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Disproportion   Listen
noun
Disproportion  n.  
1.
Want of proportion in form or quantity; lack of symmetry; as, the arm may be in disproportion to the body; the disproportion of the length of a building to its height.
2.
Want of suitableness, adequacy, or due proportion to an end or use; unsuitableness; disparity; as, the disproportion of strength or means to an object.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Disproportion" Quotes from Famous Books



... Jackson from a resolute endeavour to at least postpone the capture of the town. He had failed to induce the enemy's advanced guard to attack him in position. To attack himself, in broad daylight, with such vast disproportion of numbers, was out of the question. His resources, however, were not exhausted. After dark on the 12th, when his troops had left the town, he called a council, consisting of General Garnett and the regimental commanders of the Stonewall Brigade, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... even take by storm our imaginations and shake us out of our equanimity. Consonant chords represent stability, satisfaction and, when over-used, inertia. The genius of the composer is shown in establishing just the right proportion between these two elements; but if there is to be any disproportion let us have too much rather than too little dissonance, for then, at any rate, the music is alive. Since Beethoven the whole development of music as a human language shows the preponderating stress laid on dissonance; to this fact a knowledge of the works of Schumann, Chopin, ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... have been gathered in the recent work of the Protestants are very small in comparison, while the splendid cathedral of the Roman Church, the spectacular character of its services and the official status and aggressiveness of its priests intensify the disproportion. The term Christian, therefore, to the average man of Paoting-fu naturally means a Roman Catholic rather ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... In each ascending stage the man sustain, His breath, his food, his physic and his bane. In due proportions where these atoms lie, A certain form their equal aids supply; And while unchanged the efficient causes reign, Age following age the certain form maintain. But where crude atoms disproportion'd rise, And cast their sickening vapors round the skies, Unlike that harmony of human frame, That moulded first and reproduce the same, The tribes ill form'd, attempering to the clime, Still vary downward with the years of time; ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... true philosophy, he concerns himself no more with it, except to expose its false professors. The dialogue that perhaps comes next, The Parasite, is still Platonic in form, but only as a parody; its main interest (for a modern reader is outraged, as in a few other pieces of Lucian's, by the disproportion between subject and treatment) is in the combination for the first time of ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... any owner thinking it worth while to claim them. It must be a long time after the first establishment of such colonies, before it can become profitable to feed cattle upon the produce of cultivated land. The same causes, therefore, the want of manure, and the disproportion between the stock employed in cultivation and the land which it is destined to cultivate, are likely to introduce there a system of husbandry, not unlike that which still continues to take place in so many parts of Scotland. Mr Kalm, the Swedish traveller, when he gives an account of the husbandry ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... enough, whereas the true test lies in the question, Is it characteristic? Of Giorgione it certainly is a characteristic to treat each figure in a composition more or less by itself; he isolates them, and this conception is often emphasised by an outward disparity of size. The relative disproportion of the figures in the Castelfranco altar-piece, and of those of Aeneas and Evander in the Vienna picture can hardly be denied, yet no one has ever pleaded this as a bar to their authenticity. Instances of this want of cohesion, both in conception and execution, between the various ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... his Travels beyond the Jordan, the ruins of more sumptuous edifices than any city in the British islands, London itself not excepted, can now boast. It was the same all over the East, and in all the southern provinces of the Roman empire. Whence has arisen this astonishing disproportion between the great things done by the citizens in ancient and in modern times, when in the latter the means of enlarged cultivation have been so immeasurably extended? It is in vain to say, it is because we have more social and domestic happiness, and our wealth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... growing surplus, and their endeavour to capitalise such surplus—that is, to convert it into instruments of labour—is defeated by the impossibility of employing the means of a production the products of which cannot be consumed. In the exploiting world, therefore, there prevails a constant disproportion between productive power and consumption, between supply and demand; and the natural consequence is that the disposal of the products gives rise to a constant and relentless struggle between the various producers. The principal care of the exploiting producers is not to ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... work, take the first respectable job that offers, heeding not the disproportion between your faculties and your task. If you put your manhood into your labor, you will soon be given ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... the climate and of their stay near the swamps now became fatally manifest. In the Quorra, fourteen men died, and three in the Alburkah. The disproportion of mortality in the two vessels, at this period, is ascribed to the superior coolness of the Alburkah, which was rendered more healthy in consequence of her iron hull diffusing through her interior the coolness of the ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... pouring into the open pores in too great proportion to admit of a mixture suited to the natural temperament of the body in question. Again, if too much moisture enters the channels of a body, and thus introduces disproportion, the other elements, adulterated by the liquid, are impaired, and the virtues of the mixture dissolved. This defect, in turn, may arise from the cooling properties of moist winds and breezes blowing upon the body. In the same way, increase or diminution of the proportion of air or ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... never at rest. A little later will come maple-sugar time, when the stately maples are tapped as the sap begins to stir, and be-ringed with absurd little buckets (a cow being milked into a thimble gives some idea of the disproportion), which are emptied into cauldrons. Afterwards (this is the time of the 'sugaring-off parties') you pour the boiled syrup into tins full of fresh snow, where it hardens, and you pretend to help and become very sticky and make love, boys and girls together. Even the introduction of patent sugar ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... destroy their sense of relative proportions. Worst of all, if I may be permitted to say so, they were intended to boost something in particular. Boosting is a very unhandsome thing. Advancing enterprise is a very handsome thing, but to exaggerate local merits in order to create disproportion in the general development is not a particularly handsome thing or a particularly intelligent thing. A city cannot grow on the face of a great state like a mushroom on that one spot. Its roots are throughout the state, and unless ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... suppose that the disproportion of the sexes, caused by female infanticide, was about rectified by the deaths of males in battle and civic strife. We do not hear that the Greek had any ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... things, a gap to be filled only by a microcosm of playthings which give him his first object-lessons. In proof of which let him see a lady richly dressed, he hardly notices her; let him see a doll in similar attire, he will be ravished with ecstasy. As if to show that it was the disproportion of the sizes which unfitted him to notice the lady, the larger he grows the bigger he wants his toys, till, when his wish reaches to life-sizes, good-by to the trumpery, ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... epidemy consist not in alterations of the four primary qualities, but in a corruption of the air, powerful, though quite immaterial, and not cognoscible by the senses—(corruptio aeris non substantialis, sed qualitativa) in a disproportion of the imponderables in the atmosphere, as it would be expressed by the moderns. The causes of the pestilence and epidemy are, first of all, astral influences, especially on occasions of planetary conjunctions; then extensive putrefaction of animal and vegetable ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... have to do violence to themselves in order to bear with my shortcomings; therefore it is my duty to be patient with them, in imitation of God, who is patient with all, who supports all, and endures all, notwithstanding our many defects, and the disproportion that exists between us ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.

... mortar. But Fancy had the power to enliven, furnish, people them. She suggested that their very number was an indication of sociability, excitement, noise, and mirth. Here, as in all feudal dwellings, the vast disproportion between the space allotted to the dependents and that reserved for the lord of the manor pointed to the time when each castle was a walled city, each baronial hall the home of a crowd of petty retainers. In that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... the attacking party entered, however, the Lowes let down the stairs leading to the story above a heavy broad cart-wheel, and as it bounded clattering towards the floor below, the assailants fled out of doors in a panic, and taking advantage of their disorder, the Lowes, disregarding the vast disproportion of numbers, rushed upon them, and a regular melee began. It is thought, that the smaller party would have been victorious, but for an ugly blow on the head of the youngest brother, which felled and disabled him; whereupon his associates escaped unmolested and he was taken ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous

... them that he sets out to pursue the slayers, and does not rest till they are in his hand. It is the duty of blood-revenge which causes him to take the war-path with his household, unconcerned by the disproportion in numbers between his followers and theirs: it is the powerful sentiment of family which sets him in motion and causes him to become, as it were incidentally, the liberator of Israel from the spoilers. In the first ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... entertained for the pious, tender soul the same chivalrous and moved affection. I have spoken with one who remembered her, and who had been the intimate and equal of her sons, and I found this witness had been struck, as I had been, with a sense of disproportion between the warmth of the adoration felt and the nature of the woman, whether as described or observed. She diligently read and marked her Bible; she was a tender nurse; she had a sense of humour under strong control; she talked ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... came across killed by artillery, they figured up about three hundred —a ridiculously small number; in fact, not much more than one dead man for each Krupp gun on that part of the line. Although the number of dead was in utter disproportion to the terrific six-hour cannonade, yet small as it was the torn and mangled bodies made such a horrible sight that we turned back toward Bazeilles without having ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... Carey, Judson, Livingstone, Pitkin, Lott Carey and others were heroes on the foreign field. Some of these men are laying their lives down in the great work to which they have been called. All honor to these men! But their numbers are too few. The disproportion is too great in our professional schools. For example, when a medical school can boast of four hundred young men preparing to care for the physical life of the people and the theological school in the same institution can report barely one hundred men preparing to care for the moral ...
— The Demand and the Supply of Increased Efficiency in the Negro Ministry - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 13 • Jesse E. Moorland

... the whole fleete have told him so: they all saying, that they durst not oppose it at the Council of War, for fear of being called cowards, though it was wholly against their judgement to fight that day with the disproportion of force, and then we not being able to use one gun of our lower tier, which was a greater disproportion than the other. Besides, we might very well have staid in the Downs without fighting, or any where else, till the Prince could have come up to them; or at least till the weather was fair, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... objected that it would be absurd to assume the skill of the personnel in one fleet as twice as great as that of the personnel in the other fleet, but it can easily be shown that even so great a disproportion is not impossible, provided the skill in one fleet is very great. The value of superior skill naturally becomes important where the difficulties are great. A very simple illustration is in firing a gun; for even if the skill of one marksman be greater than that ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... of the colored people in our cities live in just such dwellings as I have described here; while most of the white population live in well-built houses in the healthy portions of the cities. Is there any surprise that there should be so great a disproportion in the mortality of the races? Compare the statistics of all the large cities and you will find that under similar conditions, this same proportion in mortality exists in the Northern and foreign cities, where the food and dwelling of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... wait for the rear, making his way onward by nearly impassable roads and coming before the outposts of the supplementary Russian army with only eight thousand men. With apparently utter indifference to the vast disproportion in numbers, the Swedish firebrand rushed forward, the Russians, not dreaming of such mad temerity, being sure that he had his whole ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... Cretinism.—Mental and bodily development is slow. There is extraordinary disproportion between the different parts of the body. The condition is sometimes not recognized until the child is six or seven years old, then the slow development is noticed. The tongue looks large and hangs out of the mouth. The hair may be thin, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... endearments, in avowals of love, in comparisons of their regards.... The soul which is in the soul of each, craving a perfect beatitude, detects incongruities, defects, and disproportion in the behavior of the other. Hence arise surprise, expostulation, and pain. Yet that which drew them to each other was signs of loveliness, signs of virtue; and these virtues are there, however eclipsed. They appear and reappear and continue to attract; but ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... thus sentenced—pity might disturb The delicate sense and most divine repose Of spirits angelical. Blessed be God, The measure of his judgments is not fix'd By man's erroneous standard. He discerns No such inordinate difference and vast Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom Such disproportion'd fates. Compared with him, No man on earth is holy call'd: they best Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield To him of his own ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... fell like a thunder-clap on Joan and her husband. The Hungarian army consisted of 10,000 horse and more than 7000 infantry, and Aversa had only 500 soldiers under Giacomo Pignatelli. In spite of the immense disproportion of the numbers, the Neapolitan general vigorously repelled the attack; and the King of Hungary, fighting in the front, was wounded in his foot by an arrow. Then Louis, seeing that it would be difficult to take the place by storm, determined to starve them out. For three months ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Fitzjames was still doomed to be an illustration of the curious disproportion which may exist between a man's intrinsic power and his fitness for professional success. Still, as at college, he was distanced in the race by men greatly his inferiors in general force of mind, but better provided with the talent for bringing their ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... a disproportion between the ages of the master and the pupil; in my eyes she was quite an old person, in her eyes, being her intellectual equal, I was likewise her equal in age. In the natural order of things she felt more personal sympathy for me than I for her. Consequently, I involuntarily put a dash of teasing ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... their backs). They mistake their carriage and its horizontal lines for a proper measure of the normal plain, and therefore all the objects outside which really are in a horizontal position must show a disproportion of twenty to twenty-five degrees declivity, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... body—the disproportioned bulk of the smaller hind-quarters—the short tail, with its tufted extremity; all these are characteristics. The hind-quarters are covered with a much shorter and smoother coat of hair, which adds to their apparent disproportion, and this, with the long hirsute covering of the breast, neck, hump, and shoulders, gives to the buffalo—especially when seen in a picture—a somewhat lion-like figure. The naked tail, with its tuft at the end, ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... troops ever at the beck and call of the Republic, vigilantly keeping watch and ward on the banks of the Rhine and with no reasonable prospect of a term to this servitude. For the real ground of this dependence upon foreign forces is the disproportion between the populations of Germany and France and between the resources of the two nations. The ratio of the former is at present about six to four and it is growing perceptibly toward seven to four. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... necessary for that purpose." They go on to say, that as a very large sum must be raised on the security of Irish property, and expended upon labour, during the continuance of the distress occasioned by the failure of the potato crop, the expenditure of this sum upon unproductive works will increase the disproportion already existing between labour and capital in the country; which disproportion they look on as the main cause of the want of employment for the people, and of the miserable wages they are sustained by. Reproductive ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... South Australia it is the same; and short as is the time that this province has been occupied as a British Colony, the results upon the Aborigines are but too apparent in their diminished numbers, in the great disproportion that has been produced between the sexes, and in the large preponderance of deaths over births. A miserably diseased condition, and the almost total absence of children, are immediate consequences of this ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... premises, our sole warrant for that judgment being that we can not conceive it not to follow. Consequently if the postulate is fallible, the conclusions of reasoning are more vitiated by that uncertainty than direct intuitions; and the disproportion is greater, the more numerous the steps ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... twelve years by 20 per cent., and they would find that whereas the taxation of England had increased by 17 per cent., that of Ireland had increased no less than 52 per cent, between 1851 and 1861. This disproportion had been brought about by laying upon Ireland the burden of the Income-tax and by heavily increasing the spirit duties, making use at the same time of these two great engines of taxation to relieve the United Kingdom, but more especially England, of particular fiscal ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... however, no acquaintance ensued between them;—it was not till the spring of the present year that, at an evening party of Madame Benzoni's, they were introduced to each other. The love that sprung out of this meeting was instantaneous and mutual, though with the usual disproportion of sacrifice between the parties; such an event being, to the man, but one of the many scenes of life, while, with woman, it generally constitutes the whole drama. The young Italian found herself suddenly inspired with a passion of which, till that moment, her mind could not have ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... be replied, in the first place, that, even in the biological domain of the "struggle for existence," the disproportion between the number of individuals who are born and the number of those who survive regularly and progressively grows smaller and smaller as we ascend in the biological scale from vegetables to animals, ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... Hellenic stamp is veracity:—Eastern nations drew their heroes with eight legs, but the Greeks drew them with two;—Egyptians drew their deities with cats' heads, but the Greeks drew them with men's; and out of all fallacy, disproportion, and indefiniteness, they were, day by day, resolvedly withdrawing and exalting themselves into ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... disproportion in your years, And, let me add, disparity of tempers, Might make the world doubt whether such an union Could ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... century were certainly not obscure; and we have no excuse for losing what they had gained, or for going back to the earlier or transitional age which preceded them. The thought of our own times has not out-stripped language; a want of Plato's 'art of measuring' is the rule cause of the disproportion ...
— The Republic • Plato

... Proclus, "who takes for his model such forms as nature produces, and confines himself to an exact imitation of them, will never attain to what is perfectly beautiful. For the works of nature are full of disproportion, and fall very short of the true standard of beauty. So that Phidias, when he formed his Jupiter, did not copy any object ever presents to his sight; but contemplated only that image which he had conceived in his mind from Homer's description." ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... and profit, necessarily became partner to Parson Dale, who himself played a good steady parsonic game. So that, in strict truth, it was hardly fair play; it was almost swindling,—the combination of these two great dons against that innocent married couple! Mr. Dale, it is true, was aware of this disproportion of force, and had often proposed either to change partners or to give odds,—propositions always scornfully scouted by the squire and his lady, so that the parson was obliged to pocket his conscience, together with the ten points which ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... would be adjusted to submission forever. "I'll go," she vowed to the night, "or I'll die!" She made plans and estimated means and resources. These and her general preparations had perhaps a certain disproportion. She had a gold watch, a very good gold watch that had been her mother's, a pearl necklace that was also pretty good, some unpretending rings, some silver bangles and a few other such inferior trinkets, three pounds thirteen shillings unspent of her dress and book allowance and a few good ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... dark locks were rolled back in pompadour fashion over a high cushion, the plait turned up in a queue, fastened at the nape of the neck by an enormous outstanding bow; the cheeks were fuller in outline, and the disproportion between nose and mouth less marked. She was by no means pretty, yet there was a charm about the quaint little face which made the onlooker smile involuntarily and feel a ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the first thing that I shall take occasion to make this manifest by, will be by showing you the disproportion that is betwixt that and the body; and I shall do it in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... sun, Still may thy blooms the changeful clime endure, I only would repress them to secure: 370 For just experience tells, in every soil, That those who think must govern those that toil; And all that freedom's highest aims can reach, Is but to lay proportion'd loads on each. Hence, should one order disproportion'd grow, 375 Its double weight must ruin ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... and the manufacture of woollen goods developed into important industries. Relatively to the population there was more "meat" of oxen and sheep in this country than on the continent of Europe, and this disproportion has been maintained. ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... large as that in which some eaglets are reared, made by interlacing branchlets of white mangrove until the mass was sufficient to support his weight. With a double ended paddle rudely shaped from the thin buttress roots of the red mangrove, and comic in the crudeness and disproportion of its parts, he felt himself safe miles out to sea. When he approached a passing vessel he presented the illusion, not of walking, but of sitting on the water, for the float was almost completely submerged. If it became necessary for his wife to attend him on his marine excursions, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... accessions made the collection the finest academic library in England, not excepting the excellent library of 380 volumes then at Peterhouse. It had a character of its own. The usual overwhelming mass of Bibles, of church books, of the Fathers and the Schoolmen does not depress us with its disproportion. The collection was strong in astronomy and medicine: Ptolemy, Albumazar, Rhazes, Serapion, Avicenna, Haly Abenragel, Zaael, and others were all represented. Besides these, there was a fine selection of ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... learned the reliability or want of reliability in certain materials or processes used in decoration, or the rules of treatment which will modify a low and dark room and make it seem light and airy, or "bring down" too high a ceiling and widen narrow walls so as to apparently correct disproportion? These things are the results of laws which she has never studied—laws of compensation and relation, which belong exclusively to the world of colour, and unfortunately they are not so well formulated that they can be committed to memory ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler

... sciences from natural science, and adopted. But originally it descended from social science to natural. Darwin's law is, as he himself said, only Malthus' law generalised and extended to the animal world: a growing disproportion between the supply of food and the number of the living is the fatal order whence arises the necessity of universal struggle, a struggle which, to the great advantage of the species, allows only the best equipped individuals to survive. Nature is regarded by Huxley ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... chubby, devoid of hair. Eyes puffed. Lips protruding and fleshy. Cheeks round and thick. Nose little developed. Skin thick and of clear color. Disproportion between the size of head and body. Hair of scalp fine. Brows and lashes scarce, trunk elongated and cylindrical. Limbs thick and plump, tapering from the root to the extremities. Good fat layers over the entire body. Reproductive organs those of a little ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... which it is attached; and thus, also, the choir and transepts, taken collectively, form nearly a square, except that, to the end of the middle compartment, is attached a circular apsis, of an unusually small size; and, seen from the inside of the church, this disproportion becomes even more conspicuous: the great thickness of the wall necessarily subtracting much from the space. It even strikes the eye as being less than it really is, from being subdivided into a number ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... which have been intensified by the war is the problem of the relations of the sexes. Difficult as it has always been, the difficulty inevitably becomes greater when there is a grave disproportion—an excess in numbers of one sex over the other. And in this country, whereas there was a disproportion of something like a million more women than men before the war broke out, there is now a disproportion of ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden

... recognition of human ignorance; 'Qui nescit ignorare, ignorat scire.' This 'learned ignorance' is the rational conviction by the human mind of its inability to transcend certain limits; it is the knowledge of ourselves,—the science of man. This is accomplished by a demonstration of the disproportion between what is to be known, and our faculties of knowing,—the disproportion, to wit, between the infinite and the finite. In fact, the recognition of human ignorance, is not only the one highest, but the one true, knowledge; ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... there is in that course—in its achievements—any disproportion with the previous promise. The magnitude of the development we are about to witness is due, not to a change in him, but to the increased greatness of the opportunities. A man of like record in the past, but ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... on with interruption for a good many years, and I think now that I am arriving at the point where I have some faint glimmerings of the littleness of my knowledge of it as compared with what there is to be known. I do not mean to say that I can begin to size the disproportion up with any accuracy, but I think I have accomplished a good deal in getting as far as ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... every where regarded as a nuisance, and must really be such as long as they are under the degradation which public sentiment inflicts on them. They are at the same time rapidly increasing from manumissions and from offspring, and of course lessening the general disproportion between the slaves and the whites. This tendency is favorable to the cause of a ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... content to remain idle, and, though without orders to engage, the Cygnet soon crept in close enough to use her guns. The Condor steamed away to the west, and engaged alone and unsupported the Marabout Fort. The admiral, seeing the disproportion of force between the Egyptian fort and the little gunboat, signalled the Bittern and Beacon to join her. The Decoy went of her own accord, and the other gunboats and the Cygnet also moved off to aid in pounding ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... more thoroughly brow-beaten the states, and having soundly lectured Buckhurst—as a requital for his successful efforts to bring about a more wholesome condition of affairs—she gave the envoy a parting stab, with this postscript;—"There is small disproportion," she said "twist a fool who useth not wit because he hath it not, and him that useth it not when it should avail him." Leicester, too, was very violent in his attacks upon Buckhurst. The envoy had succeeded in reconciling Hohenlo with the brothers Norris, and had persuaded Sir John to offer the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... we are too much impressed and oppressed by the ideas of magnitude and multitude. Since we have realized the unspeakable insignificance of the earth in relation to the unimaginable vastness of star-sown space, we have come to feel such a disproportion between the mechanism of life and its upshot, as known in our own experience, that we have a vague sense of maleficence, or at any rate of brutal carelessness, in the responsible Power, whoever that may be. "What is it all," we say, "but a trouble ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... friend that loved me, that condescended to bear, to communicate, and to share in all the pleasures and pains of the human heart, where the social affections and emotions of the mind only presided, without regard to the infinite disproportion of our rank and condition. This is a wound that cannot, ought not, to heal—if I pretended to fortitude here I should be infamous, a monster of ingratitude; and unworthy of all consolation, if I was ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... distance of time, upon the curious struggle which took place in the Cabinet on this question, we cannot fail to be struck by the immense disproportion between cause and effect exhibited in this strange episode in the history of the Shelburne Administration. The full recognition of the rights of Ireland had received the concurrent sanction of the Legislatures ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... says, Perfection is only attained by practice.[18] Whereas extempore oratory is easy and facile, mere windbag, having neither beginning nor end. And besides their other shortcomings extempore speakers fall into great disproportion and repetition, whereas a well considered speech preserves its due proportions. It is recorded by tradition that Pericles, when called on by the people for a speech, frequently refused on the plea that he was unprepared. Similarly ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... but four thousand five hundred men, had routed the army of Holkar and the Rajah of Berar—amounting in all to over fifty thousand, of whom ten thousand five hundred were disciplined troops, commanded by Frenchmen. The news excited the utmost enthusiasm among the troops, as the disproportion of numbers was far greater than it had been at the ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty

... rolls in wealth, and is one of a large family of whom she is the sun-flower. Let me give you her portrait as I have it from fragmentary but copious descriptions. She is, I should say, five feet eleven and three quarter inches in height—don't shake your head, Miss Phebe,—and slender in disproportion. She has the feet of a Chinese, the hands of a baby, and the strength of a Jupiter Ammon. She has hair six yards long and blacker than Egyptian darkness. She has a forehead so low it rests upon her eyebrows, which, by the way, have been ruled straight across the immeasurable ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... place and time can make no alteration in my friendship. It grew from esteem for your characters, and understandings, and tempers; and became affection from your good-natured attentions 'to me, where there is so vast a disproportion in our ages. Indeed, that complaisance spoiled me; but I have weaned myself of my own self-love, and you shall hear no more ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... own territory, the conflict with a power which ere three years had elapsed, carried on the war with fourteen legions, numbering an hundred and seventy thousand combatants, between the auxiliaries and Roman soldiers. It is in the magnitude of this disproportion, and the extremely small amount of the reinforcement which he received from home during the next fifteen years that the war lasted, that the decisive proof of the marvellous capacity of the Carthaginian general is to be found. It is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... of Napoleon's great Generals; but at all events it shows the estimate placed upon our fighting capacity by an enemy who at one time styled us as 'that contemptible little army.' There is sometimes a weird sense of disproportion revealed, as in the case of a Highlander who was visited by a brother chaplain at a Base hospital some two or three months ago, and who remarked to the patient, 'Well, Jock, what do you think of Jack Johnsons? They put the fear of God into your heart, don't they?' 'Aye, sir, they do, but let's hope ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester

... so, and I think that the precaution that has been taken is a very wise one. I have been informed what is really in the cases. Were I going by myself with a sergeant and twelve men, I should say that to put the money in ammunition-cases was not only absolutely useless but dangerous, the disproportion between the force and the value of the ammunition would be so great that it would attract attention at once, but as you are with us it is more likely to pass without observation. You are an officer on the staff of the English general. You have your ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... terminated with the death of Hyginus, the average duration of the life of a Roman bishop very little exceeded eight years; whereas, during the remainder of the century, it amounted to nearly twelve years. According to the chronology of Pearson the disproportion is still greater, being as eight years and a fraction to fourteen years. If we insert the episcopate of Anacletus, it will be ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... for presuming to edit the plays of Shakspeare with greatly more ability and acuteness than himself had brought to the task. His dislike had no better foundation. Neither the works, the character, nor the associations of the man authorized his elevation to the throne of dulness. The disproportion between the subject and the satire instantly impresses the reader. After the first explosion of his malice, it impressed Pope; and anxious to redeem his error, he sought diligently for some plan of dethroning Tibbald, and raising another to the vacant seat. Cibber, in the mean time, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... broken upon them, before it come on too fast upon the majesty of kings. A numerous nobility causeth poverty, and inconvenience in a state; for it is a surcharge of expense; and besides, it being of necessity, that many of the nobility fall, in time, to be weak in fortune, it maketh a kind of disproportion, between honor and means. ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... exhausts the body while it gives little exercise to the educated mind and leaves the latter free to brood over its unsatisfied longings and desires, as well as its many trials and disappointments. There are other causes, such as the growing disproportion between wants generally and the means of gratification generally; alcoholism; unhealthful work, especially in manufacturing districts; barrack and tenement-house life; and all the evils incident to poverty, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... compare notes agreed that their first idea had been that the shop was absurdly too big for the young man; their next that the young man was too big for the shop, miles, oh miles too big for it; their final impression being the tragedy of the disproportion, the misfit. Then, sadly, with lowered voices, they admitted that he had one flaw; when the poor fellow got excited, don't you know, he sometimes dropt—no—no, he skipped—his aitches. It didn't happen often, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... of longer life, are inclined to treat the notions of those whose conduct they superintend with superciliousness and contempt, for want of considering that the future and the past have different appearances; that the disproportion will always be great between expectation and enjoyment, between new possession and satiety; that the truth of many maxims of age gives too little pleasure to be allowed till it is felt; and that the miseries of life would be increased beyond all human power of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... only quickened Buonaparte's resolve to attack his enemy at home. The difficulties in his way he set contemptuously aside; "Fifteen millions of people," he said, in allusion to the disproportion between the population of England and France, "must give way to forty millions"; and the invasion was planned on a gigantic scale. A camp of one hundred thousand men was formed at Boulogne, and a host of flat-bottomed boats gathered ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green

... of her father, and the villainy of a horrid man in whom he confided. And one of the handsomest young gentlemen in the country is attached to her; but as he is heir to a great estate, she discourages his addresses on account of the disproportion of their fortune. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... four Emperors, all of whom were endowed with excellent understandings, uncommon vigour of mind, and decision of character, has hitherto obviated the danger of such an enormous disproportion between the governors and the governed. The wisdom, prudence, and energy of these Emperors have not only maintained the family on the throne, the fifth of which now fills it, but have enlarged the dominions to an extent of which history furnishes no parallel. The present Emperor, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... lose the feeling of disproportion between the size of the Dutch churches and that of the villages and congregations. The villages are so small, the churches so vast. It is as though the churches were built to compensate for the absence of hills. ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... regards which had there surrounded her. Without a mother, without a companion, she had to find what solace, what pastime she could. In the huge house there was not a piano fit to play upon; and her only source of in-door amusement was a library containing a large disproportion of books in old French bindings, with much tarnished gilding on the backs. But a native purity of soul kept her lovely, and capable of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... common tales in such enormous phrases, with such gigantic structure of rhetorical flourish, that the mere disproportion amounts to false-hood; and, the diseased appetite in listeners growing more and more diseased, feeding on such diseased food, it is impossible to predict what it will not be necessary for story-mongers to invent at the end of a century or ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... out of the fuel; and a perfect engine would be one in which the whole of the coal consumed had its full equivalent in work done. One of our problems, it seems to me, is a similar one. There is an enormous disproportion between the amount of energy expended during the week in preparation and the amount of impression made on the hearers on Sunday. Ministers do not get enough of result in the attention, satisfaction ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... of the English monarch was much more extensive within his kingdom, and the disproportion much greater between him and the most powerful of his vassals. His demesnes and revenue were large, compared to the greatness of his state: he was accustomed to levy arbitrary exactions on his subjects; his courts of judicature extended their ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... was soon opened; the Dutch traders were scrupulously honest in their dealings and purchased by weight, establishing it as an invariable table of avoirdupois, that the hand of a Dutchman weighed one pound, and his foot two pounds. It is true, the simple Indians were often puzzled by the great disproportion between bulk and weight, for let them place a bundle of furs, never so large, in one scale, and a Dutchman put his hand or foot in the other, the bundle was sure to kick the beam;—never was a package of furs known to weigh more than two pounds ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... besiegers looked on overawed as she entered Orleans and, riding round the walls, bade the people shake off their fear of the forts which surrounded them. Her enthusiasm drove the hesitating generals to engage the handful of besiegers, and the enormous disproportion of forces at once made itself felt. Fort after fort was taken till only the strongest remained, and then the council of war resolved to adjourn the attack. "You have taken your counsel," replied Jeanne, "and ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... come to the nations, there is less disproportion between the strength of the unit and the society. Hence nations have been slower than individuals in realizing their common interest. Each has placed greater reliance on its own strength for its protection. Yet the principle remains the same. There may be nations ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Ireland of but 36,000,000 pounds, there are in Ireland 75,000 agricultural proletarians more than in the neighbouring island. {272a} How great the competition for land in Ireland must be is evident from this extraordinary disproportion, especially when one reflects that the labourers in Great Britain are living in the utmost distress. The consequence of this competition is that it is impossible for the tenants to live much better than the labourers, by reason of the high rents paid. The Irish people ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... life there is the same matter for astonishment as in Napoleon's; there is the vast disproportion between beginnings and climax, between the relative modesty of early aims and the stupendous magnitude of the climacteric result. One asks how in a few years the impecunious son of the Corsican notary became the world's despot, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... lays great stress upon the disproportion between the length and width of many of the apartments. There are few of which the greater diameter is not at least double the lesser, and in many cases it is four, five, and even seven times as great. He comes to the conclusion that these curious proportions were ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... French, British, and Belgians, or of fifty corps to twelve and a half, will probably be corrected when the German statistics are known. If it is further true that at the actual points of fighting the disproportion was five to one, we need no further illustration of the ills which inadequate co-ordination imposes on an Alliance, and inadequate staff-work and intelligence on any fighting force. The Allied tactics were probably ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... insinuated therefore the necessity of their submitting to an accommodation. Pretending to be convinced by the reasoning of Loyola, the ambassador acknowledged the prodigious power of the Spanish monarchy in comparison with the Araucanian state; which, notwithstanding the vast disproportion, had hitherto been able to resist every effort of the Spaniards. He acknowledged even the propriety of his nation entering into negotiations for peace, but alleged that the Spaniards affixed wrong ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... great self-restraint, but there was no mistaking his seriousness. When such scientific triflers do find a woman worth loving, they are too deeply sensible of the fact not to be stirred to their depths; and their depths are apt to be in large disproportion to the lightness of their ordinary mood. "Come to me," he continued. "I need you; and I will be as tender and thoughtful a husband as I will be ardent as a lover. You love me: don't blind yourself any longer. ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... had amounted perhaps to as much more. Spain, it is true, was no longer the Spain of Pavia and Lepanto. But, even in her decay, she possessed in Europe resources which exceeded thirty fold those of Scotland; and in America, where the struggle must take place, the disproportion was still greater. The Spanish fleets and arsenals were doubtless in wretched condition. But there were Spanish fleets; there were Spanish arsenals. The galleons, which sailed every year from Seville to the neighbourhood of Darien and from the neighbourhood of Darien ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... account of the Maid far surpasses any thing of the sort in Southey. I perceived all its excellences, on a first reading, as readily as now you have been removing a supposed film from my eyes. I was only struck with [a] certain faulty disproportion in the matter and the style, which I still think I perceive, between these lines and the former ones. I had an end in view; I wished to make you reject the poem, only as being discordant with the other; and, in subservience to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... of Courtrai (1302), also called the Battle of the Golden Spurs, owing to the great number of these spurs collected on the battlefield after the defeat of the French knights by the Flemish militia. It was hailed at the time as a miraculous triumph for the commoners, the disproportion between the opposing forces being somewhat exaggerated by enthusiastic contemporary chroniclers. But its influence was not only social, it was national, for it definitely secured the independence of Flanders and ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... Notwithstanding the remarkable disproportion of power which Providence had placed in this duel, the accused, for lack of conclusive proofs, would in all probability have escaped from the hands of the executioner; but from that very scantiness in the evidence arose an extraordinary opportunity for eloquence, which could not fail ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various

... consists in the practical recognition of a more or less persistent disposition toward ourselves. The outward behavior of our fellow-men is construed in terms of the practical bearing of the attitude which it implies. The extraordinary feature of such belief is the disproportion between its vividness and the direct evidence for it. Of this we are most aware in connection with those personalities which we regard as distinctly friendly or hostile to ourselves. We are always more or less clearly in the presence of our friends and enemies. ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... France, and receiving in exchange for the crown of Spain the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, the states of the Duke of Savoy, Montferrat, and the Mantuan, the said Duke of Savoy succeeding you in Spain; I confess to you that, notwithstanding the disproportion in the dominions, I have been sensibly affected by the thought that you would continue to reign, that I might still regard you as my successor, sure, if the dauphin lives, of a regent accustomed to command, capable of maintaining order in my kingdom and stifling ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... that suggested idle expense or vanity. To dwell at all upon the subject would be a disproportion, but for the note of contrast that was struck. In an assembly of well-dressed people, no one would have remarked Cecily's attire, unless to praise its quiet distinction. In the Spences' sitting-room it became ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... accession brings with it a large increase of pleasure and comfort, and probably a very considerable addition to real happiness. In the case of rich men this is not the case, and of colossal fortunes only a very small fraction can be truly said to minister to the personal enjoyment of the owner. The disproportion in the world between pleasure and cost is indeed almost ludicrous. The two or three shillings that gave us our first Shakespeare would go but a small way towards providing one of the perhaps untasted dishes on the dessert table. ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... he had a fine sense of the fitting and the proportionate, and he worshipped beauty in so far as he could worship anything. The homage was cerebral, intellectual, temperamental, not of the heart. As he looked out upon the world half pityingly, half ironically, he was struck with wonder at the disproportion which was engendered by "having heart," as it was called. He did not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... vicissitudes of his fortune, he is well aware that he is affected for better or for worse by agencies which fall outside the more familiar routine operations of society and nature. So great is the disproportion between the calculable and the incalculable elements of his life that he is like a man crouching in the dark, expecting a blow from any quarter. The agencies whose working can be discounted in advance form his secular world; but this world is narrow and meagre, and is overshadowed by a beyond ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... is based (1) on the disproportion between nature and grace and (2) on the absolute necessity of grace for the performance ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... been thought that at the worst gas shells might be dropped upon the enemy strongholds and that the city would be spared: but it early became evident that the disproportion would be too great in the street fighting, which everyone now saw ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard

... corsets and tight lacing do not necessarily go hand in hand. Distortion and feebleness are not beauty. A proper proportion should exist between the size of the waist and the breadth of the shoulders and hips, and if the waist is diminished below this proportion, it suggests disproportion and invalidism rather ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... His Grace very soon would have wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged more to mine than to me. He would soon have supplied every deficiency, and symmetrized every disproportion. It would not have been for that successor to resort to any stagnant wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a salient living spring of generous and manly action. Every day he lived, he ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... the ordinary slouched hat worn by the 'natives.' His hair, the short, crispy wool of the African, was sprinkled with gray, and he had the thick lips and broad, heavy features of his race. He was nearly six feet high, stoutly and compactly built; and but for a disproportion in the size of his legs, one of which was smaller and two or three inches shorter than the other, he might have rated as a 'prime field hand.' There was nothing about him but his high, massive head, clear, piercing eye, and a certain ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... that the fortune of war is sometimes more impartial than the disproportion of numbers might lead one to suppose; to submit is to give ourselves over to despair, while action still preserves for us a hope that ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... of shyness & self-consciousness. It was American in these fine qualities. This was at Mr. Lecky's. He is Irish, you know. Last night it was Irish again, at Lady Gregory's. Lord Roberts is Irish, & Sir William Butler, & Kitchener, I think, & a disproportion of the other prominent generals are of Irish & Scotch breed keeping up the traditions of Wellington & Sir Colin Campbell, of the Mutiny. You will have noticed that in S. A., as in the Mutiny, it is usually the Irish & Scotch that are placed in the forefront of the battle.... Sir ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... idea, this effort, distinguishes these two men. The Greeks—predecessors, contemporaries, successors of Aristotle—were speculators, full of clever and ingenious guesses, in which the amount of clear and certain fact was in lamentable disproportion to the schemes blown up from it; or they devoted themselves more profitably to some one or two subjects of inquiry, moral or purely intellectual, with absolute indifference to what might be asked, or what might be known, of the real conditions under which they ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... reactionary sceptics always argue) that a motor really is just as necessary as a roof. It only proves that a man can get used to an artificial life: it does not prove that there is no natural life for him to get used to. In the broad bird's-eye view of common sense there abides a huge disproportion between the need for a roof and the need for an aeroplane; and no rush of inventions can ever alter it. The only difference is that things are now judged by the abnormal needs, when they might be judged merely by the normal needs. The best aristocrat sees the situation from ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... where everybody has stood, opposite the great Belfry Tower of Bruges, and thinking, as every one has thought (though not, perhaps, said), that it is built in defiance of all decencies of architecture. It is made in deliberate disproportion to achieve the one startling effect of height. It is a church on stilts. But this sort of sublime deformity is characteristic of the whole fancy and energy of these Flemish cities. Flanders has the flattest and most prosaic ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... arrival of the galleon returning from Acapulco, laden with the proceeds of the sale of her rich cargo. These vessels usually carried forty-four guns, and were manned by a crew of over 500 men. Anson had only 200 sailors, of whom thirty were but lads, but this disproportion did not deter him, for he had the expectation of rich booty, and the cupidity of his men was sufficient ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... can doubt its historical necessity. From this point of view the very defectiveness of the Roman poetry, which cannot be denied, may be explained and so may in some degree be justified. It is no doubt pervaded by a disproportion between the trivial and often bungled contents and the comparatively finished form; but the real significance of this poetry lay precisely in its formal features, especially those of language and metre. It was not seemly that poetry in Rome was principally in the hands of schoolmasters and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... unfavorable circumstances. The planters on all the islands were opposed to the Act of Emancipation, and, in most, exceedingly and fiercely hostile to it, and utterly indisposed to give it the best chance of success. The disproportion of the colored race to the whites was fearfully great, being that of seven or eight to one; whilst, in our slaveholding states, the whites outnumber the colored people. The slaves of the West Indies were less civilized ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... Blasphemy in this catalogue is this:— "That 'tis lawful for a man to put away his wife upon indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable; and for disproportion and deadness of spirit, or something distasteful and averse in the immutable bent of nature; and man, in regard of the freedom and eminency of his creation, is a law to himself in this matter, being head of the other sex, which was made for him; neither ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... as the first lesson taught here, the divinely appointed disproportion between means and end, and its purpose. Many an Israelite would look across to the long lines of black tents, and think, 'We are too few for our task'; but to God's eye they were too many, and the first necessity was to weed them out. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... ghost:— How might they bless our ampler scope to please, And hate their own old shrunk up audiences.— Their houses yet were palaces to those, Which Ben and Fletcher for their triumphs chose, 20 Shakspeare, who wish'd a kingdom for a stage, Like giant pent in disproportion'd cage, Mourn'd his contracted strengths and crippled rage. He who could tame his vast ambition down To please some scatter'd gleanings of a town, 25 And, if some hundred auditors supplied Their meagre meed of claps, was satisfied, How had he felt, when that dread ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge



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