"Definition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... encountered in theosophical literature, should perhaps have some definition. It has a wide application and is used as a synonym for region, place, sphere or world. In referring to the physical plane the term embraces all we know of earth and sky and ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... not new but is as old as the world; and it is not supernatural but is subject to the eternal laws that govern all that exists. This phenomenon has been usually defined as "intercourse with the spirit world." That definition is inexact. Under such a definition the spirit world is contrasted with the material world. But this is erroneous; there is no such contrast! Both worlds are so closely connected that it is impossible to draw a line of demarcation, separating the one from the other. We say matter ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... the pistols on the ground. The irresistible instinct of an average man (unless totally paralyzed by discomfiture) would have been to stoop for his weapons, exposing himself to the risk of being shot down in that position. Instinct, of course, is irreflective. It is its very definition. But it may be an inquiry worth pursuing whether in reflective mankind the mechanical promptings of instinct are not affected by the customary mode of thought. In his young days, Armand D'Hubert, the reflective, promising officer, had emitted the ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... nothing was good which was not useful, and again detailing the persecutions which this conviction had brought upon him, was delighted that an opportunity was now afforded to gain from the lips of a distinguished philosopher a definition of what utility really was. The distinguished philosopher could not refuse so ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... friends, with the definition of a pseudoscience. A pseudoscience consists of a nomenclature, with a self-adjusting arrangement, by which all positive evidence, or such as favors its doctrines, is admitted, and all negative evidence, or such as tells against it, is excluded. It is invariably connected ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... poet's definition of poetry as "the heat and height of sane emotion" would have been unintelligible to Boileau. Deficient in imagination, he always saw life on its material side, and was irritated by any display of emotion not reducible to logic. So ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... must only advert to one more doctrine, held by a thinker of our own age and country, whose opinions are worthy of all respect. It is, that the Biological sciences differ from all others, inasmuch as in them classification takes place by type and not by definition.[7] ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... nearly as a human being may to Euclid's definition of a straight line. He was length without breadth. From boyhood's early day he had sprouted like a weed, till now in the middle twenties he gave startled strangers the conviction that it only required a sharp gust of wind to snap him in half. Lying in bed, he looked more like ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... that this story is an Allegory. They have probably read other stories of a similar nature, and may be asked to frame a simple definition. An Allegory is a story, not literally true, containing incidents that have a deeper meaning than is apparent on the surface. Its purpose is to teach some moral truth or universal principle. It differs from the Parable in ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... transparency, the cosmopolitan rejoined: "That, in so defining the thing, Proclus set it to modern understandings in the most crystal light it was susceptible of, I will not rashly deny; still, if you could put the definition in words suited to perceptions like mine, I should take it for ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... animals, great as it certainly is, is one of degree and not of quality." The authors may possibly not agree in the definitions of the idea of self-consciousness—we ourselves perhaps are only an additional example in confirmation of this fact—; but whatever the definition may be, the fact itself remains, that self-consciousness does not stand as one of the intellectual faculties beside the others and cooerdinate with them, but, as an entirely new form of being, introduces a qualitatively new and valuable factor into the ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... The prevailing definition of study gives further proof of a very meager notion in regard to it. Frequently during the last few years I have obtained from students in college, as well as from teachers, brief statements of their idea of study. Fully nine out of every ten have ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... this meeting on Monday last, I stated that a modern church should have free pews. This statement needs no definition or argument. The system of pew [18] rentals is an abomination, already abolished in countless churches more orthodox than our own, and a scandal in any church claiming ...
— A Statement: On the Future of This Church • John Haynes Holmes
... mitigate his discontent and lessen the dissatisfied feeling? It passed hovering in and about his thoughts, though uncaught by actual words; and as his mind played with it, he felt more hopeful. He searched in vain for a definition, but, though fruitless, the search brought comfort somehow. Something had been accomplished and it was due to himself, because without his presence it would never have been done. This hint slipped into desire, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... neck may be molded in connection with the head if desired. Gelatine and compositions of glue and wax are used for molds where fine definition is desirable, and wax as well as plaster and paper for making casts. The ground up paper pulp is used for many casts, pressing it into mold ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... as part of the liberties of the English merchant or trader that he should still have a property in his wreck; and then the question came up as to what was a wreck. It was generally admitted that when all hands were lost, that was a wreck; but they wanted to get as narrow a definition as they could, so they got Parliament to establish this law, that in future nothing shall be considered a wreck out of which a cat or a dog escapes alive; and from that time until the present day no vessel coasts about England without ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... enough to encourage his attentions, which is a fairly good definition of a harmless flirtation," she said, quite seriously, "and later discovers that she loves him and that he loves her, why should they ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... the different types of reactions included under the heading of perseveration are sufficiently descriptive; we shall here refer only to those which require further definition. ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent
... guided him to a thorough investigation of the principle of all the Natural Sciences, with especial devotion to one single branch, as Botany or Conchology, and an entire mastery of its terminology I should have urged our gifted but destitute of all scientific method friend to the observation and definition of objective phenomena, rather than to subjective analysis, and ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... What is God's definition of that golden word "success"? He looks at Roman Catholic Europe, and Roman and heathen South America, and Mohammedan and heathen Africa and Asia, and many a forgotten place in many a great land. And then He looks at us, and I wonder what He thinks. Ragland, Fellow of Corpus ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... that matter," she replied distressfully, "if it is true? In the definition of sentimentality in ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... why there may be so many renderings of Cherubino's melodies. Mozart idealised an infinite emotion. The singer is forced to define; the actor also is forced to define. Each introduces his own limit on the feeling. When the actor and the singer meet together in one personality, this definition of emotion becomes of necessity doubly specific. The condition of all music is that it depends in a great measure on the temperament of the interpreter for its momentary shade of expression, and this dependence is ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... age of Earl Simon had been fertile in new ideals and principles of government. Edward held to the best of the traditions of his youth, and his task was not one of creation so much as of selection. His age was an age of definition. The series of great laws, which he made during the earlier half of his reign, represented a long effort to appropriate what was best in the age that had gone before, and to combine it in orderly sequence. The same ideals mark the constitutional policy ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Diagnosis and definition.—A subspecies of softshell turtle most closely allied to Trionyx muticus muticus but differing from that subspecies in having: (1) a juvenal pattern of large, circular spots, (2) no stripes on dorsal surface of snout, ...
— Description of a New Softshell Turtle From the Southeastern United States • Robert G. Webb
... this book, that privateering and piracy should not be conjoined in one volume, with documents intermingled in one chronological order, lest the impression be created that piracy and privateering were much the same. It is true that, in theory and in legal definition, they are widely different things and stand on totally different bases. Legally, a privateer is an armed vessel (or its commander) which, in time of war, though owners and officers and crew are private persons, has a commission ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... we shall before conclusion notice some other considerations which lead the ordinary "pantheist" to the true foundation of morality. Happiness has been defined by John Stuart Mill as the state of absence of opposition. Manu gives the definition in ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... our Lord here employs the word 'belief' without any definition of what or whom it is that they were to believe. He Himself, and not certain thoughts about Him, is the true object of a man's faith. We may believe a proposition, but faith must grasp a person. Even when the person is made known to us by a proposition which we have to believe before we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... "what has this to do with friendship and love? I thought you were going to give something like a London definition ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... could, merely saying that his Government "desired" the complete evacuation of the Roman States; but his reserve was not imitated by Lord Clarendon, nor could Napoleon have expected that it would be. When some one asked Lord Palmerston for a definition of the difference between "occupation" and "business," he answered on the spur of the moment—"There is a French occupation of Rome, but they have no business there;" and this witticism correctly represented English ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... the Constitution permit the acquisition of territory? May Congress establish a protective tariff, or a system of internal improvements? We have here but three of the great questions which have led to a definition of these opposing views. Speaking in general terms, the party in power has favored loose construction, while the party out of power has advocated strict construction. Said Mr. Bryce, "The Americans have more than once bent their Constitution ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... observer of Nature recognizes in almost every instance that comes under his notice in every-day life, without the aid of logical definition, the broad distinctions between an animal, a plant, and a stone. To him, the old definition that an animal is possessed of life and locomotion, a plant of life without locomotion, and a mineral deficient in both, seems to be sufficient, until some day he travels beyond the circuit of ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... dazzles our eyes at intervals, as we review the multitudes of the laughing and the gay, is a thing to be put on and off at will, like any other garment; and hence is it that the earthly happiness of men and women is susceptible of a relative definition only. I do not wish to argue that such a thing as happiness itself has become as obsolete in our day as hoop-skirts and side-combs, for, from the earliest reflections I have ever indulged in, I have concluded that it is quite easy to attain to a tolerable degree of happiness, ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... teacher desired me to ask of this young man the meaning of some word that had an abstract meaning. I asked him what he understood by intelligence. He put his hand to his head, and thought for some time, before he attempted to reply; then he nearly covered the slate with his definition. He evidently saw the difference between intelligence and learning or knowledge, but had to use many words to express his idea; but I thought he had as clear a thought as any of us. After he had given the best definition he could, he ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen
... of different degrees. It is also put up in cedar pencils. Rather more gritty than red chalk or charcoal, it is a favourite medium with some, and can be used with advantage to supplement charcoal when more precision and definition are wanted. It has very much the same quality of line and so does not show as a different medium. It can be rubbed like charcoal and red chalk and will spread a tone over the paper in ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... looked back upon from a distance, reliving it in memory, the sights and sounds and events which had impressed the boy's mind standing vividly out. Of this lowly poem it may be truly said that it is "emotion recollected in tranquillity," to use the phrase invented by Wordsworth when he attempted a definition of poetry generally and signally failed, as ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... incredulity, derision, pity, or the like—which, being in Anglo-Congo or ebony lingo, must needs be unintelligible to many of my readers. Therefore, for the enlightenment and edification of the unlearned, have I thought it best to give a list of the interjections and phrases in question, with the definition or free translation of each, ignoring etymologies as smacking, just ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... p. 221. In some of these declarations, supposed to be penned by Lord Falkland, is found the first regular definition of the constitution, according to our present ideas of it, that occurs in any English composition; at least any published by authority. The three species of government, monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical, are there plainly distinguished, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... reciprocally intent upon each other, and when rays are joined to rays, and lights to lights, then the spirit of the one is joined to that of the other; so are strong ligations made and vehement loves inflamed." Taking this definition of witchcraft, we sadly fear it is still practised to a very great extent among us. The best we can say of it is, that the business seems latterly to have fallen into younger hands; its victims do ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Gloria, to be the crux of our endeavors. But when we speak of unselfishness, as we now have it in mind, we are entering a hitherto unknown realm. The definition of selfishness yesterday or to- day is quite another thing from the unselfishness that we have in view, and which we hope and expect will soon leaven society. I think, perhaps, we may reach the result quicker if we call it mankind's new ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... How many kinds of boundary are there here between the stain which ends in a sharp edge against the gold, and the sweep in which the purple and red mingle more evenly than they do in shot-silk or in flames? Nor are the boundaries to be measured only by degrees of definition. They have also their characters of line. Here in this leaf are boundaries intermittent, boundaries rugged, boundaries curved, and boundaries broken. Nor do shape and definition ever begin to exhaust the list. For there are softness and hardness too: the agreement and disagreement ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... already been proposed by the United States, this Government has been invited to accede by all the powers represented at Paris except Great Britain and Turkey. To the last of the two additional propositions—that in relation to blockades—there can certainly be no objection. It is merely the definition of what shall constitute the effectual investment of a blockaded place, a definition for which this Government has always contended, claiming indemnity for losses where a practical violation of the rule thus defined has been injurious to our commerce. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... economy of heaven. From breakfast to dinner I remain on the balcony, and read aloud several chapters of the "Memoires" of Dumas, by way of practice. A dictionary lies by me, and I suffer no word to pass without a perfect definition. Then comes my French grammar, which I study while knitting or sewing, which takes very nearly until dinner-time. After that, I do as I please, either reading or talking, until sunset when we can ride or walk; ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Mr. Kurtz, he crawled as much as the veriest savage of them all. I had no idea of the conditions, he said: these heads were the heads of rebels. I shocked him excessively by laughing. Rebels! What would be the next definition I was to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, workers—and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked very subdued to me on their sticks. 'You don't know how such a life tries a man like ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... theologians. Much of the current cant concerning 'mysticism' may be cited in illustration of this. Exactly what mysticism is no one appears to know. Definitions are numerous and varied. So far as most mystics are concerned the definition of Harnack—"Mysticism is rationalism applied to a sphere beyond reason"—appears to hit the mark, although how reason can be used in a sphere to which it does not apply is precisely one of those unintelligible statements that so delights those with ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... object, the acquisition of clear and distinct ideas 94 Its means, good definitions Conditions of definition ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... materials towards a treatise proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale, and to show it should be only rationis capax.... The matter is so clear that it will admit of no dispute—nay, I will hold a hundred pounds that you and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... three R's were still taught efficiently, even if they were taught with the aid of chestnuts, autumn leaves and flowers; they were glad to discover that an island, though formed in the school-yard from dirt and water, was still being defined with the old standard definition, "An island is a body of land entirely surrounded ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... what we are talking about and what others are talking about. One of the values of discussion is that it enables us more clearly to realize the meaning of the words with which we constantly operate. A man may entertain for a long while a half-conscious definition of democracy as meaning political equality, and suddenly come face to face with another who means by it industrial cooeperation and participation on the part of all workers. Whether he agrees with the new definition or not, at least his ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... addition of another excellence, a comeliness of form. We might have had a novel that would be a finer, truer, more vivid and more forcible picture of life. The best form is that which makes the most of its subject—there is no other definition of the meaning of form in fiction. The well-made book is the book in which the subject and the form coincide and are indistinguishable—the book in which the matter is all used up in the form, in which the form expresses all the matter. Where there is disagreement ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... Greek masters, my genuine and personal acquaintance was confined to the Latin classics. The most serious defect of my Essay is a kind of obscurity and abruptness which always fatigues, and may often elude, the attention of the reader. Instead of a precise and proper definition of the title itself, the sense of the word Litterature is loosely and variously applied: a number of remarks and examples, historical, critical, philosophical, are heaped on each other without method or connection; and if we except ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... says Ag, offended. "Why, I mean just what Noah Webster meant when the dove came back bringin' the definition to his ark. I mean map—m-a-p, map—a drawin' that shows you the way to get to a red cross that doesn't exist on the face of nature. I like green crosses as a matter of taste, but all our paralysed ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... Articles of the Remonstrants doctrine should be examined in a Synod of Holland, and the decision carried to a Synod of all the Provinces; that previous to its meeting, the Sovereignty of each Province in things sacred should be settled; that no definition should be fixed without an unanimous content; that if they could not agree they should endeavour to convene a General Council of the Reformed Churches; that in the mean time a severe Edict be published against rioters and the authors of defamatory libels; that the ministers be charged not to treat ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... vote or hold office. We require them to contribute their share in the way of taxes to the support of government, but allow them no voice in its direction. We hold them amenable to the laws when made, but allow them no share in making them. This language applied to males would be the exact definition of political slavery; applied to females custom does not teach us so to regard it." Woman, however, is beginning so to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Herold having called at his house, it afterward appears, by his own testimony, that immediately Herold commanded him (Lloyd) "For God's sake, make haste and get those things," he comprehended what "things" were indicated, without definition, and brought forth both carbines and whisky. He testifies that John H. Surratt had told him, when depositing the weapons in concealment in his house, that they would soon be called for, but did not instruct him, it seems, by whom they would ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... her breath. Her lovely Archelaus as he had appeared before going off to that terrible Crimea, which Annie always thought was so called because it was such a wicked place. The print was not very clear, as it was only a copy made from the original daguerreotype, but what it lacked in definition Annie's memory could supply. Archelaus was standing with one elbow leaning upon a rustic pillar; he wore his uniform and looked like a king. He had splendid side-whiskers, though their yellow hue did not show in the photograph. Her beautiful Archelaus ... now toiling and moiling in ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... since, after all, great works are only due to the expansion of little ideas, I do not see why I should not pluck the laurels, if only for the purpose of crowning those dirty bacon faces who join us in swallowing a dram. One moment, pilot, let us not start without making one little definition. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Charteris. "Heaven, as I apprehend it, is a place where we shall live eternally among those ladies of old years who never condescended actually to inhabit any realm more tangible than that of our boyish fancies. It is the obvious definition; and I defy you to evolve a more enticing allurement toward ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... this, as in so many other things, we lack incentive and invention, and are fondly colonial and imitative; we ought to call it the Dirt, for that is what it is with us. As a spectacle, the racing lacks the definition in England which our course gives, and when it began, I missed the relief into which our track throws the bird-like sweep of the horses as they skim the ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... himself, which came upon him and possessed him without his choice and against his will. With these too he felt the need to make himself at home, and these too, to satisfy his need, he shaped into creatures like himself. To the whole range of his inner experience he gave definition and life, presenting it to himself in a series of spiritual forms. In Aphrodite, mother of Eros, he incarnated the passion of love, placing in her broidered girdle "love and desire of loving converse that steals the wits even of the wise"; in Ares he embodied the ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Appeals of New York, as follows: "The opinion further said that the criticism to which the case of Munn vs. Illinois had been subjected proceeded mainly upon a limited and strict construction and definition of the police power; that there was little reason, under our system of government, for placing a close and narrow interpretation on the police power, or restricting its scope so as to hamper the legislative ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... Ruth, and his expression was malicious. "I suppose you'll be telling me next that you read Spencer on her recommendation—only you didn't. And she doesn't know anything more about Darwin and evolution than I do about King Solomon's mines. What's that jawbreaker definition about something or other, of Spencer's, that you sprang on us the other day—that indefinite, incoherent homogeneity thing? Spring it on her, and see if she understands a word of it. That isn't culture, you see. Well, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... charm about her that defied definition or analysis—a rapt, exquisite look that lifted her ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... I'shvara—or, as he said, using the theosophical term, the Logos, which is only the Greek name for I'shvara—a descent of I'shvara, uniting Himself with a human soul. With all respect for the profound learning of the lamented pandit, I cannot but think that that is only a partial definition. Probably he did not at that time desire, had not very possibly the time, to deal with case after case, having so wide a field to cover in the small number of lectures that he gave, and he therefore chose out one form, as we may say, of self-revelation, ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... different gatherings, making much unhappiness and despondency; and it was at this time that I noticed that during that week she was asked for the meaning at eight different assemblages, and flashed out a fresh definition every time, which showed me that she had more presence of mind than culture, though I said nothing, of course. She had one word which she always kept on hand, and ready, like a life-preserver, a kind of emergency word to strap on when she was likely to get washed overboard ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... had an air of being clear without being easily legible; it was large and rather roundish, with a lack of definition about the letters and a disposition to treat the large ones as liberal-minded people nowadays treat opinions, as all amounting to the same thing really—a years-smoothed boyish rather than an adult hand. And it filled seven ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... a purely philosophical one, and I must answer that I do not know enough of spirit or matter to be able to give a satisfactory definition." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... men better than men know women, and are rather like the little boy's definition of a friend: "A friend is a feller who knows all about you, and ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... 'Imitation' the common principle of the Arts of Poetry. II The Objects of Imitation. III The Manner of Imitation. IV The Origin and Development of Poetry. V Definition of the Ludicrous, and a brief sketch of the rise of Comedy. VI Definition of Tragedy. VII The Plot must be a Whole. VIII The Plot must be a Unity. IX (Plot continued.) Dramatic Unity. X (Plot continued.) Definitions of Simple and Complex Plots. XI (Plot continued.) Reversal ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... laws urgently need revision. They are imperfect in definition, confused and inconsistent in expression; they omit provision for many articles which, under modern reproductive processes are entitled to protection; they impose hardships upon the copyright proprietor which are not essential ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... earned the gratitude of their fellows, by translating some of the ever-vital aspects of religion into the vocabulary of the hour. The language of religious discourse is liable to a subtle kind of pedantry, requiring a vigorous intellect adequately to dissolve. New illustrations, novel forms of definition, are often helpful in expelling the dreariness of outworn and meaningless phrases. Ruskin's task is facilitated by the nice balance of his intellectual and imaginative endowments, by the fact that his words are not mere symbols of definite ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... history is studied from documents, and that documents are the traces of past events.[54] This is the place to indicate the consequences involved in this statement and this definition. ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... you are, by definition, sane; for insanity, in the final analysis, is the inability to distinguish the real ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... the perfection of the Divine nature, come into consideration here. But all fear is not excluded, because His displeasure is itself the natural proper object of fear. Reverence, ambition of His love and approbation, delight in the hope or consciousness of it, come likewise into this definition of the love of God, because He is the natural object of all those affections or movements of mind as really as He is the object of the affection, which is in the strictest sense called love; and all of them equally rest in Him as their end. And they may all be understood to be ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... Southern India approximating in area to Scotland, and with a general elevation of from two to three thousand feet above the level of the sea. It is commonly spoken of as the Mysore tableland, but this is rather a misleading description if we adopt the dictionary definition of the word tableland as being "a tract of country at once elevated and level," for, though there are in the interior of the province considerable stretches of rolling plains, the so-called tableland presents to the view a country intersected at intervals, more or less remote, ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... harmfulness and ineffectiveness of worry, not even in the acquirement of an unconscious conscience, but in the living of a life so full and good that worry cannot find place in it. That idea of worry and conscience, that definition of serenity, simplifies life immensely. To overcome worry by substituting development and growth need never be dull work. To know life in its farther reaches, life in its better applications, is the final remedy—the great ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... illustration of the subtle worth of such literature, in developing appreciation of those inner deeps of child life that escape definition and evaporate from the figures of the statistician, could scarcely be found than Pierre Loti's "Story of a Child." There is hardly a fact in the book. It tells not what the child did or what was done to him, but what he felt, thought, dreamed. A record of ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... this definition of species may appear to be, we confidently appeal to all practical naturalists, whether zoologists, botanists, or palaeontologists, to say if, in the vast majority of cases, they know, or mean to affirm anything more of the group of animals or ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... of causality, so long as the attempt to get along with a single one has not been pushed to its furthest extent (to absurdity, if I may be allowed to say so): that is a morality of method which one may not repudiate nowadays—it follows "from its definition," as mathematicians say. The question is ultimately whether we really recognize the will as OPERATING, whether we believe in the causality of the will; if we do so—and fundamentally our belief IN THIS is just ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... have excited by an Epistle Dedicatory very elegantly composed, I should have endeavoured to make a fine and learned Preface; nor do I want books which would have supplied me with all that can be said in a scholarly Manner upon Tragedy and Comedy; the Etymology of them both, their Origin, their Definition, and so forth. I should likewise have spoken to my friends, who to recommend my Performance, would not have refused me Verses, either in French or Latin. I have even some that would have praised me in Greek, ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... included in Logic terms and propositions, and the Port Royal logicians spoke of it as equivalent to the art of thinking. Even popularly, accuracy of classification, and the extent of command over premisses, are thought clearer signs of logical powers than accuracy of deduction. On the other hand, the definition of logic as a 'science treating of the operations of the understanding in the search of truth,' though wide enough, would err through including truths known from intuition; for, though doubtless many seeming intuitions are processes of inference, questions as to what facts are real ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... against ordre. But suche is the empire and regiment of all woman (as euidentlie before is declared) and therfore, I say; it is a thing plainlie repugnant to good ordre, yea it is the subuersion of the same. If any list to reiect the definition of Augustin, as ether not propre to this purpose, or elles as insufficient to proue mine intent: let the same man vnderstand, that in so doinge, he hath infirmed mine argument nothinge. For as I depend not vpon the determinations of men, so think I my cause no weaker, albeit ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox
... definition is the one who has that decoration. He is not placid. He is not discourteous. He ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... hasn't been proved, and until it is proved you will spend your time over other things that you know to be true. Try it at least, give it a chance. Why not? You give other things a chance, marriage, doctors, trades, amusements. Why not the Soul? Don't listen to any one else's definition of religion. Don't believe in it. Make your own. Find out for yourself. My children, I am an old man, I am shortly to die. If I have scolded forgive me. Let me leave with you my blessing, and my earnest prayer that you will not pass by God on the other side. The ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... royalist nor a republican, neither a democrat nor an aristocrat, but a disaffected subject under a King, a dangerous citizen of a Commonwealth, ridiculing both the friend of equality and the defender of prerogatives; no exact definition can be given, from his past conduct and avowed professions, of his real moral and political character. One thing only is certain;—he was an ungrateful traitor to Louis XVI., and is a submissive slave ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... phrase, "a beginning, a middle, and an end." That they are complete in themselves, although only parts of whole essays, is due to the fact that Huxley, in order to make succeeding material clear, often prepares the way with a long and careful definition. Such is the nature of the extract A Liberal Education, in reality a definition to make distinct and forcible his ideas on the shortcomings of English schools. Such a definition, also, is ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... But he did not believe that this should shackle his freedom in appointing. According to him a man must profess right views in order to be considered worthy of appointment. The result of this was that Washington's appointees must be orthodox in his definition ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... that those of whom we speak are really Manicheans without knowing it; and build their systems upon assumptions secretly borrowed from the disciples of Zoroaster, without ever stating those assumptions openly in the form of postulates or definition. ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... as a narcotic, "God" is brought into an argument as though it stood for a term which carried a well defined and well understood meaning. In work after work dealing with theism one looks in vain for some definition of "God." All that one can do is to gather the author's meaning from the course of his argument, and that is not always an easy task. The truth is, of course, that instead of the word carrying with it a generally understood meaning ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... are too subtle for definition. Superficially, two rivers in the North Country are unlike only in this respect, that one has cut a deep valley through the hills and flows swiftly and shallowly to its sea, and the other has kept to the plateaus and drops ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... disputes between the abbats of the two houses about tithes and other matters. Among the other matters were included questions of candlesticks and bindings and gildings of books. The two houses were long at variance on the right definition of luxury in living, and this variance may to this day be observed in their separate and distinct styles, both of architecture and the ornamentation of books. The use of gold was still continued in the older Benedictine ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... beganne to leave armes, haply for that many of them had none, and to bear the curtaines of their mistresses' beddes, their mistresses' colours, as impresses in their banners, shields, and caparisons.' Daniel, one of our earliest English writers on the subject, is worth quoting for a definition of the impress, and to shew the exclusive spirit of the age. He says: 'Impresa, used of the Italians for an enterprise taken in hand, with a firm and constant intent to bring the same to effect. As if a prince or captaine taking in hand some ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... give you my definition of metaphysics, that is to say, the science of the unknown, the science of guessing. Metaphysics is where two fools get together, and each one admits that neither can prove, and both say, "Hence we infer." That is the science of metaphysics. For this these ghosts were supposed to have ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... his suggestion that the article which he quotes from the Treaty of Paris can be taken as containing "an international official definition of neutralisation as applied to waters." The article in question, after declaring the Black Sea to be "neutralisee," no doubt goes on to explain the sense in which this phrase is to be understood, by laying down ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... "Considerations on the present Political State of India," after pointing out the depravity which prevails to an extraordinary degree among the population of India, states in the 313th page of the first volume, that "Poverty, or according to the definition of writers on Police, Indigence may be said to be the nurse of almost all crimes. To find out the causes of poverty, and to attempt their removal, must therefore be the chief ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... don't think that we should ever be spoken of as other people's property. All men are married women's property. That is the only true definition of what married women's property really is. But we don't belong to ...
— A Woman of No Importance • Oscar Wilde
... My definition of a drunkard has always been this: A man is a drunkard when he drinks whisky or any other liquor before breakfast. I think that is pretty nearly right. Personally I never took a drink of liquor before breakfast in my life ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe
... form that consists of three columns for 'word', 'definition', and 'additional notes'. It is set up with a comma between each item and a hard return at the end of each definition. This means that this section could easily be cut and pasted into its own text file and imported into a database or spreadsheet as a comma separated variable file (.csv ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... advance the interests of the Province;—if honouring such men and such principles be "hoisting the colours (as Mr. Mackenzie says), of a cruel, vindictive, Tory priesthood," then has Mr. Mackenzie the merit of a new discovery of vindictive cruelty, and with his own definition of liberty, and his own example of liberality, will he adopt his own honourable means to attain it, and breathe out death and destruction against all who do not incorporate themselves into a strait-jacket ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... the book, "What's Wrong?" and it begins on this note of interrogation. The chapter called "The Medical Mistake" is a brilliant attack on the idea that we must begin social reform by diagnosing the disease. "It is the whole definition and dignity of man that in social matters we must actually find the cure before we find the disease." The thing that is most terribly wrong with our modern civilisation is that it has lost not only health but the clear picture of health. The doctor called in to diagnose a bodily illness does not ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... excitation produced by several gases. In all these cases there seems to be a morbid degree of sensibility, with which this symptom is ready to ally itself, and which, though inaccurate as a medical definition, may be held sufficiently descriptive of one character of the various kinds of disorder with which this painful ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... many topics, which it is necessary to introduce into the pulpit, subjects in themselves interesting and important, but which few men can be trusted to treat in unpremeditated language; because they require an exactness of definition, and nice discrimination of phrase, which may be better commanded in the cool leisure of writing, than in the prompt and declamatory style of the speaker. The rule also forbids the attempt to speak when ill ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... point about people. It gives one one's definition of goodness both for one's self and for others. It gives one a ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... this chapter "chiffons," and given an imperfect definition of the term, as a sign-post of warning to masculine readers,—a hint that this is a chapter to be lightly skimmed, or altogether skipped, for it unavoidably treats of "chiffons," which the necessities of the narrative will ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... hurtled upon Caltis, tangled with him. It was absurd, insane. Man and moondog went down together in a silly sprawl. Sparks flew, became a confused tesseract of luminous motion. Radiance blazed up and danced and flickered and no exact definition of the intertwined bodies was possible. Glowing lines wove fat webs of living color. It was too swift, too ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... I find YOUNG PEOPLE a multum in parvo, serving as an entertaining reader, besides giving manly hints in all branches of knowledge—geography, natural history, science, drawing, and music. Even the puzzles draw out the youthful mind, which learns from them unconsciously the analysis and definition of words. It is like the medicine which ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... disobedience of orders, fell heavily on Holmes, who was imprisoned for two months, and not re-appointed to the same ship. Brahe afterwards made a proper submission for the fault he had committed, at his own court. His conduct reminds us of Sir Henry Wotton's definition of an ambassador—that he is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. A ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... mean only those, which are caused by the sensorial power of association. Whence it appears, that those fibrous motions, which constitute the introductory link of an associate train of motions, are excluded from this definition, as not being themselves caused by the sensorial power of association, but by irritation, or sensation, or volition. I shall give for example the flushing of the face after dinner; the capillary vessels of the face increase their actions in consequence of their catenation, not their association, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... our habits, but it only re-established cordiality between Only-One-Eye and us. He once more became the honored proprietor of the Fly from Saturday night until Monday morning, as his superiority over all of us had been thoroughly established by that definition, which, moreover, closed one of the questions about the word Fly. For the future we were satisfied with playing the secondary part of grateful and polite friends who profited discreetly by the week days, without any contention of any ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... definition of capital, economists differ with all the consistency that they only show in differing. One of the earliest descriptions of capital was given by Turgot, who thought that capital meant "valeurs accumulees." In this wide sense the word covers all goods which have value, that is, can be exchanged ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... bursts upon us as we top the last rise to the Aghil Pass. Across the deep valley is arrayed in bold and jagged outline a series of pinnacles of ice glistening in the brilliant sunshine, showing up in clearest definition against the intense blue sky, and rising abruptly and incredibly high above the rock-bound Oprang River. They are the mighty peaks which group around K2—the noblest cluster ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... so clearly defined and so well known, at any rate in all our large centres of labor, that definition is hardly necessary. For England and America alike the sweater is simply a sub-contractor who, at home or in small workshops, undertakes to do work, which he in turn sublets to other contractors, or has done under his own eyes. The business had a simple and natural beginning, ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... impossibility of substantiating its actual occurrence. The modern discussion has proceeded largely in view of Hume's destructive criticism. Assuming the possibility of a miracle, the questions of fact and of definition ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... similar, to which unquestionably he would give the name of art. He must have seen plays like those of Aristophanes, with the chorus dressed up as Birds or Clouds or Frogs or Wasps, and he might undoubtedly have claimed such plays as evidence of the rightness of his definition. Here were men imitating birds and beasts, dressed in their skins and feathers, mimicking their gestures. For his own days his judgment would have been unquestionably right; but again, if we look at the beginning of ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... With his definition of sincerity that comes out in the following extracts I have myself often found fault in conversation and by letter, but I never produced any change. I thought, and still think, that it is sophistical in tone, and tampers with ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... may not be identified with motion, and as may be designated indifferently as the Divinity, or as the Soul of the world,—the possibility of Atheism may be effectually excluded; but this only serves to show the indispensable necessity of a correct definition of the terms which are employed in this discussion, since it is perfectly manifest that they are not used in the same sense by the contending parties, and that consequently the disputants are not arguing about the same thing. For Pantheism, whatever ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... sorry piece of illustration of the old-fashioned sort, lacking definition and finish, but effective notwithstanding; for it was evidently the reproduction, though a cheap and imperfect process, of a photograph. It represented a small yacht at anchor below some woods, with the owner standing on deck in his shirt sleeves: a well-knit, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Desire for improvement. 4. Fondness for children. Miserable condition of a husband or wife, where this is wanting. 5. Love of domestic concerns. Evils of ignorance on this point. Fashionable education in fault. 6. Sobriety. Definition of the term. An anecdote. Love of mental and bodily excitement usually connected. 7. Industry. How to judge whether a person is industrious. 8. Early rising. A mark of industry. Late rising difficult ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... doctrines are realistic in that they assume reality to be demonstrated or revealed, rather than created, by knowledge. Both are rationalistic in that they develop a system of philosophy from the problem of philosophy, or deduce a definition of reality from the conception, of reality. There remains a third doctrine of the same type—the philosophy of Aristotle, the most elaborately constructed system of Greek antiquity, and the most potent influence exerted upon ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... the principles of Plato, and delineates the perfect orator according to the abstract conceptions of the intellect rather than the deductions of observation and experience. Hence he sets out with a definition of the perfectly eloquent man, whose characteristic it is to express himself with propriety on all subjects, whether humble, great, or of an intermediate character;[213] and here he has an opportunity of paying some indirect compliments to himself. With this work he was so ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... of which have no direct connection with spiritual beings, while it will also be allowed that these do not lie without the field ordinarily covered by the word superstition. For our purposes, therefore, it is necessary to enlarge this definition. This may be done by emphasizing the first component part of the word, and introducing into it the notion of what has been left over, or of survival, made familiar by the genius of Edward B. Tylor. In these lingering notions we have opinions respecting relations ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... Comte de Chesterfield, in which, after the first page, there is practically nothing about Lord Chesterfield or his deafness, but which contains a good deal of Voltaire's crispest writing, especially the definition of that English freedom which he sometimes used to extol. With thirty guineas a year,[359] the materialist doctor Sidrac informs the unfortunate Goudman, who has lost a living by the said deafness, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... half my life—at all events, the better half—at a public school and the University, preparatory to a profession, my antipathy for which was exactly proportioned by my inaptitude for it, the sole result is, that I can now answer to the definition of a real gentleman, "one who has no visible ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... The definition was not quite clear to him. He had proved that he could see farther and clearer than she could when looking at trees or chipmunks. He looked ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... Joseph, give me a definition of love according to thy idea. What can it be—for thou seest it exists out of romances. This worthy youngster undertook these little conspiracies through love. Thou heardst it thyself with throe unworthy ears. Come, what is love? For my part, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... to vote for this bill from the opinion he entertained on "the question of power." He referred to the Dred Scott and other decisions, and showed their bearing upon the legislation now proposed. He said: "I have been exceedingly anxious individually that there should be some definition which will rid this class of our people from that objection. If the Supreme Court decision is a binding one, and will be followed in the future, this law which we are now about to pass will be held, of course, to be of no avail, as far as it professes to define what citizenship is, because it ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... we must give to the word "God," I am not going to propose to you a metaphysical definition, or any system of my own: I am inquiring what is in fact the idea of God in the bosom of modern society, in the souls which live by this idea, in the hearts of which it constitutes the joy, in the consciences of which it is ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... a great deal about the authority of the Church in these days, as a determiner of truth and as a prescriber of Christian action. It means generally official authority, the power of guidance and definition of the Church's action, etc., which some people think is lodged in the hands of preachers, pastors, priests, either individually or collectively. There is nothing of that sort meant here. Whatever this authority is, it belongs ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... conceived to be ideally beautiful or necessary for the grand style in vast architectonic schemes of decoration—still it is used with an exquisite sensitiveness to the pose and structure of the natural body, a delicate tact in the definition of muscle and articulation, an acute feeling for the qualities of flesh and texture. None of the creations of this period, moreover, are devoid of intense animating emotions ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... even give us a substantial devil, but coins a strange personification of a negative. Such was not the devil, by the way, at the time of "the noblest heroism ever transacted on the earth." Such a definition of the "roaring lion," would, in those days of light and happiness, have procured its author, at the very least, a trip to Barbadoes. Even Cromwell himself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... this there is no one very satisfactory reply. There are, indeed, so many diverse views held with regard to the nature and classification of werwolves, their existence is so keenly disputed, and the subject is capable of being regarded from so many standpoints, that any attempt at definition in a restricted sense would ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... month, therefore, continues to be essentially a true lunar one, though the exact definition of each month is, to some extent, conventional, and the words of the Son of Sirach still apply to ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... stroke is the general definition of a chop. The slice and chop are so closely related that, except in stroke analysis, they may ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." In justification our sins are pardoned and we are accepted as righteous because of the righteousness of Christ, which is imputed unto us and received by faith alone. And yet to him this definition in every day language means that, being justified, we stand before God as if we never had sinned. No wonder that in the light of such a doctrine Paul could say, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... religious demands means first of all to live in the light of them, and to act as if the invisible world which they suggest were real. It is a fact of human nature, that men can live and die by the help of a sort of faith that goes without a single dogma or definition. The bare assurance that this natural order is not ultimate but a mere sign or vision, the external staging of a many-storied universe, in which spiritual forces have the last word and are eternal,—this bare {57} assurance is to such men enough to ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... fully to understand this definition we must know exactly what is meant by 'thought,' by a 'law of thought,' by the term ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... the definition Cospatric clapped on to that culminating episode of his Cambridge life; "but," he added, with a chuckle, "I did enjoy myself whilst the fun lasted. That's just typical of the particular fool I am. Nature intended me for clown in a third-rate travelling ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... say in Georgia; and I have one in my mind's eye. There the people do not live so fast as to have no time to enjoy their life, while they have all that makes life enjoyable. Successful effort is my nearest approach to a definition of what constitutes happiness. There, there is every scope for various effort. The city and country around are still in process of active growth. "Fecundity" is writ large across the surface of the State, on fields, in mills, in mines. All the men ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... I hate definitions; and of all the definitions in the world, the one I have been most unfortunate in has been a definition of friendship; I might say" (and here her voice sunk), "I might say of all the sentiments in the world, friendship is the one which has been must fatal to me; but I must not inoculate you with my bad spirits, bad spirits are not for young blood ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... troubadours had sung of love as a quality belonging to gentle folk, meaning by that phrase the nobility, and nobility had been defined by the Emperor Frederick II, patron of the troubadours, as a combination of ancestral wealth and fine manners. In the Banquet (bk. IV) Dante rejects that definition and transfers nobility from the social to the moral order holding that "nobility exists where ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... universal definitions and standards of literacy. Unless otherwise noted, all rates are based on the most common definition—the ability to read and write at a specified age. Detailing the standards that individual countries use to assess the ability to read and write is beyond the scope of ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... extremely indecent, and culpable in another view, does not constitute a different sort of wrong, or any other rule of law, than would have obtained, if the same words had been pronounced elsewhere. I don't know whether there be any difference in the law of Scotland, in the definition of slander, before the Commissaries, or the Court of Session. The common law of England does not give way to actions for every reproachful word. An action cannot be brought for general damages, upon any words which import less than an offence cognisable by law; consequently ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... I ventured on a definition;—only a few loose ideas which had been troubling me lately. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... a bright winter's day, before a glowing fire of anthracite, with one's feet on the fender, and one's form half-buried in the depths of a cushioned easy-chair, holding the uncut pages of the last novel, be indeed the practical definition of happiness, then Emma Leslie was to be envied as she sat thus cosily, one afternoon, listening to an animated discussion going on between an elderly lady and gentleman on the opposite side of the fire-place. The discussion ran on a grave ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... answers this question with the ancient designation of a Studium Generale,—a school of universal learning. "Such a university," he says, "is in its essence a place for the communication and circulation of thought by means of personal intercourse over a wide tract of country."[B] Accepting this definition, can we say that Harvard College, as at present constituted, is a University? Must we not rather describe it as a place where boys are made to recite lessons from text-books, and to write compulsory exercises, and are marked according ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... father, grinned companionably at his son. "I agree with Scotty. Not only is Rick's driving a remarkable experience, but it fits the rest of the definition: 'The ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... How could I tell him that my longings to do something, to be somebody in the world were never more keen than at that moment? Matthew Arnold had not then written his definition of God as the stream of tendency by which we fulfil the laws of our being; and my father, at any rate, would not have acquiesced in the definition. Dimly but passionately I felt then, as I had always felt, that I had a mission to perform, a service to do which ultimately ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... essay in colonization by her conquest of Algiers. A Dey once said to an English consul, "The Algerines are a company of rogues, and I am their captain." The definition cannot be improved. That such a power should have been permitted to exist and ravage is one of the anomalies of modern history. Yet within the memory of living men this hoard of pirates flaunted its barbarism in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... centrifugal force? It is an extremely simple thing; a very ordinary amount of mechanical intelligence is sufficient to enable one to form a correct and clear idea of it. This fact renders it all the more surprising that such inaccurate and confused language should be employed in its definition. Respecting writers, also, who use language with precision, and who are profound masters of this subject, it must be said that, if it had been their purpose to shroud centrifugal force in mystery, they could hardly have accomplished this purpose more effectually ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... individual thought must follow. Take the words time, friendship, work, play, heroism. It took Carlyle to define Time for us. Emerson has defined Friendship. Let the lights and shadows of the thought of Carlyle and Emerson play upon these words, they are at once removed from mechanical definition, and we dimly perceive that each word is larger than the outreach of the thought of man. Another generation than ours shall define and refine them. In heaven, in some other aeon, we shall find ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... certain propositions, and that these, in time, should become rules, to be preached by pedants, practised by dilettanti, and ignored by every artist worthy of the name. What does surprise us is that the first of these Chinese canons should be nothing less than a definition of that which is essential in all great art. "Rhythmic vitality," Prof. Giles calls it; Mr. Okakura, "the Life-movement of the Spirit through the Rhythm of things"; Mr. Binyon suggests "the fusion of the rhythm of the spirit with the ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... visit upon my rejection of Mr. Anderson's delicate overture—you will not surely permit the events occurring, unhappily occurring, since my trial to influence your judgments. And do not, I implore you, accept as a truth, influencing that judgement, Talbot's definition of the objects of Feminism. Hear what Devany, the American informer, describes them to be. 'The members,' he says, 'were pledged by word of honour to promote love and harmony amongst all classes of Irishmen and to labour for the independence of Ireland.' Talbot ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... a la rigueur de la definition que j'en ai donne a V.M. c'est a dire, une fente dans la montagne naturelle, comblee de matiere etrangere. Mais ce qu'il y a d'extraordinaire ici, c'est que cette matiere vient de la mer: ce sont differentes couches aquiformes, dont ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... dictionary," said Lydia, taking down a book and opening it. "Here it is. 'Pug—a fighting man's idea of the contracted word to be produced from pugilist.' What an extraordinary definition! A fighting man's idea of a contraction! Why should a man have a special idea of a contraction when he is fighting; or why should he think of such a thing at all under such circumstances? Perhaps 'fighting man' is slang too. No; it is not given here. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... reality out of sight so that men cannot look beyond the vail to its brighter glories and enjoy its peaceful reign in their hearts by faith. When faith is lost in certainty, then this kingdom will be delivered up, and to know shall be life eternal. This definition we believe will hold good, and apply to any passage in the New Testament where it may occur. Though some contend that it very seldom has reference to an immortal existence, yet we strenuously contend that there ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... stood upon a mantel shelf in Hull-House for five years, we still associate her most vividly with the play of little children, first in her kindergarten and then in her own nursery, which furnished a veritable illustration of Victor Hugo's definition of heaven—"a place where parents are always young and children always little." Her daily presence for the first two years made it quite impossible for us to become too solemn and self-conscious in our strenuous routine, for her mirth and buoyancy were irresistible ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... and submission; and will, at any rate, view with suspicion those weakly amiable theories of the divine government, which would have us believe pain to be an oversight and a mistake, to be corrected by and by." ("Collected Essays" 3 page 62.) This essay contains the definition of science as "trained and organised common sense," and the reference to a new "Peter Bell" which suggested Miss May Kendall's spirited ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... of mental and nervous disorders has been so loosely applied that some definition may be necessary. By the term "idiocy," is meant a condition of undeveloped mentality. Idiocy exists in various degrees, from the complete absence of intellectual faculties to a condition of mere irresponsibility ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... absurdly nervous at luncheon that day, and kept telling herself with severity not to act like a high-school girl. He was late in returning that noon, and though there seemed a new something in his voice when he asked if he hadn't better sharpen her pencils, he said nothing about her new definition of invitation. It was almost five o'clock when he threw this ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... his position, to push the continent into a rebellion. Unlike most of his patriot friends, he had neither private business nor private profession to fall back upon when public affairs grew tame, his only business being, as one might say, the public business, his only profession the definition and defense of popular rights. In this profession, by dint of single-minded devotion to it through a course of years, he had indeed become wonderfully expert and had already achieved for himself the enviable position ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... talked of an absolutely necessary being, and have nevertheless declined to take the trouble of conceiving whether—and how—a being of this nature is even cogitable, not to mention that its existence is actually demonstrable. A verbal definition of the conception is certainly easy enough: it is something the non-existence of which is impossible. But does this definition throw any light upon the conditions which render it impossible to cogitate the non-existence of a thing—conditions which we wish to ascertain, that we may discover ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant |
