"Disquisition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rarefaction of the hydrogen in the air, so that, though no spirit could be photographed as such, a code and language might be established by means of the effect produced on the air by the spirit's mind. I am so interested in the subject of my disquisition that I had almost forgotten that your spirits are still subject to the requirements of the body. Last time I dined with you; let me ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... expedition, (he observes in the Preliminary Disquisition to the latter work), has been questioned; but if the primordial history of every nation but one is tinctured with the fabulous, and if from among the rest a choice is necessary to be made, it must be allowed ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... which can be easily done without the objection of a tack, the grantees might possibly then have much harder conditions given them; and I do not see how they could prevent it. Whether the resuming of royal grants be consistent with good policy or justice, would be too long a disquisition: besides, the profusion of kings is not like to be a grievance for the future, because there have been laws since made to provide against that evil, or, indeed, rather because the crown has nothing left to give away. But the objection made against the date of the intended enquiry ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... number of resemblances, so will any two wars in history, whether war itself be regarded as abstract or concrete,—a question that seems to have exercised some grammatical minds, and ought therefore to be settled before any further step is taken in this disquisition, which is the disquisition of a grammarian. Now most persons would pronounce war an abstract, but one excellent manual with which I am acquainted sets it down as a concrete, and I have often thought that the author must have known something practically ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... requested that the coffee might be brought to us out of doors. It was now after sun-set; and a lurid sky was above our head. Our conversation was desultory as to topics, but animated as to manner. I had never witnessed M. Van Praet more alive to social disquisition. We talked of books, of pictures, and of antiquities... and I happened, with the same witless simplicity which had pinned the portrait of King John over my seat at dinner, to mention that volume, of almost unparalleled rarity, ycleped the Fables of Pfister, printed at Bamberg ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Mr Cupples found Trent little inclined to talk. He excused himself on the plea of a restless night. Mr Cupples, on the other hand, was in a state of bird-like alertness. The prospect of the inquest seemed to enliven him. He entertained Trent with a disquisition upon the history of that most ancient and once busy tribunal, the coroner's court, and remarked upon the enviable freedom of its procedure from the shackles of rule and precedent. From this he passed to the case that was to come before ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... "On the Determination of the Relative Weight of Single Molecules," by E. Vogel, of San Francisco. This paper, which was taken as read, consists of a lengthy theoretical disquisition, in which the author maintains the following propositions: That the combining weights of all elements are one third of their present values; the assumption that equal volumes of gases contain equal numbers of molecules does not hold good; that the present theory of valency is not supported by ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... Paine,—Lincoln who began his first Douglas debate, not like his cultivated opponent with the conventional "Ladies and Gentlemen," but with the ominously intimate, "My Fellow Citizens,"—Lincoln is saying, "I am not master of language; I have not a fine education; I am not capable of entering into a disquisition upon dialectics, as I believe you call it; but I do not believe the language I employed bears any such construction as Judge Douglas puts upon it. But I don't care about a quibble in regard to words. I know what I meant, and I will not leave this crowd in doubt, if I ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Conchologist read an extremely interesting disquisition on the Oyster, which was divided into sections and literally devoured by the audience. He also exhibited some Specimens of Conchs, which were regular Sneezers in point ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... the new deals and competition and our combination would do to 'em if they kept on sleeping on their stock certificates. Funny how hard it is to pry some folks loose from their par-value notions." Mr. Fogg delivered this little disquisition on the intractability of stockholders with reproachful vigor, staring blandly into the unwinking gaze of Mr. Marston. "I don't want to praise my own humble efforts too much," he went on, "but I truly believe that inside another thirty days the Sound crowd would have been ready ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... Quixote and his squire on the dismissal of 'regoldar', from the language of good society, and the substitution of 'erutar' in its room (Don Quixote, 4. 7. 43). In a letter of Cicero to Paetus (Fam. ix. 22) there is a subtle and interesting disquisition on forbidden words, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... subsistence, and conferring it on a set of stamp officers, distributors and their deputies.—But I must proceed no farther at present.—The sequel, whenever I shall find health and leisure to pursue it, will be a "disquisition of the policy of the stamp act."——In the mean time, however, let me add, These are not the vapours of a melancholy mind, nor the effusions of envy, disappointed ambition, nor of a spirit of opposition to government: but ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... seem to be much interested by this disquisition, and Cleary dragged his friend away after they had respectfully bade the pugilist good-night. A crowd of soldiers was waiting outside to see Corker get into his carriage. They paid no attention ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... a useless physiological disquisition; it is of the greatest use in directing our practice; and teaches us that, in passive inflammation, which has all the symptoms of active, and therefore shows in a striking point of view the fallacy of symptoms, we shall not succeed by applying leeches, and other debilitating ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... disquisition on the origin of these evidently congenerous words under the term Arage, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... with an account of the speculations of these latter, and the state of the parties which they represent? The complication is not a little curious, and may form, perhaps, a subject of graver disquisition. The July fetes occupy, as you may imagine, a considerable part of their columns just now, and it is amusing to follow them one by one; to read Tweedledum's praise, and Tweedledee's indignation—to read, in the Debats how the King was received with shouts and loyal vivats—in the Nation, how ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... place. Domestic science is an important subject. So is the proper heating and ventilating of our habitations. But when the house is on fire reasonable men do not stop to argue of culinary cuts nor listen to a disquisition on plumbing; they call out the fire department and join it in an attempt to save their dwelling. They think only in terms of ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... our paper, purporteth to be, in some wise, a disquisition on Beaux, and, by our faith, we had well-nigh forgotten it. Retournons a nos moutons, as the ancient lawyers used to say (and many a tyro, in the interim, hath said the same) when they grew so entangled in the mazes of Jack Shepherd cases that they lost sight of their original designs. And lest ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... did not start out to write a disquisition on women as golfers, but only to offer some hints ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... of our Confession, in which we said that the Church is the congregation of saints, they have condemned and have added a long disquisition, that the wicked are not to be separated from the Church, since John has compared the Church to a threshing-floor on which wheat and chaff are heaped together, Matt. 3, 12, and Christ has compared it to a net in which there are both good and ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... properly trained in clear thinking by the diligent perusal of the classics strips it of its pseudo-scientific rags and shows it straight out from the shoulder, in the fire of common sense and sound religion. And here is the point of my disquisition: ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... refer to the "Itineraire" of Chateaubriand, and his "Genie du Christianisme;" the History of England by Sir James Mackintosh, volume first; and to Mills's History of the Crusades, volume first, chapter sixth. We may add Dr. Robertson's "Historical Disquisition concerning the Knowledge which ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... let the virtue of a definition be what it will, in the order of things, it seems rather to follow than to precede our inquiry, of which it ought to be considered as the result. It must be acknowledged that the methods of disquisition and teaching may be sometimes different, and on very good reason undoubtedly; but, for my part, I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... sonnets to a woman (cf. xxi. xlvi. xlvii.) Similarly, the sonnets in the second 'group' (cxxvii.-cliv.) have no uniform superscription. Six invoke no person at all. No. cxxviii. is an overstrained compliment on a lady playing on the virginals. No. cxxix. is a metaphysical disquisition on lust. No. cxlv. is a playful lyric in octosyllabics, like Lyly's song of 'Cupid and Campaspe,' and its tone has close affinity to that and other of Lyly's songs. No. cxlvi. invokes the soul of man. Nos. cliii. and cliv. soliloquise on an ancient Greek apologue ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... not a botanical disquisition; it is not a complete account of all the members of the important tree family of maples. I am not a botanist, nor a true scientific observer, but only a plain tree-lover, and I have been watching some trees bloom and bud and grow and fruit ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... perpetually strolling out to the groves of Academia to bother poor old Plato with his nonsensical ideas about what he called his "lucky number." But Plato devised a way of getting rid of him. When the seer one day proposed to inflict on him a lengthy disquisition on his favourite topic, the philosopher cut him short with the remark, "Look here, old chappie" (that is the nearest translation of the original Greek term of familiarity): "when you can bring me the solution ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... the castle, but they have a thousand spears where we have ten. And so the castle of sin stands. Oh, my friends, we will never capture this world for God by any keen saber of sarcasm, by any glittering lances of rhetoric, by any sapping and mining of profound disquisition, by any gunpowdery explosions of indignation, by sharp shootings of wit, by howitzers of mental strength made to swing shell five miles, by cavalry horses gorgeously caparisoned pawing the air. In vain all the attempts on the part of these ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... godly disquisition, the spokesman of Na-im-be and Te-tzo-ge invited the followers of the True God to a feast where only strong men could come. The women of the dance in that feast were strong and were young. Four days ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the Professor, or, as he here, speaking in the third person, calls himself, 'the Wanderer,' is not once named. Then again, amidst what seems to be a Metaphysico-theological Disquisition, 'Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine,' or, 'The continued Possibility of Prophecy,' we shall meet with some quite private, not unimportant Biographical fact. On certain sheets stand Dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking Actions are omitted. Anecdotes, oftenest without ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... disquisition upon labor and capital; hesitancy about slavery. The President wishes to be pushed on by public opinion. But public opinion is safe, and expects from the official leader a decided step onwards. The message gives no solution, suggests none, accounts ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... Still—I suppose it was only by coming into Parliament that I could see things as I do now in terms of personality and imaginative range...." I stopped. Her stiff, unhappy, unlistening silence broke up my disquisition. ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... were to open and the New Jerusalem to appear this moment before you," retorted Judith, with the relevant irrelevance of her sex, "you would begin an unconcerned disquisition on the iconography ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... of the Laws" he takes the verse of the Bible not so much as a text to be amplified and interpreted, but as a pretext for a philosophical disquisition. The allegories indeed are only in form a commentary on the Bible; in one aspect they are a history of the human soul, which, if they had been completed, would have traced the upward progress from Adam to Moses. It is not to be expected, however, that Philo ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... does not Jefferies suddenly break his method, introduce his own personality, intersperse abrupt disquisitions on food, illness, and Fleet Street? Is not that description of Iden's dinner a little—well, a little unusual? In short, is not the book a disquisition on life from the standpoint of Jefferies' personal experiences? And if this is so, how can the book be so fine an achievement?" Oh, candid reader, with the voice of authority sounding in your ears (and have we not Mr. Henley and Mr. Saintsbury bound in critical amity against ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... to imagine the small beginnings of this great power exercised by one branch of the Federal Government over another. By holding that the mandamus must issue from the District and not the Supreme Court, the case might have been dismissed briefly. The Republicans thought the long disquisition on the powers of the court and its relation to the executive branch a kind of defiance and entirely unwarranted. It was the beginning of a long list of ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... were dimming the legend in my mind, taking the brilliance out of the indirect but extraordinarily personal impact of the man himself. They embalmed the Cid and set him up in the church with his sword in his hand, for all men to see. What sort of legend would a technical disquisition by the archbishop on his theory of the angle of machicolations have generated in men's minds? And what can a saint or a soldier or a founder of institutions leave behind him but a legend? Certainly it is not for the Franciscans ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... this genealogical disquisition our eyes turned to a most attractive looking tea table which was set forth with superb silver, and thin slices of bread and butter and cake. With appetites sharpened by our long ride through the fresh air, I fear that we all gazed longingly at that tempting regale, and for Miss Cassandra, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... replied in a tone that was meant to show his entire indifference to the whole affair,—"and some time when you are in town drop in again. And now tell me about Ruth, as we must call her, I suppose. Your aunt just missed her at the Cosgroves' the other day." Then came a short disquisition on Garry and Corinne and their life at Elm Crest, followed by an embarrassing pause, during which the head of the house of Breen lowered the flow line on a black bottle which he took from a closet behind his desk,—"his ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Thirlwall is a great improvement on its predecessor. It is written with profounder learning, and a more equitable spirit; and is indeed pre-eminently distinguished by the calmness, candour, and judge-like serenity that pervades it. In a style always lucid in disquisition, and always elegant in narrative, he appears to be solely anxious to communicate the fair result, whatever it may be, to which his extensive reading has conducted him. But, unfortunately, Dr Thirlwall wrote his history in one of those transition states of mind ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... mind of a certain professor of chemistry, whose lectures on light and heat I once was rash enough to attend, who, after a long dry disquisition which had nearly put us all to sleep, used to arouse our attention to the "beautiful effects" produced by certain combinations, which he would proceed to illustrate, as he said, by a "little experiment." But, somehow or other, these little experiments ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... disquisition on myself above cited, you will be prepared to understand the changes through which this wonderful ego et me ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... mother-hen who gathers under her wings a numerous brood of biographical chicks. Quantities of recondite erudition are poured out on the slightest provocation. Nat's unquestioned superiority to his schoolmates evokes a disquisition for the encouragement of dull boys, in which we are told that "the great philosopher, Newton, was one of the dullest scholars in school when he was twelve years old. Doctor Isaac Barrow was such a dull, pugnacious, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... omitted a long, uninteresting, and inconclusive disquisition on the supposed Terra Australis, as altogether founded on supposition ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... a geographical survey of the field, taking countries as the units, and had written upon Italy and Spain, and attempted France. But I found that when the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were reached my tract was becoming a disquisition upon palaeography, art, and learning, and, of course, was failing to do justice either to any one of them or to what it had promised in its title. I now think that a chronological survey will be more practicable, and ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... own ends. From the day when Mr. Chamberlain launched his scheme, or dream, of Tariff Reform, Mr. Balfour's authority steadily declined. Endless ingenuity in dialectic, nimble exchanges of posture, candid disquisition for the benefit of the well-informed, impressive phrase-making for the bewilderment of the ignorant—these and a dozen other arts were tried in vain. People began to laugh at the Tory leader, and likened him to Issachar crouching down between two burdens, or to ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... dispute between the partisans of ideal beauty on the one hand, and the beauty which exists in nature on the other." But here is a mistake in initio; for is not the Ideal, too, Nature? We should have rather expected a disquisition to elucidate this point; but our author prefers passing away from the real question to indulge in a little severity on the admirers of the Ideal, which Ideal we are persuaded he never understood; for he considers evidently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... them with seriousness, and without any marks either of surprize or incredulity. He pursued, with visible pleasure, that kind of disquisition which was naturally suggested by them. His fancy was eminently vigorous and prolific, and if he did not persuade us, that human beings are, sometimes, admitted to a sensible intercourse with the author of nature, he, at least, won over our inclination ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... obviously more at home among the song-birds than among the Raptores, unless he be the discoverer of some new species of eagle characterized by traits very unlike those of other members of the genus. It were to be wished that he had left out the disquisition on Whitman, for it is a jarring chord in his little orchestra of lyric and ornithologic song. He might have kept it by him till the longer growing of his critical beard, and then, if still a devotee at that singular shrine, have expanded it into a volume or two explanatory of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... had observed every flower, and listened to a disquisition on every plant, I was permitted to depart; but first, with great pomp, he plucked a polyanthus and presented it to me, as one conferring a prodigious favour. I observed, on the grass about his garden, certain apparatus of sticks ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... the Vulgar Tongue itself—though exhaustive disquisition obviously lies outside the scope of necessarily brief forewords—it may be pointed out that its origin in England is confessedly obscure. Prior to the second half of the 16th century, there was little trace of that ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... who was too anxious to gossip to dally by the way in a disquisition on the Game Laws, assented to her friend's argument with somewhat disappointing promptness, and returned to ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... in that disquisition in which a man reasons at once for and against himself upon authority which he knows not to be valid. The quarto ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... A disquisition or a discussion between two or more persons, on the manner in which the Wandering Jew has spent his life. One period, perhaps, trying over and over again to grasp domestic happiness; then a soldier, then a statesman, &c., at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... seen a white, black, red, and yellow fog," and went off into a disquisition about optics, mediums, reflections, refractions, and ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... by Dalaber grew more and more eager in his task—the more so as he became better acquainted with other red-hot spirits amongst the graduates and undergraduates, and heard more and more heated disquisition and controversy. Sometimes a dozen or more such spirits would assemble in his rooms to hear Garret hold forth upon the themes so near to their hearts; and they would sit far into the night listening to his fiery orations, ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... could have gone into a long disquisition about Presbyterian Orders, contradicting the arguments many good and devout people adduced in favour of them, but there was little time, so he only confirmed with authority Stead's belief that a Bishop's Ordination was indispensable to a true pastor, "the only door by which to enter to the ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... through the swing-doors and wandering slowly up and down in search of vacant tables or of tables occupied by friends. One of these rovers interested me because I was sure he wanted to catch Rothenstein's eye. He had twice passed our table, with a hesitating look; but Rothenstein, in the thick of a disquisition on Puvis de Chavannes, had not seen him. He was a stooping, shambling person, rather tall, very pale, with longish and brownish hair. He had a thin, vague beard, or, rather, he had a chin on which a large number of hairs weakly ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... length came to be looked upon as different Deities. Most of these secondary Divinities had the title of Hippius, and Hippia: and as they had female attendants in their temples, these too had the name of Hippai. What may have been the original of the term Hippa, and Hippus, will be matter of future disquisition. Thus much is certain, that the Greeks, who were but little acquainted with the purport of their antient theology, uniformly referred it to [693]horses. Hence it was often prefixed to the names of Gods, and of Goddesses, when it had no relation to their department; ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... June 23.-Madame du Barry at Mrs. Hobart's breakfast. Dr. Robertson's "Disquisition." French anarchy. Madame d'Albany at the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... trades the decadence had begun at different periods; to take the same starting year of comparison in each case would, therefore, have been a stupid error. "Made in Germany" is a call to arms, not an academic disquisition on the movements ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... you to propose to yourself, you will be aware." He had visited Scott at Lasswade as early as 1803, and in recording his impressions notes that "his conversation was full of anecdote and averse from disquisition." The minstrel was a raconteur and lived in the past, the bard was a moralist and lived in ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Swans.—"It would," says Bishop Percy (Mallet's North. Antiq., ii. p. 72.), "be a curious subject of disquisition, to inquire what could have given rise to so arbitrary and groundless a notion as the singing of swans," {476} which "hath not wanted assertors from almost every nation." (Sir ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... time nor the place for a disquisition upon the comparative merits, as a system of government, of a republic, and a monarchy surrounded by republican institutions. Upon this subject there is among us no diversity of opinion; and if it should take the people of ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... in all human affairs, and consequently in all church movements," the Major replied, and the impulse of a disquisition straightened him into a posture more dignified, for he was fond of talking and at times he strove to be logical and impressive; but at this moment Bill arrived with mint from the spring; and with lighter talk two ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... an Autobiographia Literaria, sketches of my literary Life and Opinions. This in turn developed into "a full account (raisonne) of the controversy concerning Wordsworth's poems and theory," with a "disquisition on the powers of Association ... and on the generic difference between the Fancy and the Imagination." This ran to such a length that he decided not to use it as a preface, but to amplify it into ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... regeneration mentioned in Tract I, in which we invited contributions on the subject. In response we had a paper sent to us, which we do not print because, though full of learning and interesting detail, it was a curious and general disquisition calculated to divert attention from the practical points. What the Society asks for is not a list of lost words that are interesting in themselves: we need rather definite instances of good dialect words which are not homophones ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... has conveyed so many meanings, the term "Biology" which denotes the whole of the sciences which deal with living things, whether they be animals or whether they be plants. Some little time ago—in the course of this year, I think—I was favoured by a learned classic, Dr. Field of Norwich, with a disquisition, in which he endeavoured to prove that, from a philological point of view, neither Treviranus nor Lamarck had any right to coin this new word "Biology" for their purpose; that, in fact, the Greek word "Bios" had relation only ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... of his religious suggestions, he goes on to descant upon slavery in the [210] fashion which we have elsewhere noticed, but it may still be proper to add a word or two here regarding this particular disquisition of his. This we are happy in being able to do under the guidance of an anterior and more reliable exponent of ecclesiastical as well as secular obedience on the part of all free and enlightened men in the present ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... parallel, I take it for granted that we can stand for this short time very clear of our party distinctions. If it were enough, by the use of an odious and unpopular word, to determine the question, it would be no longer a subject of rational disquisition; since that very prejudice which gives these odious names, and which is the party charged for doing so, and for the consequences of it, would then become the judge also. But I flatter myself that not a few will be found who do not think that the names of Protestant and Papist ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... committee occupied with the Code, Napoleon entered upon a long disquisition in favour of the Roman law of adoption; urging with intrepid logic, that an heir so chosen ought to be even dearer than a son. The object of this harangue was not difficult of detection. Napoleon had no longer any hope of having children ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... to oaks in general, to forests, the enclosure of them, waste lands, crown lands and government, he shortly found himself arrived at politics; and from politics, it was an easy step to silence. The general pause which succeeded his short disquisition on the state of the nation was put an end to by Catherine, who, in rather a solemn tone of voice, uttered these words, "I have heard that something very shocking indeed will soon come ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... service. They have generally no previous preparation, or possible knowledge of the matters to be tried, or what is applicable or inapplicable to them; and they decide in a space of time too short for any nice or critical disquisition. The Judges, therefore, of necessity, must forestall the evidence, where there is a doubt on its competence, and indeed observe much on its credibility, or the most dreadful consequences might follow. The institution of juries, if not thus qualified, could ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... shows and petty intrigues of society. He felt himself now in a manner debased by having had to listen with enforced patience to Bainton's rambling account of the gossip going on in the neighbourhood, and despite that worthy servitor's disquisition on the subject, he could not imagine how it had arisen, unless his quarrel with Putwood Leveson were the cause. It was all so sudden and unlooked for! Maryllia had gone away,—and that fact of itself was sufficient to ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... is a historical disquisition on the comparison between European and Japanese feudalism and chivalry, it is not the purpose of this paper to enter into it at length. My attempt is rather to relate, firstly, the origin and sources of our chivalry; secondly, its character ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... Plassans his voice was considered thick, his movements heavy. He generally wandered from the question at issue, rambled, as the wiseacres expressed it. On one occasion particularly, when he was pleading in a case for damages, he so forgot himself as to stray into a political disquisition, to such a point that the presiding judge interfered, whereupon he immediately sat down with a strange smile. His client was condemned to pay a considerable sum of money, a circumstance which did not, however, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... glad," wrote Clarendon to Downing, [Footnote: Letter of October 28th, 1664.] "to find any temperate and sober considerations, which dispose that people to peace, I wish they had entertained it sooner, for I scarce see time left for such a disquisition as is necessary. They have too insolently provoked the King to such an expense, that fighting is thought the ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... in a work devoted wholly to the description of the volcanoes of Peru and New Spain. Had I given the physical description of a single province, I could have treated separately everything relating to its geography, mineralogy, and botany; but how could I interrupt the narrative of a journey, a disquisition on the manners of a people, or the great phenomena of nature, by an enumeration of the productions of the country, the description of new species of animals and plants, or the detail of astronomical observations. Had I adopted a mode ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... prefixed to the translation of "Luther's Way to Prayer," published by Mr. Pickering in 1846. Juncker's book is a very good repertory of the various representations of the great reformer, but the prints are generally but faithless copies. In 1750 Kirchmayer printed an especial disquisition upon the portrait by Lucas Cranach of 1523, under the following title:—"Disquisitio Historia de Martini Lutheri Oris et Vultus Habitu Hervieo ad vivum expresso in Imagine divine pencilli Lucae Cranachj ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... talked in a friendly, bantering tone of the concerts they gave together, Christophe with his piano, the Commandant with his flute. Christophe tried to go, but the old man would not let him: and he plunged blindly into a disquisition on music. Suddenly he stopped ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... to quote so freely from Torrotti, as thinking that the reader will glean more incidentally from these fragments about the genius of Varallo and its antecedents than he would get from pages of disquisition on my own part. Returning to the Varallo of modern times, I would say that even now that the railway has been opened, the pleasantest way of getting there is still over the Colma from Pella opposite Orta. I always call this road "the root," ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... eager for your twopence, the acquisition or the loss of it may affect your peace of mind, and peace of mind is better than any amount of twopences. My friend, the old-clothes'-man, whose agonies over the hat have led to this rambling disquisition, has, I very much fear, by a too eager pursuit of small profits, disturbed the equanimity of a mind that ought to be easy and happy. "Had I stood out," he thinks, "I might have had the hat for threepence," and he doubts whether, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this title in the collection of his works. There is an older King John, in two parts, of which the former is a re-cast:—perhaps a juvenile work of Shakspeare, though not hitherto acknowledged as such by the English critics. See the disquisition appended to this Lecture.] and Henry the Eighth at a later period, as an addition to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... tell you about the different noises which disturb my peace of mind by day and my repose of body by night, and have gone, instead, into a financial disquisition upon mining prospects. Pray forgive me, even though I confess that I intend, some day, when I feel statistically inclined, to bore you with some profound remarks upon the claiming, drifting, sluicing, ditching, fluming, and coyoting politics ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... evening, and the companion to whom he could speak of his sheep and his lambs. Mike listened to the little troubles of each sister in the back garden, never failing to evince the profoundest sympathy. He was surprised to find that he enjoyed these conversations just as much as a metaphysical disquisition with John Norton. "I am not pretending," he often said to himself; "it is quite true;" and then he added philosophically, "Were I not interested in them I should not ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... occupies chapters 37 to 46, inclusive of the author's text is little more than a paraphrase of The History of the Late Rebellion in the States of the Great Mogol by Bernier, as the disquisition is called in Brock's translation. Mr. A. Constable's revised and annotated translation of Bernier's work (Constable and Co., 1891; reprinted with corrections. Oxford University Press, 1914) renders superfluous the reprinting of Sleeman's paraphrase, which would require much correction and comment ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Mr. Naismith—' Don't know what in thunder he was going to tell him, for the next few moments they mixed it up good and hot. Say! it was a circus with all the monkeys loose and the band playing seventeen tunes all at once! But finally Grant had his say and treated the Presbytery to a pretty full disquisition of his own theology, and when he was done my pity was transferred from Boyle to him, for it seemed that on every doctrine where Boyle was a heretic Grant had gone him one better. And I believe the whole ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... hand, the ready talk on any topic of the time, the quick illustration which was so frequently borrowed from some characteristic or incident in the life of the person, or the person's ancestor, with whom he was conversing, the eloquent disquisition playful or profound, put the visitor at his ease, and hours flew like minutes in refreshing talk. It was a mistake to suppose that Mr. Tazewell arrogated all the talk to himself, and purposely kept others silent ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... needeth to be further reformed. Hath he forgotten his own definition of the bias which he had but just now given? But he will needs make it more than probable, by the instances which I brought, that the Commissioners from Scotland came not to this Assembly as divines, by dispute and disquisition, to find out truth, but as judges, to censure all different opinions as errors; for so came foreign divines to Dort, Alexander to the Council of Nice, Cyril to Ephesus. Is it not enough that he slander us, though he do ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... possessing a tenth part of his intellectual powers, hardly ever address the House of Commons without producing a greater impression than was produced by his most splendid and elaborate orations. His luminous and philosophical disquisition on the Reform Bill was spoken to empty benches. Those, indeed, who had the wit to keep their seats, picked up hints which, skilfully used, made the fortune of more than one speech. But "it was caviare to the general." And even those who listened to Sir James with pleasure and admiration ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... system of Moses, if I may so call it, who was in great reputation at that time in the heathen world, as we find by Diodorus, Justin, Longinus, and other authors; for the rest, the wisest among them laid aside all notions after a deity as a disquisition vain and fruitless, which indeed it was upon unrevealed principles; and those who ventured to engage too far fell into ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... but mostly in the way of extract; anon we find him reviewing A Journal of Eight Days' Journey, by Jonas Hanway, of whom Johnson said that he made some reputation by travelling abroad, and lost it all by travelling at home. Then again we find him writing a disquisition on Some Enquiries concerning the First Inhabitants, Language, Religion, Learning, and Letters of Europe, by a Mr. Wise, who, along with his critic, appears to have got into hopeless confusion in believing Basque ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... he was elected Lumleian lecturer at the College of Physicians, and three years later was appointed physician extraordinary to King James I. In 1628, twelve years after his first statement of it in his lectures, he published at Frankfurt, in Latin, "An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Heart and Blood," in which he maintained that there is a circulation of the blood. Moreover, he distinguished between the pulmonary circulation, from the right side of the heart to the left through the lungs, and the systemic circulation from the left side ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... open the meeting by the invocation of divine blessing. Professor William Hansberry of Straight College was introduced to deliver a lecture on the Ancient and Mediaeval Culture of the People of Yorubuland. This was a most informing disquisition on the achievements of these people prior to the time when they came into contact with the so-called more advanced Asiatic and European races. On the whole, Professor Hansberry made a strong argument in behalf ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... rational subscription collection maintained by this intellectual people. But neither the light reading of the one, nor the heavy artillery of the other, suited my purpose. I always fell asleep at the fourth or fifth page of history or disquisition; and it took me a month's hard reading to wade through a half-bound trashy novel, during which I was pestered with applications to return the volumes, by every half-bred milliner's miss about the place. In short, during the time when all the town besides ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Rome has left us, as an episode of his great work, a disquisition on the probable effects that would have followed, if Alexander the Great had invaded Italy. Posterity has generally regarded that disquisition as proving Livy's patriotism more strongly than his impartiality or ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... at greater length than either of the counsel between whom he was to hold the scales. The address from the bench was much the shortest of the three. Less exhaustive than the conventional review of a complicated case, it was a disquisition of conspicuous clearness and impartiality. Only the salient points were laid before the jury, for the last time, and in a nutshell, but with hardly a hint of the judge's own opinion upon any one of them. The expression of that opinion was reserved for a point of even greater import ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... for which his grand halls are merely the frames. No doubt I could make fine speeches about these paintings; but who, not seeing them, would be the wiser, after the best description and the choicest critical disquisition? In fact, our travellers themselves found it pleasanter, after a while, to yield to the guidance of the Custode, and to enjoy the stupider marvels of the place, than to do the set and difficult admiration of the works of art. So, passing the apartments in good preservation ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... it, and points out that the assumption that it has occurred is a necessary part of the doctrine of Evolution. The fourteenth lecture, on "Schoepfungs-Perioden und Schoepfungs-Urkunden," answers pretty much to the famous disquisition on the "Imperfection of the Geological Record" in the ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and led, as usual, by Major Harper, became a general disquisition on the race of North American Indians. Accidentally, or not, the elder brother drew from the younger many facts, indicating a degree of both information and experience which made every one glance with surprise, respect, and a little awe, on the ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... all other modes of reasoning, constitutes the prominent subject of these volumes. Nevertheless, the old topic of logic proper, or deductive reasoning, is not omitted, and the first passage to which we feel bound, on many accounts, to give our attention, is the disquisition on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... transpired centuries before, and in many instances the entire absence of a written language, by which, either to perpetuate events, or enable the philosopher by analogy of language to ascertain their affinity with other nations. Conjectural then as must be every disquisition as to the manner in which this continent was first peopled, still however, as many men eminent for learning and piety have devoted much labor and time to the investigation of the subject, it may afford satisfaction to the curious to see some of those ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... that she was congenitally incapable of forming a single letter worthy of the least of Milton's words; but she persisted; and again he suddenly threw himself into the task of teaching her with a combination of stormy intensity, concentrated patience, and occasional bursts of interesting disquisition on the beauty and nobility, the august mission and destiny, of human handwriting. Eliza ended by acquiring an extremely uncommercial script which was a positive extension of her personal beauty, and spending three ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... He, in the succeeding winter, chose the same subject for an essay, submitted to Mr. Dugald Stewart, whose prelections on ethics he was then attending. Some time later he again illustrated the same opinions more at length in a disquisition before the Speculative Society; and, indeed, he always adhered to them. One of the last historical books he read, before leaving Abbotsford for Malta in 1831, was Colonel Tod's interesting account of Rajasthan; and I well remember the delight ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... which had drawn down his wrath upon the unlucky Mrs. Macleuchar, our Antiquary only bestowed on the delay the honour of a few episodical poohs and pshaws, which rather seemed to regard the interruption of his disquisition than the retardation ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... our Boston newspapers quite so amusing as the very friendly and sympathetic report of Prof. Harris' most elaborate and laborious comments on the SYLLOGISMS, which reminds one of Hopkinson's metaphysical and elaborate disquisition on the nature, properties, relations, and essential entity of a salt-box. We do not laugh at the professor as we did at Daniel Pratt, the "Great American Traveller," whose travels are now ended; for, aside from his metaphysical follies, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... my present disquisition relates to the feeling of self-approbation or self-complacency, which will be found inseparable from the most honourable efforts and exertions in which mortal ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... this rather desultory disquisition with what patience she could command, breaking in upon it impulsively at various points, and seen that it was drifting nowhere—at least, that it was not drifting toward the object of her wishes. Then she took up the burden of ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... too much from the luminous field of philosophic disquisition to the sterile regions of polemic divinity, and the still more ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... other Catholic authorities in order that the mandate might be issued without further delay, adding, "Gropper, the indefatigable champion of our cause, is ill, otherwise he would have sent a learned and luminous disquisition on ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... should reconstruct the naive gaieties of Cremorne; and, finally, it should recreate and illumine all the large, forgotten moments in the lives of those apostles of beauty whose ruminations and dreams the soul of Chelsea has fused with more of herself than men may know; ending, perhaps, with a disquisition on the effects of environment on the ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... amount of theological divergence which was conveyed by these terms Arian and Catholic, or to speak more judicially (for the Arians averred that they were the true Catholics and that their opponents were heretics) Arian and Athanasian? As this is not the place for a disquisition on disputed points of theology, it is sufficient to say that, while the Athanasian held for truth the whole of the Nicene Creed, the Arian—at least that type of Arian with whom we are here concerned—would, in that ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... He was probably reminded by his delicate critical perception that the true business of literature is with narrative; in reasoned narrative, and there alone, that art enjoys all its advantages, and suffers least from its defects. Dry precept and disembodied disquisition, as they can only be read with an effort of abstraction, can never convey a perfectly complete or a perfectly natural impression. Truth, even in literature, must be clothed with flesh and blood, or it cannot tell its whole story to the reader. Hence the effect of anecdote on simple minds; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the situation with unconscious accuracy in a subsequent disquisition delivered to an admiring circle in the servants' hall at ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... examines the nature of sensitive perception of fibres, and goes on to show how an impression made on an external part, or a natural perception, becomes converted into sensation, and thus made known to the sensorium. But his disquisition is not only very long but very dark, and we shall therefore pass it by with the ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... manifold immeasurable imaginations, Cain is only a polemical controversy, the doctrines of which might have been better discussed in the pulpit of a college chapel. As a poem it is greatly unequal; many passages consist of mere metaphysical disquisition, but there are others of wonderful scope and energy. It is a thing of doubts and dreams and reveries—dim and beautiful, yet withal full of terrors. The understanding finds nothing tangible; but amid dread and ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... interest? Yes, but not on account of its contents, for they were pure Greek to me; but because it lacked the dust on its upper edge which had marked every other volume I had handled. This, then, was what had attracted the unknown to these shelves, this—let me see if I can remember its title—Disquisition upon Old Coastlines. Pshaw! I was wasting my time. What had such a dry compendium as this to do with the body lying in its blood a few steps behind me, or with the hand which had put out the candle upon this dreadful deed? Nothing. I replaced the book, but not so hastily ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... to your own conclusions respecting the date of its erection, and "putting the colophon" to this disquisition respecting the principal public buildings at Caen, it is high time to assure you how faithfully ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the mass of serious speculation in which they are embedded. What he, as a purely literary critic, passed over as comparatively uninteresting, gives the exposition of Cowper's intellectual position. The poem is in fact a political, moral, and religious disquisition interspersed with charming vignettes, which, though not obtrusively moralised, illustrate the general thesis. The poetical connoisseur may separate them from their environment, as a collector of engravings might cut ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... when the King on his Progress visited Sir Francis Carew, Lady Ralegh's uncle. Ralegh previously had laid before James a Discourse touching a War with Spain, and of the Protecting of the Netherlands. It is a most forcible, and, from its own point of view, sagacious disquisition in favour of persistency in the war with Spain, and the alliance with Holland, as well for offensive purposes against the Spaniards, as for defence, whether against Spain or France. As a controversial pamphlet it evinces none of the want of judgment with which ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... was soon on his legs, and in a voice mellow with old port, youth and fun, responded "Friends, fellow countrymen, brothers, (this last expression was challenged as he was an only son) I am indeed proud of my Dublin education, we have something, however better before us than a disquisition on the excellence of the various systems of continental courses, to be brief, I now challenge any here present to meet me on the classics, astronomy, the cubic root or glass to glass, you have your choice." "Glass to glass," they one and ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... begging his pardon: witness his "Friend," his "Lay Sermons," and, latterly, his "Aids to Reflection"; but he becomes inspired by the sound of his own silver voice, and pours out wisdom like a sea. Had he a domestic Gurney, he might publish a Moral Essay, or a Theological Discourse, or a Metaphysical Disquisition, or a Political Harangue, every morning throughout the year ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... scandal. On All Saints' day (the first of November, 1533), the university assembled according to custom in the church of the Mathurins, to listen to an address delivered by the rector. But Nicholas Cop's discourse was not of the usual type. Under guise of a disquisition on "Christian Philosophy," the orator preached an evangelical sermon, with the First Beatitude for his text, and propounded the view that the forgiveness of sin and eternal life are simple gifts of God's grace that cannot be earned by man's ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... and the more instructive and stimulating experience at Breed's Hill, the penned the British in Boston and determined to drive them from the land. Dr. Dwight said of Lexington: "The expedition became the preface to the history of a nation, the beginning of an empire, and a theme of disquisition and astonishment ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... Glen Rushen, but my little sketch may perhaps get you close to that side of Manx life whereon I wish to speak to-day. I want to tell the history of religion in Man, so far as we know it; and better, to my thinking, than a grave or solid disquisition on the ways and doings of Bishops or Spiritual Barons, are any peeps into the hearts and home lives of the Manx, which will show what is called the "innate religiosity" of the humblest of the people. To this end also, when I have discharged my scant duty ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... systematic form; that is, beginning with the Propyleum, On the Power and Use of Words, comprising Logic, as the Canons of Conclusion, as the criterion of Premises, and lastly as the discipline and evolution of Ideas (and then the Methodus et Epochee, or the Disquisition on God, Nature, and Man), the two first grand divisions of which, from the Ens super Ens to the Fall, or from God to Hades, and then from Chaos to the commencement of living organization, containing the whole of the Dynamic Philosophy, and the deduction of the ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... physiologists, that two bodily pains cannot endure at the same space of time in the system; and, whether it be so or not, is a question concerning which it would be foreign to the nature of our work, to enter into anything like an elaborate disquisition. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest |
