionable society could well afford to overlook its little mysteries. But, unfortunately, the enigmatical history of the Lanty family ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... and pen in hand he began what looked very much like algebraic formula: I followed with my eyes his trembling hands, I took count of every movement. Might not some unhoped-for result come of it? I trembled, too, very unnecessarily, since the true key was in my hands, and no other ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... a dull hue, somewhat lighter than that of lead, and were of a convenient shape for handling. Each cake had its weight, and value, and result of assay stamped upon it, and I was told that it was assayed again at St. Petersburg to guard against the algebraic process of substitution. About thirty poods of gold are extracted from every thousand poods of silver after the treasure reaches St. Petersburg. The silver is extracted from the lead used to absorb it, the latter being again employed while the former goes on its long ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... her simple algebraic problems Jose saw the working of a rule infinite in its adaptation. She knew not what the answers should be, yet she took up each problem with supreme confidence, knowing that she possessed and rightly understood the rule for correctly solving ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... gives us the formula by which Stokes made his calculation. It is a relatively simple algebraic one, but need not be repeated here. For us it suffices that with the aid of this formula, by merely measuring the actual descent of the top of a vapor cloud, Professor Thompson was able to find the volume of the drops and thence the number of particles. The number of particles being ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... designate quantities, lines, etc., in algebraic, geometrical, and similar matter, and in explanation ...
— The Uses of Italic - A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters • Frederick W. Hamilton
... that the laws of correct thinking can be expressed in algebraic notation, and, thus expressed, will be subject to all the mathematical laws of an algebra whose symbols bear the uniform value of unity or nought (1 or 0)—a limitation required by the fact that pure logic deals in notions of ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... that we should be glad to buy back from desuetude at any cost. Those who look upon language only as anatomists of its structure, or who regard it as only a means of conveying abstract truth from mind to mind, as if it were so many algebraic formulae, are apt to overlook the fact that its being alive is all that gives it poetic value. We do not mean what is technically called a living language,—the contrivance, hollow as a speaking-trumpet, by which breathing and moving bipeds, even now, sailing o'er life's ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... well be, as the world is constituted, more than once or twice in the course of an existence, the rest of the sojourn upon earth being devoted to a sublimation of our thought. But always wise, sensible, sagacious, rational; always in wig and spectacles; always algebraic and mathematical; doctrinal and didactic; ever to sit like FRANKLIN'S portrait, with the index fixed upon 'causality;' one might as well be a petrified 'professor,' or a WILLIAM PENN bronzed upon a pedestal. There is nothing so good, either ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... of them have been generally adopted. The older one, called the "descriptive notation," still predominates in the English, French and Spanish speaking countries, but as leading English and American writers have lately used the newer "algebraic notation" which is much more simple, the latter will be employed in this book. Later the former method will be explained for the sake ...
— Chess and Checkers: The Way to Mastership • Edward Lasker
... I ask whether, in the nature of the mind, illustration and explanation must not of necessity proceed from the lower to the higher? or whether a boy is to be taught his addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, by the highest branches of algebraic analysis? Is there any better way of systematic teaching, than that of illustrating each new step, or having each new step illustrated to him by its identity in kind with the step the next below it? though it be the only mode in which this objection ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... land. My antipathy to a horsewhip is an inheritance from boyhood. It carried me across Caesar's bridge, and through Virgil and Horace. I am indebted to it for a tolerable understanding of grammar, arithmetic, geography, and other occult sciences. It enlightened me not a little upon many algebraic processes, which, to speak truth, presented, otherwise, but slender claims to my consideration. It disciplined me into a uniform propriety of manners, and instilled into my bosom early rudiments of wisdom, and principles ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... mounted infantry, who returned the compliment. That was the signal for the opening of hostilities. On this matter it may be urged that Boer reports differ from ours, but Boer veracity may be defined by the algebraic quantity x, and cannot be accepted. Lieutenant-Colonel Winsloe, of the 21st Regiment, who was commanding at a fort outside the village, signalled orders to Major Clarke to begin firing. This officer was fortified ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... of the most important books of the nineteenth century because of its power of changing the minds of those who read it, in spite of its unsound capitalist economics, its parade of quotations from books which the author had either not read or not understood, its affectation