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Attribute   Listen
verb
Attribute  v. t.  (past & past part. attributed; pres. part. attributing)  To ascribe; to consider (something) as due or appropriate (to); to refer, as an effect to a cause; to impute; to assign; to consider as belonging (to). "We attribute nothing to God that hath any repugnancy or contradiction in it." "The merit of service is seldom attributed to the true and exact performer."
Synonyms: See Ascribe.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Attribute" Quotes from Famous Books



... sanctions, the fear of exile, the dungeon, or the gibbet, when conscience no longer enforced the dictates of religious faith. The great auxiliary and support of all human authority is to be found in that most noble attribute of human nature—the sense of duty, which ceases to operate the moment we lose the consciousness of freedom, believing that our thoughts, our actions, ourselves, are but necessary links in an eternal chain of ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull

... feelings subordinate reason and people judge more by their emotions than by evidence, many are too quick to-day to attribute interested motives to those whose opinions are not similar to their own. Since a great number of people in the Congo and at home are curious to know whether I was sent out by the Congo Government, the British Government or the Times, I will state here once for all that I went ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman

... annually in 1995-97, but averaged near-zero growth in 1998-2001 and contracted by 2.3 percent in 2002, in response to regional contagion and an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease. On a per capita basis, real income has stagnated at 1980 levels. Most observers attribute Paraguay's poor economic performance to political uncertainty, corruption, lack of progress on structural reform, substantial internal and external debt, and deficient infrastructure. Aided by a firmer exchange rate and perhaps ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... Antiochus approaches conducted by her own son Eleazar. She curses the apostate.—She has still two younger sons, but the Israelites take them from her to give as hostages to the King Antiochus. Leah is bound to a cypress-tree by her own people, who attribute their misfortunes to her and to her sons. Only Noemi, the despised daughter-in-law remains to liberate the miserable mother, and together they resolve to ask the tyrant's pardon ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... jumping, and the being out in the open air. Very naturally, however, men who have passed their lives as fox-hunters grow to regard the chase and the object of it alike with superstitious veneration. They attribute almost mythical characters to the animal. I know some of my good Virginian friends, for instance, who seriously believe that the Virginia red fox is a beast quite unparalleled for speed and endurance no less than for cunning. This is of course a mistake. Compared with a wolf, an ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... Danish law, the property of the wife be seized to cover the debts of the husband. Similarly runs the law of Norway of 1888.[152] The right of educating the children and of deciding thereupon is, according to the legislation of most countries, the attribute of the father: here and there a subordinate co-operation is granted the mother. The old Roman maxim, that stood in sharp contradiction to the principles prevalent during the mother-right, and that clothed the father alone with rights and powers over the child, is to this ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... the veteran nobleman too well to attribute this advice to any motive save deep interest in his safety. He saw, too, that it was utterly impossible for them to remain as they then were, without serious evils alike to his female and male companions; the common soldiers, steady ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... The attribute of modernity is not given to every new age. The cogs in the wheels of time slip back, at times. The classic revival may be permeated with enthusiasm, but it is a second edition of an old work—not a virile essay at expression of living thought. The later Renaissance ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin

... could the party have had in the art with which he is accused? Surely it may be here asked, Why should Cheyt Sing wish to rebel, who held on easy and moderate terms (for such I admit they were) a very considerable territory, with every attribute of royalty attached? The tribute was paid for protection, which he had a right to claim, and which he actually received. What reason under heaven could he have to go and seek another master, to place himself under the protection of Sujah Dowlah, in whose hands ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... phenomenon in question is without doubt more complicated than it appears, and the causes to which we attribute it are certainly powerfully modified by the general character of the objects in which they reside. Most of the German botanists give this explanation, others suppose that it forms at first or during ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... the derivation of the word from the Greek, "to symbolize" signifies "to compare one thing with another." Hence a symbol is the expression of an idea that has been derived from the comparison or contrast of some object with a moral conception or attribute. Thus we say that the plumb is a symbol of rectitude of conduct. The physical qualities of the plumb are here compared or contrasted with the moral conception of virtue, or rectitude. Then to the Speculative Mason it becomes, after he has been ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... O king, to hear in detail the origin, the place, the growth, the decay, the rise, the root, the inseparable attribute, the course, the time, the cause, and the consequence, of ignorance. The misery that is felt here ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... clothes do not make the man, but they have a much larger influence on man's life than we are wont to attribute to them. Prentice Mulford declares dress to be one of the avenues for the spiritualization of the race. This is not an extravagant statement, when we remember what an effect clothes have in inciting to personal cleanliness. Let a woman, for instance, don an old soiled or worn wrapper, and it will ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... where it was roughly handled. The principle of household suffrage was conceded, and another million voters were added to the electorate. Disraeli had made a greater change of front than any which he could attribute to Peel, and that without conviction, for reasons of party expediency. The real triumph belonged to Bright. 'The Bill adopted', he writes, 'is the precise franchise I recommended in 1858.' He had not only roused the country by his platform ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... physical excellence of her mother. The miscarriage that Anne experienced in February, 1536, was probably the occasion of her repudiation and murder in the following May, as Henry was always inclined to attribute disappointments of this kind to his wives, who ever dwelt in the valley of the shadow of death.[Footnote: Henry thought of divorcing Catharine of Aragon some years before she had become too old to bear children. She ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... so prodigious a length, that it not only reached the ground, but I had to tie it up as carters do their horses' tails, to keep it out of the snow. My hair and eyebrows had increased in the same proportion, so that I was more like a wild beast than a man. This extraordinary exuberance I attribute entirely to my having lived so completely on bear's flesh. When cut off it served to stuff a large sized pillow, which I afterwards gave to the President of the United States, who sleeps every night ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... scientific forest than most men, would have been much surprised to learn that he was preaching the doctrine of the Cabbala, pure and simple. According to this modification of Neoplatonism by contact with Hebrew speculation, the divine essence is unknowable—without form or attribute; but the interval between it and the world of sense is filled by intelligible entities, which are nothing but the familiar hypostatised abstractions of the realists. These have emanated, like immense waves of light, from the divine centre, and, as ten consecutive zones of ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... acknowledged. We are startled from time to time at the rapid growth of crime in our cities; but it is the natural result of preexisting physical evils. These evils have become more apparent during the last twenty years than before, and it has been the fashion to attribute their increase, with their frightful consequences, mainly to the enormous Irish immigration, which for a time crowded our streets with poor, foreign in origin, and degraded, not only by hereditary poverty, but by centuries of civil and religious oppression. This ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... perfectly natural causes—had left upon my mind a strange impression. That he should have lured me so far, and then eluded me in such a way! I could not help fancying design in it: and fancying so, I could attribute such design only to a higher intelligence—in fact, to ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... viz., out of the first hundred, nineteen had pustules; out of the second, thirteen; and out of the last hundred and ten, only seven had pustules. Thus it appears that the disease has become considerably milder; which I am inclined to attribute to a greater caution used in the choice of the matter, with which the infection was communicated; for, lately, that which has been employed for this purpose has been taken only from those patients in whom the cow-pox proved very mild and well characterized." ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... accounts, whose terrible disarrangement I had aided, five years before, in remedying, still hung over the dying man's head, like a nightmare. He could not die, he said, with the thought in his mind, that any one might attribute this disorder to intentional ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... between God and man, we rub out all moral distinctions as well. If we are not other than He is, how can we act other than He wills? If we hold that the soul is only "a finite mode of God's infinite attribute of thought," part of "the necessary expression of the infinite attributes of eternal Being," the sense of sin can be no ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... the multitudinous facts far surpass our powers of complete colligation, that much in the vital process is still obscure, that we are conscious in ourselves of a power of shaping circumstances which we are inclined in various degrees to attribute to other living things, so far we recognize a profound difference between the laws of life and the laws of physics, and pay our respects to M. Bergson and his allies of the neo-vitalist school. Not for the first time in history we have to seek the truth in the ...
— Progress and History • Various

... render me as Conspicuous as any Young Woman in Town. It is in my Power to enjoy it in all its Vanities, but I have, from a very careful Education, contracted a great Aversion to the forward Air and Fashion which is practised in all Publick Places and Assemblies. I attribute this very much to the Stile and Manners of our Plays: I was last Night at the Funeral, where a Confident Lover in the Play, speaking of his Mistress, cries out: Oh that Harriot! to fold these Arms about the Waste of that Beauteous strugling, and at last ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... responded, hoping that he would attribute the heightened color of her cheeks to the exertion of the ride. "We thought we'd ride out to see how you ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... affairs whirl onwards together in such a torrentuous galopade, that I am compelled to seize occasion by the forelock; for each moment has its imperious employ. Do not then accuse me of negligence: if my correspondence has not always that regularity which I would fain give it, attribute the fault solely to the whirlwind in which I live, and which carries me hither and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... after suffering the most terrible reverses an army does not fall from its position of being the finest in the world. For if nations ascribe their victories to the ability of their generals and the courage of their soldiers, they always attribute their defeats to an inexplicable fatality. On the other hand, navies are classed according to the number of their ships. There is a first, a second, a third, and so on. So that there exists no doubt as to ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... Rye-beach, observing the interesting phenomenon, believe there are two sets of islands there; but recalling facts which I have learned, and philosophical truths which I have acquired and verified, I attribute the appearance to its true cause, refraction of light. When in passing from room to room in the dark, with my arms outspread, I run my nose against the edge of a door, I do not therefrom conclude that my nose is longer than my arms! ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... almost always religious. Religion in some form enters into all the details of early life—there is no event that is not supposed to be caused or affected by a supernatural Power or influence. A vaguely conceived force (mana), an attribute of life, is believed to reside in all things, and under certain circumstances has to be reckoned with. Mysterious potencies in the shape of souls, spirits, gods, or mana are held to preside over and control all affairs—birth, ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... way, manufactured paper, gunpowder, pottery and other articles in common use. This knowledge which he claimed to possess was tested by actual demonstration during the trial for his life. His superior skill in planning was universally admitted by his fellow workmen. He did not, however, attribute this superior influence to sorcery, conjuration or such like agencies, for he had the utmost contempt ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... allowed to worship their Maker according to their own desires." Exactly. Many visitors left at once, and will never return. During my six hours' stay I heard complaints of the falling-off of business. If the place be empty next summer the people will attribute the loss to the British Government, and especially to the machinations of the Tory party. An old fisherman said the fish had left the bay. I assured him they would return under a Dublin Parliament. He refused to be comforted, because they ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... brother when given to you in charge as such, that they may remain as secure and inviolable in your breast as his own, before communicated to you. I further present you with check-words two; their names are TRUTH and UNION, and are thus explained: Truth is a divine attribute, and the foundation of every virtue; to be good and true is the first lesson we are taught in Masonry; on this theme we contemplate, and by its dictates endeavor to regulate our conduct; hence, while influenced by this ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... in autumn on its expanded form. M. Richard explains the cause more philosophically: "Although the fall of the leaves generally takes place at the approach of winter, cold is not to be considered as the principal cause of this phenomenon. It is much more natural to attribute it to the cessation of vegetation, and the want of nourishment which the leaves experience at that season, when the course of the sap is interrupted. The vessels of the leaf contract, dry up, and soon after, that organ is detached from the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various

... is highly esteemed by the natives, and they attribute to it the virtues of Peruvian bark; the Portuguese, ascribe the same quality to it, and dispatch from their factories small vessels to collect all they ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... not necessarily a sixth sense or a fixed attribute of personality. It is based on knowledge of the workings of the other man's mind, either intuitive or acquired. It is the purpose of this and succeeding chapters to consider some of the aspects of human nature that can be turned to advantage ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... than two. Some of our statesmen have got themselves into such a condition of mind on this point as to really believe that, while all other products of human labor are changing in value, gold alone is gifted with the great attribute of God—immutability. It is sheer blasphemy. It is conclusively proved, and by many different lines of reasoning, that silver is many times more stable in ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter

... well and good. But he seeks more, and fails, I think, to attain more. It seems to me impossible that the suggestions he creates can ever be more than suggestions. They cannot become definite concepts that will mean the same thing to all men. Suggestion, the opening-up of vistas, is a high attribute of the art he follows; but he is not content with suggestion, he would seek more definite expression of what, after all, is not thought but mood. So it is that he is most successful when conveying mood and less successful when conveying esoteric thought. As a critic, of ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... sometimes,' I answered, 'the very solitude and repose which steal over one, enfeebles the spirit and makes life too harmonious for improvement either of the mind or heart. Continued life in a place like this, would rob an American of his last attribute,—a love of progression. Rest and sensuous enjoyment were not intended for a people like us. Yet the place is so lovely, I feel like ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... me, but they are a very small fraction of the library, as is shown by the numerals attached to the several class letters. Very few of them are as old as the twelfth century; late twelfth and particularly early fourteenth make up the bulk. I attribute this to the great fire of 1286, and I take it that then the greater part of the priory books were spoiled, and that energetic steps to refill the library were taken in the years that followed. There are more Norwich books in the University Library at Cambridge ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... should be invincible, they kept them away from those contests in which victory is assigned, not by the judge, or by the issue of the contest itself, but by the voice of the vanquished begging the victor to spare him as he falls. This attribute of never being conquered, which they so jealously guard among their citizens, can be attained by all men through virtue and goodwill, because even when all else is vanquished, the mind remains unconquered. For this cause no one ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... explains Malthus's position. To attribute depopulation to luxury was to say that it was caused by the inequality of property. The rich man wasted the substance of the country, became demoralised himself, and both corrupted and plundered his neighbours. The return to a 'state of nature,' in Rousseau's ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... what might otherwise be a dark interior. In summer it can be screened to keep out flies and mosquitoes. Through it on fair winter days, especially if it faces south or west, pours that most valuable attribute ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... one man, and he innocent, and sees, standing in their midst, the meek and lowly Jesus, calm as an evening zephyr over Judea's plains, from whose eye flows the gentle love of an infinite divinity,—his face beaming in sympathy with every attribute of goodness, faith and humanity,—all this, too, before his mad, unjust accusers, from whose eyes flash in mingled rays the venom of scorn and hate,—his mind grows strong with a sense of right. His feelings will not longer ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... expressive, than the gestures and attitudes of those dancing-girls, which may properly be called the eloquence of the body, in which indeed most of the Asiatics and inhabitants of the southren climates constitutionally excel, from a sensibility more exquisite than is the attribute of the more northern people; but a sensibility ballanced by too many disadvantages to be envied them. The Siamese, we are told, have three dances, called the Cone, the Lacone, and the Raban. ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... blindness, this people will wag their poor heads, and attribute their diseases not ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day

... rate, from reproach. He was kind and charitable to the poor, punctual in his services, forbearing with the farmers around him, mild with his brother clergymen, and indifferent to aught that bishop or archdeacon might think or say of him. I do not name this latter attribute as a virtue, but as a fact. But all these points were as nothing in the known character of Mr. Woolsworthy, of Oxney Colne. He was the antiquarian of Dartmoor. That was his line of life. It was in that capacity that he was known to the ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various

... me as come to establish peace on earth, for I have come to send a sword, and to separate the son from the father, and the daughter from her mother, and the daughter-in-law from her mother-in-law,' which words are written in Mat. ch. x. But we find the prophecies concerning the Messiah to attribute to him very different works from these; nay, the very opposite. For, whereas Jesus testifies concerning himself, that he did not come to establish peace in the earth, but 'division,' 'fire' and 'sword,' Zechariah says, concerning ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English

... to which, in the course of his polemics, he had so long been accustomed. The king, by this ill usage, was still more prejudiced against the new doctrines; but the public, who naturally favor the weaker party, were inclined to attribute to Luther the victory in the dispute.[*] And as the controversy became more illustrious by Henry's entering the lists, it drew still more the attention of mankind; and the Lutheran doctrine daily acquired new converts ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... to promise her any favour she asked—and this was what she was after! I attribute her obstinacy to this; for if she loved me she would have ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... if they are unsuccessful, lamenting the war between England and America; they call it an unhappy strife between brethren; and they attribute this "unnatural war," to a French influence; and their friends in New England, who are denominated tories, use the same language. They say that all the odium of the war ought to fall on our administration and their wicked seducers, the French; and yet you will find that both ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... and dished-up melodist, so that they turn with horror from such meat, so I cannot separate this bird, nor any bird, from the bird's wild life of liberty, and the marvellous faculty of flight which is the bird's attribute. To see so wild and aerial a creature in a cage jars my whole system, and is a sight hateful and unnatural, an outrage on our ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... to be eaten. But, as this had no effect on the captain's conduct, their prejudice gradually subsided: they began to like their diet as much as the rest of their companions; and, at length, there was hardly a man in the ship who did not attribute the freedom of the crew from the scurvy, to the beer and vegetables which had been made use of at New Zealand. Henceforward, whenever the seamen came to a place where vegetables could be obtained, our commander seldom found it necessary to order them to be gathered; and, if ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... in contrast with the foregoing is found in persons of a more strenuous, perhaps more admirable but less agreeable character. The savour of acerbity may be a natural attribute of the critical character, and it is certainly not lessened where moral philosophy is the subject-matter of the criticism. The continual search after solutions of problems that may be insoluble at least makes ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... had ideas in his groups, but he was not sculpturesque. His friends protest against this judgment, and attribute it, ad nauseam, to "malevolence" and "envy." What if his technique was less brilliant than that of Hals, they say; what if his shadows are less transparent than those of Rembrandt (and they will make no meaner comparison)? ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... fact I attribute the circumstance that there has always been a small section of the population to which the ordinary methods of constitutional agitation have appeared feeble and unavailing, but to understand to the full the reason for ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... deprived of their sovereignty without even a mention of it—when the tenth amendment confronts us with the declaration that nothing was surrendered by implication—that everything was reserved unless expressly delegated to the United States or prohibited to the States? Here is an attribute which they certainly possessed—which nobody denies, or can deny, that they did possess—and of which Mr. Everett says no mention is made in the Constitution. In what conceivable way, then, was ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... sanctuary, lost to him for ever. For he could never quite forget the defiling thought; it would always remain with him, and the consciousness of the stain would preclude all possibility of that refining happiness, that attribute of cleanliness, which he now knew had long been his. In his anger and self-loathing his rage turned against Kitty. It was always the same story—the charm and ideality of man's life always soiled by woman's influence; so it was in the beginning, ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... August, a year ago, wearing a suit of white serge which attracted a little attention from those observers who were able to observe anything except the heat. The coat was shaped delicately; it outlined the wearer, and, fitting him as women's clothes fit women, suggested an effeminacy not an attribute of the tall Corliss. The effeminacy belonged all to the tailor, an artist plying far from Corliss Street, for the coat would have encountered a hundred of its fellows at Trouville or Ostende this very day. Corliss Street is the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, the Park ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... unparalleled value, not in itself, but for what it represents. That thing you know. You have twice held it in your hands. I have twice taken it from you. Well, I am entitled to believe that, when you tried to obtain possession of it, you meant to use the power which you attribute to it and to use ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc

... the raised tone of his voice—he was speaking quite a third above his ordinary pitch—that he was pleasantly excited by our interview with Anne: an excitement that he now wished either to conceal, or, if that were impossible, to attribute to another cause. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... inclined to attribute the lustre of mercerised cotton to the absence of the cuticle, which is destroyed and removed in the process, partly by the chemical action of the alkali, and partly by the stretching at one or other stage of the process. The authors have investigated the ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross

... great, material civilization; nowhere is it more observable than in Paris life. What bullyism is to the English, shrewdness to the Yankee, and intrigue to the Italian, is finesse, which is a union of insight and address, to the French. This normal attribute is another proof how the economy of Gallic life is reduced to an art. It is the expression in manners of Rochefoucauld's maxims, of Richelieu's policy, of Talleyrand's cunning. It is favored by the tendency ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... of Louisiana are protesting strongly against permitting Gen. Lovell to remain in command in that State, since the fall of New Orleans (which I omitted to note in regular order in these chronicles), and they attribute that disgraceful event, some to his incompetency, and others to treason. These remonstrances come from such influential parties, I think the President must listen to them. Yes, a Massachusetts man (they say Gen. L. came from Boston) was in command of the troops of New Orleans when that great city ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... on the painful hardness, which aunt succeeded in allaying after four most exquisite bouts of love, varied by a thoroughly good double gamahuche between the last two acts. Aunt must have spent at least ten times, and appeared thoroughly contented, but continued to attribute it to her gratification at having relieved me of my painful hardness. Again I passed hours in instructive conversation with my learned uncle and after a similar evening to the last, retired ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... courier who carried the plan of operations of the French army, and Alexander declared in a dispatch that Jews had opened the eyes of the Russians, and the Government, therefore, felt itself bound to them by eternal gratitude.[7] It is to this proof of patriotism that some attribute Alexander's interest in the Jews and his order that three deputies should reside in St. Petersburg to represent them in Russia, and in Poland a committee consisting of three Christians and eight Jews should be appointed to devise ways and means of ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... under the circumstances there was some credit for being merry. It happened at a deuced bad time, but Sir Thomas took his defeat manfully, while those animated volcanoes, Hawley and Markham were wonderfully passive—a fact we must attribute to Major McNair. The general melee and pow-wow in which I was so unceremoniously toasted, taught a lesson. Jove, the Major is entitled to an order if he can, by any means, reclaim any of the 52nd. But the most amusing of the crowd ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour

... necessities that compass our chaotic sense when we ascend by continual abstraction to the absolute, without entangling ourselves vainly in those wildernesses that no created intellect can range or measure—even one sole attribute of God, His holiness, makes it as impossible for Him to proceed except by certain steps as it would be impossible for a man, though a free agent, and apparently master, as he feels and thinks, of his own life, to cut his throat while in a state of pleasurable health both of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... you would define a mirror—from a surface per se, in quantum est superficies, or from a substance that forms the surface, or from the substance upon which the surface rests, the raw material, modified by the attribute 'surface,' since it is clear that, surface being an accidental property of bodies, it cannot exist without substance. Let's ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... attribute of these khouans is, that after having excited the ignorant Kabyles to many a losing war by their magnetism, they remain themselves behind the curtain, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... bitterness of death, to the friendless and poverty-stricken parent. In this way she passed the night, to renew, with the dawn, the toils and cares which were fast closing their work on her. We will not say what Phoebe, under other circumstances, might have been. She possessed every noble attribute common to woman, without education, or training, but she was not prepossessing in her appearance; and Mrs. Percy, who never studied character, or sympathized with menials, or strangers, would have laughed at the idea ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous

... no longer virtue, or wisdom, but wretched and degenerate cowardice; no, never let him that was born to execute judgment secure his honours by cruelty and oppression. Hath not thy Koran told thee that fear and submission is a subject's tribute, yet mercy is the attribute of Allah, and the most pleasing endowment of ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... and assigns to it as its province the motives or propensions to action. It takes a view of these, approves or disapproves, impels to or restrains from action. But at times he uses language that almost compels one to attribute to him the popular view of conscience as passing its judgments with unerring certainty on individual acts. Indeed his theory is weakest exactly at the point where the real difficulty begins. We get from him no satisfactory answer to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... shrewd wisdom of his practical suggestions in treatment may be attributed in large part the extraordinary vogue which the great Coan has enjoyed for twenty-five centuries. One may appreciate the veneration with which the Father of Medicine was regarded by the attribute "divine" which was usually attached to his name. Listen to this for directness and honesty of speech taken from the work on the joints characterized by Littre as "the great surgical monument of antiquity": ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... stories and a certain poignant sensual disillusionment is insistently stressed by the characters who flit through the shadowy foreground. It is the definitely realized and concrete sense of landscape that Mr. Lawrence has achieved which is his finest artistic attribute, and the sensitive response to light which is so characteristic an element in his vision bathes all the pictures he presents in a rich glow, whose gradations of light and shadow respond finely to the emotional reactions of his characters. He is the most sophisticated of the contemporary ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... stage men no longer attribute life indiscriminately to inanimate things; but the same powers and attributes recognized by subjective vision in man are attributed to the animals by which he is surrounded. No line of demarkation ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... certain stanzas are written, under what are called the fourteen stazioni or stations of the cross, (places where our Saviour is supposed to have halted, or fainted under his load, on his way to Calvary.) Stanzas we were at first profane enough to attribute to Metastasio, but afterwards found that it was only the metastasis of his metre adapted to the use of the church. They are much better than most of our sacred poetry, as it is strangely miscalled, which is frequently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... of his conduct, in the very court of justice unsheathed his sword and slew himself. Upon such considerations, Nicias declined all difficult and lengthy enterprises; if he took a command, he was for doing what was safe; and if, as thus was likely, he had for the most part success, he did not attribute it to any wisdom, conduct, or courage of his own, but, to avoid envy, he thanked fortune for all, and gave the glory to the divine powers. And the actions themselves bore testimony in his favor; the city met at that time with several considerable reverses, but he had ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... Above and below are classes of extreme characterisation; I believe the happiness assignable to those who are the lowest stratum of civilisation is, relatively speaking, no whit less than that we may attribute to the thin stratum of the surface, using the surface to mean the excessively rich. It is a paradox, but anyone capable of thinking may be assured of its truth. The life of the very poorest is a struggle to support their bodies; the richest, relieved of that one ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... blurred and defaced by party feuds and personal ambitions, by the fickleness and passion of the mob, by the lust of conquest and the fratricidal jealousies of neighbouring republics. Yet to the influence of this ideal we must attribute both the solidarity of the Italian city-state and the wealth of individual genius which it fostered. The Italian Renaissance was little more than the harvest-time of medieval Italy, the glorious evening of a day which had dawned with the Fourth Crusade and had reached high ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... inspires such demonstrations on the part of linnets, sparrows, chaffinches, and other determined hunters of the cuckoo. It seems impossible, when we observe the larger bird's unmistakable desire to win free of them, to attribute friendly feelings to its pursuers. Yet some writers have held the curious belief that, with lingering memories of the days when, a year ago, they devoted themselves to the ugly foster-child, the little birds still regard the stranger with affection. If so, then they have ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... 'No—I attribute no sort of supernaturalism to my fancy about the thing that was really about to take place. By a law of the association of ideas—contraries come into the mind as often as similarities—and the peace and solitude readily called up the notion of what would most ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... exact mensuration. In fact, since quantification is the object of all mathematical operations, mathematics may be not inaptly defined as the science of the determinations of limits. It is evident, therefore, that the terms quantity and finitude express the same attribute, namely, limitation—the former relatively, the latter absolutely; for quantity is limitation considered with relation to some standard of measurement, and finitude is limitation considered simply in itself. The sphere of quantity, therefore, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... tore off several of his arms. During the summer of 1348 he lost two of his largest arms. These were large and sound, and were more than a foot in diameter at the points of breakage. As these were broken by a down-pressing weight or force, we may attribute these breaks to accumulations ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... people blame the churches and the ministers and the lack of proper training of the children by their parents. Others blame the automobile and sports and recreations which are being indulged in on Sunday, through the laxity and insufficiency of the law-makers. Still others attribute it largely to the pernicious influence of the alien population. Finally, there are some who blame the vain, selfish spirit of the age, without bothering their heads to decide where that came from (except to infer a general relationship ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... establishment of large forest reserves near the headwaters of our streams, which are to serve also the purpose of national parks. In assigning a cause for the lowering of our streams, and the drying up of many of our lakes, in a former part of this work, I attribute it to the plowing up of their valleys and watersheds, and not to the destruction of the forests, because I do not think that the latter reason has sufficiently progressed to produce the result, although it is well known that the destruction of growing timber about the head waters ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... papers on the Diatomaceae ("On Conjugation in the Diatomaceae," "Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist." Volume XX., 1847, pages 9-11, 343-4; "Further Observations on the Diatomaceae," loc. cit., 1848, page 161). See "Life and Letters" II., page 292.) I should attribute most of such structures to quite unknown laws of growth; and mere repetition of parts is to our eyes one main element of beauty. When any structure is of use (and I can show what curiously minute particulars are often of highest use), I can see with my prejudiced eyes no limit to the perfection ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... (except me). The Germans are a very naughty people. But the Belgians are worse. It was very, very wicked of the Germans to bombard the houses of the Belgians. But how naughty of the Belgians to go and sit in their houses while they were bombarded. It is to that that I attribute—with my infallible sense of justice—the dreadful loss of life. So you see the only conclusion that I can reach is that everybody is very naughty and that the only remedy would be to appoint me a committee—me and a few ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock

... without the aid of thy members, so without thy people thy reign is nothing. My son, thou shalt fear and dread God above all things; and thou shalt love, honour, and worship him with all thy heart: thou shalt attribute and ascribe to him all things wherein thou seest thyself to be well fortunate, be it victory of thine enemies, love of thy friends, obedience of thy subjects, strength and activeness of body, honour, riches, or fruitful generations, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... of God, as a creative intelligence; and that it was therefore entitled to the rank of an esoteric doctrine of natural religion. But seeing in the same no practical or moral bearing, I confined it to the schools of philosophy. The admission of the Logos, as hypostasized (that is, neither a mere attribute, nor a personification) in no respect removed my doubts concerning the Incarnation and the Redemption by the cross; which I could neither reconcile in reason with the impassiveness of the Divine Being, nor in my moral feelings with the sacred distinction ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... of Congress "to exclude aliens from the United States and to prescribe the terms and conditions on which they come in" is absolute, being an attribute of the United States as a sovereign nation. In the words of the Court: "That the government of the United States, through the action of the legislative department, can exclude aliens from its territory is a proposition which we do not think open to controversy. ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... found after this time." This is so very different from what is ordinarily presumed to have been the case and openly proclaimed by many historians of medicine because apparently they would prefer to attribute scientific advance to the Arabs than to the Christian scholars of the time, that it is worth ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... Patroclus. We are too well acquainted with these answers; But his evasion, wing'd thus swift with scorn, Cannot outfly our apprehensions. Much attribute he hath, and much the reason Why we ascribe it to him. Yet all his virtues, Not virtuously on his own part beheld, Do in our eyes begin to lose their gloss; Yea, like fair fruit in an unwholesome dish, Are like to rot untasted. Go and tell him ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... earnestly ask that they also deal wisely and promptly with such conduct, or else this small body of wrongdoers may bring shame upon the great mass of their innocent and right-thinking fellows—that is, upon our nation as a whole. Good manners should be an international no less than an individual attribute. I ask fair treatment for the Japanese as I would ask fair treatment for Germans or Englishmen, Frenchmen, Russians, or Italians. I ask it as due to humanity and civilization. I ask it as due to ourselves because we must act uprightly toward ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... the race. It is not a decay, for it grows with the growing mind, being feeblest in childhood, when desires are simplest and most easily satisfied, and strongest where mental life is the most vigorous. It is an attribute of great minds in proportion to their greatness. To be without it, would be to live a minor in point of intellect, not much removed from imbecility. It is not a waste of energy, rather it furnishes the motive-power to all human volition. It comes ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... 17 more bring us to 4 Men (here a dot is missing in Kingsborough's copy, but is present in the photograph); 8 more to 12 Akbal. Here there is one dot too many, which we may attribute to a mistake of the original artist. Assuming XII to be correct, 8 more bring us to 7 Chuen; 8 more to 2 Cauac; 8 more to 10 Manik; 8 more to 5 Men; 8 more to 13 Akbal, and to the end of our table; thus, if we include the first seventeen days, completing the ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas

... incidents can I attribute our loss: yet still comes there the shadow of a suspicion out of Paris and its Politics. For example, when the Saint-Simonian Society transmitted its Propositions hither, and the whole Gans was one vast cackle of laughter, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... simply spies and tyrants, resistance to whom was innate virtue. He was forever ignoring or violating some written or unwritten law of the Academy; was frequently being caught in the act, and was invariably ready to attribute the resultant report to ill luck which pursued no one else, or to a deliberate persecution which followed him forever. Every six months he had been on the verge of dismissal, and now, a fortnight from the final examination, with a margin of only six demerit to run on, ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... exists within their party, frequently argue that prostitution, now so prevalent throughout the world, will under Socialism no longer remain the dreadful menace to society that it is today. They attribute the prevalence of this vice principally to poverty, and argue that in the new state, all persons will be abundantly supplied with the goods of this world, and consequently no one will be obliged to indulge in this ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... the former case the real cause lies not in the fruit but in some nerve irritant, tea, for example, the effects of which are more acutely felt under the new regime. The nervous system tends to become much more sensitive upon a vegetarian, especially fruitarian, diet, and people often attribute their increased nervousness and irritability to the diet when it is simply that they now react more quickly to poisons. This is not a bad thing, on the contrary, it shows that the system has become ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel

... but Our sorrow for our sins; and then delights To pardon erring man: Sweet mercy seems Its darling attribute, which limits justice; As if there were degrees in infinite, And infinite would rather want perfection ...
— All for Love • John Dryden

... a girl of breeding and of family elopes with an under-servant or a chauffeur, the unfortunate incident is hushed up and the parents attribute the unhappy occurrence primarily to some mental or moral twist in the young lady. They should seek the fault in their own hearts and lives. It is the home life of England that is responsible for a large portion of the misery that drives the victims to open revolt. The children ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... 'Where Fortune lavishes her gifts unearned, 'Can selfishness the liberal heart controul? 'Is glory there achieved by arts, as foul 'As those which felons, fiends, and furies plan? 'Spiders ensnare, snakes poison, tygers prowl; 'Love is the godlike attribute of man. 'O teach a simple Youth this mystery ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... quelque chose?" "Absolument rien, madame," was the consolatory reply of one of the first medical men of Europe, under whose care both I and my sister then were, and to whose skilful and devoted care I attribute the preservation of my sister's life under ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... compromising spirit, have formulated in accordance with the statement of the Chinese Representatives thereby making the statements of the Representatives an empty talk; and on seeing them conceding with the one hand and withholding with the other it is very difficult to attribute faithfulness and sincerity to ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... have been invented for that purpose. It is the light of truth alone, sought for its own sake, and therefore clearly seen, that can reveal the sublime proportions, and the intrinsic moral loveliness, of this awful attribute of the Divine Being. On the other hand, would we vindicate the freedom of man, and break into atoms the iron law of necessity, which is supposed to bind him to the dust, then again must we seek the truth without reference to this particular aim or object. We must ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... strain, condition; characteristic, peculiarity, trait, property, attribute, attribution, accident; high rank, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... had been a previous people from whom both races inherited their extinct civilization, this previous race being the "Toltecs," whom we have repeatedly mentioned in the preceding chapter. To that previous race some attribute the colossal stonework around Lake Titicaca, as well as other survivals of long-forgotten culture. Some would even class them with the "mound-builders" of the Ohio Valley. Other recent antiquaries, however, while fully admitting the Aztec-Tescucan civilization ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... succeeding poets and romancers have accumulated around the names of Charlemagne and his Paladins, or Peers. But Ariosto and the other Italian poets have drawn from different sources, and doubtless often from their own invention, numberless other stories which they attribute to the same heroes, not hesitating to quote as their authority "the good Turpin," though his history contains no trace of them; and the more outrageous the improbability, or rather the impossibility, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... out, "Ah! So-and-So is dead"; for such an exclamation is supposed to delude the demon of disease into a belief that he has accomplished his fell purpose, so he takes himself off and leaves the sufferer to get well. The Mai Darat, a Sakai tribe of the Malay Peninsula, attribute all kinds of diseases to the agency of spirits which they call nyani; fortunately, however, the magician can induce these maleficent beings to come out of the sick person and take up their abode in rude figures of grass, which are hung up outside the houses in little bell-shaped ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... majestic Simplicity of the Relation, cannot but be surpris'd at the Advances that may be made in Poetry by the Strength of an uncultivated Genius, and may see how far Nature can proceed without the Ornamental Helps and Assistances of Art. The Poet don't attribute his Sickness to a Debauch, to the Irregularity or Intemperance of his Life, but to an Exercise becoming an Hero; and tho' he dies quietly in his Bed, he may be said in some measure to die in the Bed of Honour. And to ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe

... of a man, my inferiority to whom I am proud to acknowledge. Amongst other things, however, Moore, after giving Lord B, much good advice about public opinion, &c. seems to deprecate my influence on his mind on the subject of religion, and to attribute the tone assumed in Cain to my suggestions. Moore cautions him against any influence on this particular with the most friendly zeal, and it is plain that his motive springs from a desire of benefiting Lord B. without degrading me. I think you know Moore. Pray assure him that ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... inexpressibly grieved and shocked. It is the attribute of the poet to seem always living, always a friend. Leonard felt as if some one very dear had been suddenly torn from his heart. He tried to console his mother; but her emotion was contagious, and he ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... extensionis, as feeling, volition, desire, representation, and judgment are possible only in a conscious being, and hence are merely modifications of thought. Extension is the essential or constitutive attribute of body, and thought of mind. Body is never without extension, and mind never without thought—mens semper cogitat. Guided by the self-evident principle that the non-existent has no properties, we argue from a perceived ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... and promised that no negotiations should take place, however secret and confidential, that were not laid before her Majesty. "He has the chief administration among the States," said Herle, "and to his credit and dexterity they attribute the despatch of most things. He showed unto me the state of the enemy throughout the provinces, and of the negotiation in France, whereof he had no opinion at all of success, nor any will of his own part but to please the Prince of Orange in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... restiff horse, (as I have heard described by sportsmen,) he pains one's hands, and half disjoints one's arms, to rein him in. And, when you see his letters, you must form no judgment upon them, till you have read my answers. If you do, you will indeed think you have cause to attribute self-deceit, and throbs, and glows, to your friend: and yet, at other times, the contradictory nature complains, that I shew him as little favour, and my friends as much inveteracy, as if, in the rencontre betwixt my brother and him, he had been the aggressor; ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... gratuity, so that those may receive a salary who have served, and not those who came to get office. Whoever not satisfied with this, wishes an office, let him change his manner of living and remove the obstacles so that an office may be given him; and if not, then let him attribute the blame to himself. It might even be a means to cause many, by consideration or desire of an office, to moderate and relinquish their excesses if there were a punishment for them, and a reward for well doing; and if offices ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair

... reinnuha; that is, "I thank thee, I thank thee, devil, I thank thee, little uncle!" If they are sick, or have a pain or soreness anywhere in their limbs, and I ask them what ails them they say that the Devil sits in their body, or in the sore places, and bites them there; so that they attribute to the Devil at once the accidents which befall them; they have otherwise no religion. When we pray they laugh at us. Some of them despise it entirely; and some, when we tell them what we do when we pray, stand astonished. When we deliver a sermon, sometimes ten ...
— Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 • Various

... interesting volume entitled The Origin of Attic Comedy, the author reckons the Doctor among the stock Masks of the early Greek Theatre, and assigns to this character the precise role which later survivals have led us to attribute to him. ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... quantity as any he asked them to find in the recitation-room. They were baffled by the impersonal attitude he had brought from the university, where the individual counted for little, and were inclined to attribute it to a disposition to ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... unconscious, but this very unconsciousness is perhaps one of the secrets of their strength. In the natural world beings exclusively governed by instinct accomplish acts whose marvellous complexity astounds us. Reason is an attribute of humanity of too recent date and still too imperfect to reveal to us the laws of the unconscious, and still more to take its place. The part played by the unconscious in all our acts is immense, and that played by reason very small. The unconscious ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... as forged any miracles for his, which he really did not, lay under a hearty curse from the prophet. For it was a received tradition among the faithful, that Mahomet denounced hell and damnation to all those who should tell any lies of him. So that none who believed in Mahomet, durst attribute miracles to him which he was not concerned in; and those who believed not in him, would certainly never have given him the honour of working any, unless he had done so." Christian reader, thou seest how much can be said, and ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English

... contrary, who are an active, laborious class of men but yet indulge as freely in opium as any others whatever, are notwithstanding the most healthy and vigorous people to be met with on the island. It has been usual also to attribute to the practice destructive consequences of another nature from the frenzy it has been supposed to excite in those who take it in quantities. But this should probably rank with the many errors that mankind have been led into by travellers ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... attribute it to the dead weight of instinct which he could not step over, again through weakness and meanness. He looked at his fellow prisoners and was amazed to see how they all loved life and prized it. It seemed to him ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... nocturnal habits and plaintive note, is invested with a reputation for occult power which inspires a chilling awe among superstitious people, and leads them insanely to attribute to it an evil influence; but it is a harmless, useful night prowler, flying low and catching enormous numbers of hurtful insects, always the winged varieties, in its ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... fortnight later, and that was as far as he got in explanation. It was enough. I could read men a little. To Mick women—all women—were sacred creatures. In the scheme of nature woman was good and man was evil. Passion was a male attribute, an evil fire that scorched and burned and rendered impotent the protesting ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... yet been crossed from within. No change of substance, no modification of environment, no chemistry, no electricity, nor any form of energy, nor any evolution can endow any single atom of the mineral world with the attribute of Life. Only by the bending down into this dead world of some living form can these dead atoms be gifted with the properties of vitality, without this preliminary contact with Life they remain fixed in the inorganic sphere forever. It is a very mysterious Law ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... look, and the tone of his conversation both with masters and comrades. There was almost always a dash of bitterness in what he said. He had very little of the disposition that leads to attachments; which I can only attribute to the misfortunes of his family every since his birth, and the impression which the conquest of his country had made on his early years." One day, at dinner, the principal of the school happened to say something slightingly of Paoli. "He was a great man," ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... of moral guilt annexed to such conduct as that which we attribute to Le Sage, is an invidious topic, not necessarily connected with our subject, and upon which we enter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... the sake of the amusement they afford to readers at home. In future, whenever I hear a man state how he broke the back of an antelope at 600 yards, I shall incline to believe a cipher had been added by a slip of the pen, or attribute it to a typographical error, for this is almost an impossible feat in an African forest. It may be done once, but it could never be done twice running. An antelope makes a very small target at 600 yards distance; but, then, all these stories belong by right divine to the chasseur ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... use of still is frequent in Elizabethan writers (Abbott, Sec. 69). I was all ear. Warton notes this expressive idiom (still current) in Drummond's 'Sonnet to the Nightingale,' and in Tempest, iv. l. 59, "all eyes." All is an attribute of I. ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... Because my places being but three, contain all his: I knew the Organon to be confusde, And I reduc'd it into better forme. And this for Aristotle will I say, That he that despiseth him, can nere Be good in Logick or Philosophie. And thats because the blockish Sorbonests Attribute as much unto their workes, As to the service of ...
— Massacre at Paris • Christopher Marlowe

... found at Saint Albans that the journey would be insupportably tedious, and altered his Plan. [146] A coach and six is in our time never seen, except as part of some pageant. The frequent mention therefore of such equipages in old books is likely to mislead us. We attribute to magnificence what was really the effect of a very disagreeable necessity. People, in the time of Charles the Second, travelled with six horses, because with a smaller number there was great danger ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... fraternity would have been of real service; but he had decamped at an early hour, and had carried off an axe, a tomahawk, and some bacon, although I had made him several presents. I was not at all surprised at this piece of roguery, since cunning is the natural attribute of a savage; but I was provoked at their running away at a moment when I so much required ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... and destroy Newton's Theory of Attraction, by such an argument as the following. "Let any man jump from a height, in descending he feels no attraction to the Earth. How hasty and absurd therefore is it to attribute the movement in ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... character of Fire, and regard it as the mysterious element of the Universe, which typifies the Divinity. They believe, and practice strictly, with the descendants of Abraham, the law of separation, but not the practice of circumcision. With the ancient Phoenicians, they attribute extraordinary powers, to the wisdom and subtlety of the Serpent, and this reptile holds a high place in their mythology. They regard the Tortoise, as the original increment, and medium of the creation of the Earth, and view the Bear and the Wolf as enchanted ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... to weep as he realises his loss. And the rest of the Free Company, — the pony, the cows, the great cart-horses, — are ever shaming him by their unboastful exercise of some enviable and unattainable attribute. Even the friendly pig, who (did but parents permit) should eat of his bread and drink of his cup, and be unto him as a brother, — which among all these unhappy bifurcations, so cheery, so unambitious, so purely ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame

... those colleagues died, English comedy took to her bed. 'The Comic Muse, long sick, is now a- dying,' wrote Garrick in his prologue to She Stoops to Conquer, and she had not to apologise, like Charles the Second, for the unconscionable time she was about it. It is a little crude to attribute her demise to Jeremy Collier and his Short View—a block painted to look like a thunderbolt. It is not a matter of decency, of alteration or improvement in manners. A comedy might be wholly Congrevean ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... his character was already setting into firm, unyielding mould—the one trait to which Russell H. Conwell, the preacher, the lecturer, writer, founder of college and hospital, may attribute the success he has gained. This childish escapade was the first to strike fire from ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr



Words linked to "Attribute" :   trait, form, interiorise, abstract entity, ballast, characteristic, sunniness, impute, infinite, blame, personate, cheerfulness, interiorize, anthropomorphise, dimension, human nature, personify, feature, time, lineament, sunshine, sensualize, project, heritage, charge, ethos, abstraction, anthropomorphize, reattribute, depth, pass judgment, accredit, personality, character, state, common denominator, attribution, credit, space, quality, feature of speech, internalise, eidos



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