of algebraic formulas, and its general attempt to disguise a masterpiece of propagandist journalism and prophetic invective as a drily scientific treatise of the sort that used to impose on people in 1860, when any book that pretended ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... Oneness of allness in quasiness. I will engage to write the formula of any novel in psycho-chemic terms, or draw its graph in psycho-mechanic terms: or write, in romantic terms, the circumstances and sequences of any chemic or electric or magnetic reaction: or express any historic event in algebraic terms—or see Boole and Jevons for economic ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... bracket,' he remarked, smiling benevolently, 'which no algebraic process will remove. Let us hope it signifies that you and Buckland will work through life shoulder to shoulder in the field of geology. What did Professor Gale ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... as we certainly shall say one day, either here or yonder, unless our lives be thus part of the divine plan, 'What a fool I was! Seventy years of toiling and moiling and effort and sweat, and it has all come to nothing; like a long algebraic sum that covers pages of intricate calculations, and the pluses and minuses just balance each other; and the net result is a great round nought.' So let us remember the twofold process, and let it stir us to make sure that 'in our embers' shall be 'something that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... in his review, I saw in my mind's eye the algebraic equation of Snow, the equals sign, and the answer in ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... CLEAR AND DEFINITE.—Whatever attention centers upon stands out sharp and clear in consciousness. Whether it be a bit of memory, an "air-castle," a sensation from an aching tooth, the reasoning on an algebraic formula, a choice which we are making, the setting of an emotion—whatever be the object to which we are attending, that object is illumined and made to stand out from its fellows as the one prominent thing in the mind's eye while the attention ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... back in the corner awhile, trying his best to get something definite out of the great array of books he found on a low shelf. Looking up and seeing Mr. Fulton's eyes on him, a twinkle in their depths, he threw down the latest collection of algebraic formulas and ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... the most delightful portion of his day. And this tutor, he tells me, most generously gives him problems to work at in his absence: a favour for which every pupil, perchance, would not be equally grateful, but which Alexander, who loves problems algebraic as another boy loves a play or an opera, regards as the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... in it by the time Waterloo Bridge was in sight; and yet she was no more listening to it than she was counting the paving-stones at her feet. She was feeling happier than she had felt in her life. If Denham could have seen how visibly books of algebraic symbols, pages all speckled with dots and dashes and twisted bars, came before her eyes as they trod the Embankment, his secret joy in her attention might have been dispersed. She went on, saying, "Yes, I see.... But how would that help you?... Your brother has passed his examination?" so sensibly, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... to a story by the great American romancer, which is a masterpiece. Who has not read the "Gold Bug?" In this novel a cryptogram, composed of ciphers, letters, algebraic signs, asterisks, full-stops, and commas, is submitted to a truly mathematical analysis, and is deciphered under extraordinary conditions, which the admirers of that strange genius can never forget. On the reading of the American ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... law holds with equal sureness for all right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. The good man has absolute good, which like fire turns everything to its own nature, so that you cannot do him any harm; but as the royal armies sent against Napoleon, when he approached, cast down their colors and from enemies became friends, so disasters ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... The great bulk of them regard it with disfavour, first, because it smacks of peddling dealing; and, secondly, even if it were right they know that State aid means State interference, and State interference savours too much of working commerce on strictly algebraic lines, which only an executive with a wealthy, indulgent nation behind it could stand. The Chamber of Shipping last year vigorously declared against subsidies of this kind; and the way in which the proposal was strangled leaves small hope of it ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... is a gospel of dirt. All that is good, generous, wise, right ... who or what could by any possibility have given it to me, but One who first had it to give! This is not logic, it is axiom.... Poor "Comtism, ghastliest of algebraic specialities."... Canst thou by searching find out God? I am not surprised thou canst not, vain fool. If they do abolish God from their poor bewildered hearts, there will be seen such a world ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... tendency created by the splendid conquests of modern generalization, to believe that all social questions are merged in economical science, and that the relations of men to their neighbors may be settled by algebraic equations,—the dream that the uncultured classes are prepared for a condition which appeals principally to their moral sensibilities,—the aristocratic dilettantism which attempts to restore the "good old times" by a sort of idyllic masquerading, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... head upon the pillow of Doubt, because it is the easiest of solutions; acting in this respect with the majority of mankind, who say in their hearts: 'Let us think no more of these problems, since God has not vouchsafed to grant us the algebraic demonstrations that could solve them, while He has given us so many other ways to get from earth ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... the foundation upon which to rest our hope of pardon? This is the Unitarian's plea: "I believe," he says, "that God is merciful; and I repose in his kindness, and trust he will have compassion on me." Alas, my friends! it was bad enough that Mr. Porter should have yesterday adopted the algebraic principle of neutralizing one text of scripture by another; but to carry up this principle to a contemplation of the character of God, and to bring it into collision with the attributes of Jehovah, and thus ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... possessing the outward attributes of humor without its intrinsic quality. For the dear lady was providentially deficient in humor: the least hint of the real thing clouded her lovely eye like the hovering shadow of an algebraic problem. ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... was not quite ready, when Barbican, raising his head, showed Ardan a page covered with algebraic signs at the end of ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... with some chemical experiments—which when Knighton and I repeated at his father's house, 9 Hanover Square, the baronet in future blew us up to the astonishment of the baronet in praesenti, his famous father. Also, I was a diligent student in the Algebraic class of Dr. Short, afterwards the good Bishop of St. Asaph; and I have before me now a memoria technica of mine in rhyme giving the nine chief rules of trigonometry, but not easily producible here as full of "sines and cosines, arcs, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... sustain any act of Congress which purports to be for the improvement of navigation whatever other purposes it may also embody; nor does the stream involved have to be one which is "navigable in its natural state." Such, at least, seems to be the algebraic sum of its holdings in Arizona v. California,[362] decided in 1931, and in the United States v. Appalachian Electric Power Co.,[363] decided in 1940. In the former the Court, speaking through Justice ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... others have supposed to be of a distinct nature, and to resist all further analysis) gives way before Mr. Ricardo's law, and is eliminated; an admirable simplification, which is equal in merit and use to any of the rules which have been devised, from time to time, for the resolution of algebraic equations. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... table post, and then there was nothing heard but the scratching of the tutor's pen. But Mike's restlessness increased: he fidgeted and shuffled about in his chair, shook the table, and tried all kinds of positions to help him in solving his algebraic problem, but without avail. Scrub oaks, ravens and red-legged choughs danced before his eyes; great dark holes opened in the rocks, and the desire to finish work, get out in the bright sunshine, and run and shout, seemed more ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... disturbance, in a hazy cloud where the only thing distinct is their denial that there is anything definite. Their creed is not strengthened by its being vague and curtailed. "Moral sense," "intuitive truth," "general utility"—their ultimate appeal—is just as far out of reach of algebraic logic as any of the propositions are which they reject because these cannot be proved thus. Try this scrimp creed by their own standard of proof, and it shrivels away, until no God,—no soul,—no being remains as absolutely demonstrated, and there is only a thing faintly conscious ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... the algebraic notation, which has been adopted in most countries. It has the advantage of being unmistakably clear, and also more concise. Here the perpendicular lines of squares (called files) are named with the letters a-h, from left to right, ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... speak of them not as similar but the same. In order that a comparison may be effective either for ornament or for use, there must be, between the two acts or objects, a similarity in some points, and a dissimilarity in others. The comparison for moral or aesthetic purposes is like an algebraic equation in mathematical science; if the two sides are in all their features the same, or in all their features different, you may manipulate the signs till the sun go down, but you will obtain no useful result: it is only when they are in some of their terms ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... an abstract character, whose form resembles more an algebraic formula than a living process of human relations, another of Andreyev's plays, "The Love of the Student," written a short time before "Anathema," gives us a little picture of customs, alert and painted with ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... the trust plank in that platform that it "did not anywhere condemn monopoly except in words." Exactly of what else could a platform consist? Does Mr. Wilson expect us to use algebraic signs? This criticism is much as if he said the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence contained nothing but words. The Progressive platform did contain words, and the words were admirably designed to express thought and ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... way of salvation either for myself or for my pupils. I grope around all the while trying to find this way. At times, I think they may find salvation while they are finding the value of x in an algebraic equation, and possibly this is true. I cannot tell. If they fail to find the value of x, I fall to wondering whether they have sinned or the teacher that ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... opening of the next chapter, the admission, that "the historical development of the abstract portion of mathematical science has, since the time of Descartes, been for the most part determined by that of the concrete." Further on we read respecting algebraic functions that "most functions were concrete in their origin—even those which are at present the most purely abstract; and the ancients discovered only through geometrical definitions elementary algebraic properties of functions to which a numerical ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... Peaucellier gave his solution to the readers of the Nouvelles Annales. His reasoning, which has a distinct flavor of discovery by hindsight, was that since a linkage generates a curve that can be expressed algebraically, it must follow that any algebraic curve can be generated by a suitable linkage—it was only necessary to find the suitable linkage. He then gave a neat geometric proof, suggested by Mannheim, ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... age of three. One of the most remarkable of the French calculating boys was Henri Mondeux. He was investigated by Arago, Sturm, Cauchy, and Liouville, for the Academie des Sciences, and a report was written by Cauchy. His specialty was the solution of algebraic problems mentally. He seems to have calculated squares and cubes by a binomial formula of his own invention. He died in obscurity, but was the subject of a Biographie by Jacoby (1846). George P. Bidder, the Scotch engineer (1806-1878), was exhibited as ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... to exam Mary goes, Smartly dressed in stunning clothes, Expert in algebraic rule, Best pupil-teacher ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the standard AOS system administrator's manual ("How to Load and Generate your AOS System") was created, issued a part number, and circulated as photocopy folklore; it was called "How to Goad and Levitate your CHAOS System". 3. /n./ Algebraic Operating System, in reference to those calculators which use infix instead of postfix (reverse Polish) notation. 4. A {BSD}-like operating system ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... the thermal junctions in different sections to the galvanometer makes possible a more accurate control of the temperatures in the various parts, and while the algebraic sum of the temperature differences of the parts may equal zero, it is conceivable that there may be a condition in the calorimeter when there is a considerable amount of heat passing out through the top, for example, compensated exactly by the heat which passes in ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... that of Physics, Professor Silliman says, 'all its phenomena are dependent on a limited number of general laws ... which may be represented by numbers and algebraic symbols; and these condensed formulae enable us to conduct investigations with the certainty and precision of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... of experiments offers a rare example of the verification of algebraic calculation by direct demonstration. In general, we may employ geometry, which gives a graphic representation of calculation and furnishes a valuable control. Sometimes we have practical application, which is a very important verification ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... nothing of the moral relations between man and man. He does not readily generalize or conceive of abstractions. He observes the qualities common to certain bodies without reasoning about the qualities themselves. With the aid of geometric figures and algebraic signs, he knows something of extension and quantity. Upon these figures and signs his senses rest their knowledge of the abstractions just named. He makes no attempt to learn the nature of things, but only such of their relations as concern himself. He estimates external things only by their relation ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... 'to swarm.' But is it not a real gain to know further that the one is to strut as the peacock does, the other to swarm as do ants? There are at the same time, as must be freely owned, investigations, moral no less than material, in which the nearer the words employed approach to an algebraic notation, and the less disturbed or coloured they are by any reminiscences of the ultimate grounds on which they rest, the better they are likely to fulfil the duties assigned to them; but these are exceptions. [Footnote: A French writer, Adanson, in his Natural ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... has fully succeeded, by a process not attended with much difficulty. He details some unexpected results from his experiments. Cauchy made profound reports (from committees) respecting the Researches on Algebraic Functions by M. Puiseux, and the studies of Crystallography by M. Bravais. Papers on the speed of sound in iron, and on respiration in plants, and new schemes of atmospheric railroads were submitted. Attention was given to M. Burg's new observations ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the meaning of the words. It has sometimes seemed to me that in England there was a growing tendency to curtail language into a mere convenience, and to defecate it of all emotion as thoroughly as algebraic signs. This has arisen, no doubt, in part from that healthy national contempt of humbug which is characteristic of Englishmen, in part from that sensitiveness to the ludicrous which makes them so shy of expressing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Selected," "Speaking of Automobiles," "The Unusual Thing," "The High Cost of Learning," and "Wanted—A Funeral of Algebraic Phraseology;" also, some verse, "The Twentieth Regiment Knight" and "Back to God's Country" are magazine work that never came back. School Science & Mathematics, a magazine to which she contributes and of which she is an associate editor, gives ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... modern books and magazine articles) to balance and modify each other. A plain figure 4, scrawled in chalk anywhere, must always mean something; it must always mean 2 2. But the most enormous and mysterious algebraic equation, full of letters, brackets, and fractions, may all cancel out at last and be equal to nothing. When a demagogue says to a mob, "There is the Bank of England, why shouldn't you have some of that money?" he says something which is at least as honest and intelligible as the figure 4. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... hand into his purse,—he drew a great check on his bankers. Was a congregation without a church, or a village without a school, or a river without a bridge, Mr. Trevanion set to work on calculations, found out the exact sum required by an algebraic x—y, and paid it as he would have paid his butcher. It must be owned that the distress of a man whom he allowed to be deserving, did not appeal to him in vain. But it is astonishing how little he spent in that way; for it was hard indeed to convince ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thoughts before, she was now never out of them. From the first she had been personally fascinating; but the fascination now had become intellectual as well. He was constantly pondering her words and motions; they were as interesting as the factors in an algebraic problem. This is saying a good deal; for Acton was extremely fond of mathematics. He asked himself whether it could be that he was in love with her, and then hoped he was not; hoped it not so much for his own sake as for that of the amatory passion itself. If this was ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... were carried to the greatest perfection their method would allow. They did not understand algebra, by the application of which to geometry modern mathematicians have climbed to greater heights than the ancients; but then it is all the more remarkable that without the aid of algebraic analysis they were able to solve such difficult problems as occupied the minds of Archimedes and Apollonius. No positive science can boast of such rapid development as geometry for two or three hundred years before Christ, and never was the intellect of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... got out, and they sat down to their work; but Hugh could not help observing that David, in the midst of his lines and angles and algebraic computations, would, every now and then, glance up at Margaret, with a look of tenderness in his face yet deeper and more delicate in its expression than ordinary. Margaret was, however, quite unconscious ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... a handful of husks, or was it a banquet? Carolyn took it for the latter and lived on it for days. Little it mattered what or how much he had written: he had written, and of his own accord—as Carolyn made a point of from the first. There is an algebraic formula expressive of the truth that "1" is an infinitely greater number of times than "0." And a single small taper is infinitely greater in point of light and cheer than none at all. Carolyn's little world underwent illumination, and she with it. She promptly ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... thesis. Some persons will immediately cry out, 'How CAN a reality resemble a feeling?' Here we find how wise we were to name the quality of the feeling by an algebraic letter Q. We flank the whole difficulty of resemblance between an inner state and an outward reality, by leaving it free to any one to postulate as the reality whatever sort of thing he thinks CAN resemble a feeling,—if not an outward thing, then another feeling like the first one,—the ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... persuasive rabbi exists. How much of his vast structure will bear the touch of time, how much is clay and how much brass, it were too curious to inquire. But his words, if dry, are always manly and honest; there dwells in his pages a spirit of highly abstract joy, plucked naked like an algebraic symbol but still joyful; and the reader will find there a caput mortuum[13] of piety, with little indeed of its loveliness, but with most of its essentials; and these two qualities make him a wholesome, as his intellectual ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as possible of opium pandering to pleasure; yes, by forty-nine, by seven times seven at the least, that we be not accused of extenuating so fatal an excitement; for it is competent to conceive one's self expanded into any unlimited number of bodies, seven sevens being the algebraic n, and if so, into their huge undefined aggregate; a giant's pains are throes indeed, a giant's pleasures indeed flood over. But, we may do harm to morality and truth, by falsely making much of a faint, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... girl must have had a surprising memory for sounds, for she could always repeat the words which I let fall in this way, without, of course, understanding in the least what they meant. I have often been amused at hearing her discharge a volley of chemical equations and algebraic symbols at old Madge, and then burst into a ringing laugh when the crone would shake her head, under the impression, no doubt, that she ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to me that some important truths had escaped even "the inevitable eye" of Mr. Ricardo; and as these were for the most part of such a nature that I could express or illustrate them more briefly and elegantly by algebraic symbols than in the usual clumsy and loitering diction of economists, the whole would not have filled a pocket-book; and being so brief, with M. for my amanuensis, even at this time, incapable as I was of all general exertion, I drew up my Prolegomena to all future Systems of Political ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... X? It was an island lost in the immensity of the Pacific Ocean between the Equator and the Tropic of Cancer—an island most appropriately named by Robur in this algebraic fashion. It was in the north of the South Pacific, a long way out of the route of inter-oceanic communication. There it was that Robur had founded his little colony, and there the "Albatross" rested when tired with her flight. There she was provisioned for all her voyages. In X Island, Robur, ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... of our time for the image-making names. Immediately, all the mythical material vanishes. Thus, "Selene kisses the sleeping Endymion" becomes the dry formula, "It is night." The most skilled linguists often declare themselves unable to change the pliant tongue of the imaginative age into our algebraic idioms.[60] Thought by imagery cannot remain itself and at the same time take ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... model Tachypomp. We will summon thereunto the professor, his daughter, and why not his fair sister Jocasta, as well? We will take them a journey which shall much astonish the venerable Surd. He shall place Abscissa's digits in yours and bless you both with an algebraic formula. Jocasta shall contemplate with wonder the genius of Rivarol. But we have much to do. We must ship to St. Joseph the vast amount of material to be employed in the construction of the Tachypomp. We must engage a small army of workmen to effect that construction, for we are ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... time you never showed any self-esteem; or spoke of getting into employment at some future day, among the learned. The pleasure of intellectual exercise in demonstrating or analyzing a geometrical problem, or solving an algebraic equation, seemed to be your only object. No Junior, Seignour or Sophomore class, with annual honors, was ever, I suppose, presented to ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... viewed as a hammer; when he wishes to place his paper on the ground, it becomes a weight; when he is threatened by the strange dog, it becomes a weapon of defence. In like manner the sign x suggests an unknown quantity in relation to the algebraic problem; in relation to phonics it is a double sound; in relation to numeration, the number ten. It is evident that in all these cases, what determines the meaning given to the presented object is the need, ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... shutting and not shutting. True, they are not taught to do so, any more than Frenchmen are taught to make gestures. It is in them. They are born with a natural proneness to consider, as if it were a question of algebraic quantities, whether the satisfaction they might impart by shutting the door would not be more than counterbalanced by the dissatisfaction that might accrue from distinctly and unmistakably shutting it. Still, it seems strange how any displeasure could be ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... association. The entire system of human passion, all the risks of public peace and security, all labor and action, spring from these sources. It is the same with the other primordial differences; their effects embrace an entire civilization, and may be likened to those algebraic formulae which, within narrow bounds, describe beforehand the curve of which these form the law. Not that this law always prevails to the end; sometimes, perturbations arise, but, even when this happens, it is ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the parabola once more, imagine it rolling on an indefinite straight line and ask what course does the focus of this curve follow. The answer comes: The focus of the parabola describes a 'catenary,' a line very simple in shape, but endowed with an algebraic symbol that has to resort to a kind of cabalistic number at variance with any sort of numeration, so much so that the unit refuses to express it, however much we subdivide the unit. It is called the number e. ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... particulars renders any method of calculation simply an approximation in the end. The factors which must remain unknown necessarily lead the engineer to the provision of a margin of safety, which makes mathematical refinement and algebraic formulae ridiculous. ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... taken successively on the elements in sets of three. We may, in other words, take one set of observations upon the combined time of the three elements numbered 1, 2, 3; another set upon elements 2, 3, 4; another set upon elements, 3, 4, 1, and still another upon the set 4,1, 2. By algebraic equations we may solve the values of each of ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... a fanciful present from an admiring Marchesa, curiously embroidered with algebraic figures like a conjuror's robe, and with a skull-cap of black satin on his hive of a head, the man of gravity was seated at a huge claw-footed old table, round as the zodiac. It was covered with printer papers, files of documents, rolls of manuscript, stray bits of strange models in wood and ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... young Willard was seated between two brothers—Henry and Brayton Abbott by name—engaged in solving Algebraic problems, a whispered inquiry, regarding the lesson, passed from one ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens |
