"Abstruse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a Debating Club, exceeding wise and great; On grave and abstruse questions it would eagerly debate. Its members said: 'We are so wise, ourselves we'll herewith dub The Great Aristophelean Pythagoristic Club.' And every night these bigwigs met, and strove with utmost pains To solve recondite problems that would baffle lesser brains. ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... imaginary pretences on which men thus combine, meet, and act in concert, are manifest proofs of a social proclivity so strong as to create reasons for its indulgence where such reasons do not already exist. Even in science and in the most abstruse forms of erudition, men of learning seek mutual countenance and encouragement, and readily suspend their solitary research and study for the opportunity of intercommunication on the subjects and objects of their pursuit. The cases in which society is voluntarily shunned or forsaken are as ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... Margaret of Angouleme was first drawn into sympathy with the reformatory movement. Unsatisfied with herself and with the influences surrounding her, she sought in Briconnet a spiritual adviser and guide. The prelate, in the abstruse and almost unintelligible language of exaggerated mysticism, endeavored to fulfil the trust. His prolix correspondence still exists in manuscript in the National Library of Paris, together with the replies of his royal penitent. Its incomprehensibility ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... imagine from the first hasty inspection of the characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a cipher—that is to say, they convey a meaning; but then, from what is known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of the more abstruse cryptographs. I made up my mind, at once, that this was of a simple species—such, however, as would appear, to the crude intellect of the sailor, absolutely ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in a state of preternatural activity by the prick and anguish of his daily life. His fame, though still on its upward slope, already overshadowed the soberer reputations of his fellow-clergymen, eminent as several of them were. There are scholars among them, who had spent more years in acquiring abstruse lore, connected with the divine profession, than Mr. Dimmesdale had lived; and who might well, therefore, be more profoundly versed in such solid and valuable attainments than their youthful brother. There ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... engineer to understand the fundamentals thoroughly than to use a complex formula that may be misapplied." However, many readers undoubtedly read only the lead paragraph, sagely nodded their heads when they reached the word "fictitious," which confirmed their half-formed conviction that anything as abstruse as the Coriolis component could have no bearing upon a practical problem, and turned the page to the ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... by the breadth and the scope which she sensed more or less vaguely in The Evolution of Sociology. Holman Sommers quoted freely, and discussed boldly and frankly, such abstruse authors as Descartes, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Comte, Gumplowicz, some of them names she had never heard of and could not even spell without following her copy letter by letter. Holman Sommers seemed to have read all ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... philosopher or moneyed man) than the operation of figures; and when in bed, the effect is irresistible. Sir Geoffrey fell asleep in the act of calculating King Ryence's height, from the supposed length of his mantle. Indeed, had he not stumbled on this abstruse subject of calculation, there is no guessing how long he might have held forth upon the superiority of men of little stature, which was so great a favourite with him, that, numerous as such narratives are, the dwarf had collected almost all ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... awaken nothing but curiosity. How then can one who thinks and reasons admit that an art can be cultivated and sustained by theories extravagant, fantastic, enigmatic, explained and condensed in abstruse phrases and sentences, which not only have no meaning whatever, but even lead one to doubt whether the teacher himself knows what result it is desired to obtain? Do you wish a ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... of which he will not be easily deprived, while learning shall have any reverence among men: for there is no science in which he does not discover some skill; and scarce any kind of knowledge, profane or sacred, abstruse or elegant, which he does not appear to have cultivated with success. His exuberance of knowledge, and plenitude of ideas, sometimes obstruct the tendency of his reasoning, and the clearness of his decisions. On whatever subject he employed ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... there sprang up on every hand strange societies called Browning Clubs, and the libraries were ransacked for Browning's works, and for the books of whoever has had the conceit or the hardihood to write about the great poet. Lovely girls at afternoon receptions propounded to each other abstruse conundrums concerning what they were pleased to regard as obscure passages, while little coteries gathered, with airs of supernatural gravity, to read and discuss ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... the temple of the Nymphs, near Mieza, where, to this very day, they show you Aristotle's stone seats, and the shady walks which he was wont to frequent. It would appear that Alexander received from him not only his doctrines of Morals, and of Politics, but also something of those more abstruse and profound theories which these philosophers, by the very names they gave them, professed to reserve for oral communication to the initiated, and did not allow many to become acquainted with. For when he was in Asia, and heard Aristotle had published some treatises of that kind, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... important question in silence until they reached the next corner; then Nimble Dick, tossing back his head as one who had thrown off an abstruse problem, and would have ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... translators and editors have generally been men who were often over-enthusiastic. For example, Mr. Wilkinson says of the Systeme de la Nature, [64:15] "No work, ancient or modern, has surpassed it in the eloquence and sublimity of its language or in the facility with which it treats the most abstruse and difficult subjects. It is without exception the boldest effort the human mind has yet produced in the investigation of Morals and Theology. The republic of letters has never produced another author whose pen was so well calculated to emancipate mankind from all those trammels with which the nurse, ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... honestly proud of the success achieved during this strenuous period, yet am I still as anxiously imbued as ever with the spirit and habit of research which is now directed to the endeavour to further simplify my method of treatment, by further discoveries in the realm of that most abstruse of the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... Quintilian says, that he spoke with the same force with which he fought; and if he had devoted himself to the bar, would have been the only man capable of rivalling Cicero. Nor was he a master only of the politer arts; but conversant also with the most abstruse and critical parts of learning; and, among other works which he published, addressed two books to Cicero on the analogy of language, or the art of speaking and writing correctly. He was a most liberal patron ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... therein the nature of that curve which the discovery of Kepler has raised to such unparalleled importance. The subject, no doubt, is a difficult one, and to pursue it with any detail would involve us in many abstruse calculations which would be out of place in this volume; but a general sketch of the subject is indispensable, and we must attempt to render it such justice as may ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... has been said, nearly related to those of Greece; they underwent as great modifications, while the opinions of her philosophers were equally abstruse, varied, and difficult to understand. The author above quoted, treating of the notion of the soul and a future state entertained by the Roman philosophers, proves their ideas to have been extremely ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... brilliant as the tongue which was its vehicle; her well-stored brain was more than a match for the most learned men at Court, and she would leave an archbishop discomfited in a theological argument, to cross swords with Sully himself on some abstruse problem of statesmanship. When Sully had been brought to his knees, she would rush away, with mischief in her eyes, to take the lead in some merry escapade or practical joke, her silvery laughter echoing in some remote ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... of this simple question on Mr. Burrowes was stupendous. He dropped away from Fillmore's coat-button like an exhausted bivalve, and his small mouth opened feebly. It was as if a child had suddenly propounded to an eminent mathematician some abstruse problem in the higher algebra. Females who took an interest in boxing had come into Mr. Burrowes' life before—-in his younger days, when he was a famous featherweight, the first of his three wives had been accustomed to sit at the ringside during his contests and ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... Mr. Spayth has adopted, is both clear and concise; and we are glad to see that our author has adhered to the old system of draught-notation, which is infinitely superior to any of the new plans. The condensation and clear presentation of Paterson's somewhat abstruse essay on "The Move and its Changes" is every way admirable, and many of the problems are remarkable for beauty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... been left for me; and I have endeavoured to collect and communicate, in the clearest and most intelligible manner, the whole of the heretofore abstruse mysteries of the culinary art, which are herein, I hope, so plainly developed, that the most inexperienced student in the occult art of cookery, may work from my receipts with ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... it was necessary that women should participate, if they wished to retain their old position in the social world. In the salons of Berlin, therefore, women have been heard taking a prominent part in conversations in which the most abstruse questions in religion, politics, and general science were discussed. The philosophers, male and female, debarred by the spy system from any open investigation of passing political events, revenged themselves by treating these events as mere temporary ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... paint scenes that amuse or strike their fancy with tolerable accuracy; but it requires the strong-thinking heart of man to anticipate events, and trace certain results from particular causes. Women are out of their element when they attempt to speculate upon these abstruse matters—are apt to incline too strongly to their own opinions—and jump at conclusions which are either ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... some time in my country, then?" said the Count with awakened interest, a little glad of a topic scarce so abstruse as sex. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... self; it follows, that everything, which contributes to the happiness of society, recommends itself directly to our approbation and good-will. Here is a principle, which accounts, in great part, for the origin of morality: And what need we seek for abstruse and remote systems, when there occurs ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... might to those who have no strength. Learning may bring her ample pages and her ponderous records, rich with the spoils of every age, gathered from every land, and gleaned from every source. Philosophy and science may bring their abstruse researches and wonderous revelations—Literature her elegance, with the toils of the pen, and the labors of the pencil—but they are idle tales compared to the truths of Christianity. They may cultivate the intellect, enlighten the understanding, ...
— The Story of Mattie J. Jackson • L. S. Thompson
... grammar school and in six months had completed the work of seven grades. At the age of seven he had gone so far with his mathematical studies that his father, Professor Boris Sidis, could be of little assistance to him. He worked out the most abstruse and difficult problems with the greatest ease and invented new systems of computation which attracted much attention. When eight years old he entered the Brookline High School and in six weeks had completed ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... obstacles which Horrox had to encounter may be best described by quoting his own words. He writes: 'There were many hindrances. The abstruse nature of the study, my inexperience and want of means dispirited me. I was much pained not to have any one to whom I could look for guidance, or indeed for the sympathy of companionship in my endeavours, and I was assailed by the languor and weariness which are inseparable from every great ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... of mental struggle and self-evolvement narrated in that odd but interesting work; but he will see the track marked in light; the notions become images, the images glorified, and not unfrequently the abstruse position stamped clearer by the poet than by the psychologist. No student of Coleridge's philosophy can fully understand it without a perusal of the illumining, and if we may so say, popularizing commentary of his poetry. It is the Greek put into the vulgar tongue. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... The bells at St. Mary's were ringing the customary curfew. The Dean was seated before the fire in his arm-chair. An open book, a treatise on some abstruse question of pure mathematics, lay on the table by his side. He was meditating on his past exploits, and planning new punishments. But somehow there was a strange sinking at his heart. What could be the reason of it? The dinner in hall had been of the usual moderate excellence, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... of ages of experience in navigation, to enable Columbus to discover that path to the New World which now any little boat can follow. Ages of experience and genius are stored up in a locomotive, but quite an unlettered man can drive it. It is the work of genius to render difficult matters plain, abstruse thoughts clear. ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... world, which poses in every country as an elite body of scientific fighters, and is often found on the battle-field to be an aggregation of abstruse theorists, were jealous and contemptuous. They said, "See how easily the artillery knocked out machine guns at Gravelotte." The Cavalry of the world, famous everywhere for an esprit-du-corps which looks haughtily down on all other arms of the service, were too deeply absorbed in the merits of ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... present stage, still lacks one important item—a sacred book. Certain indications show that this lacuna will be filled by the elevation of the more important Imperial Rescripts to that rank, accompanied doubtless by an authoritative commentary, as their style is too abstruse to be understanded of the people. To these Imperial Rescripts some of the poems composed by his present Majesty may be added. In fact, a volume on the whole duty of Japanese man, with selected Imperial poems as texts, has already ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... the same that she had always sung, yet breathed a more tender spirit. Either the tones of her voice were more soft and touching, or some passages were delivered with a feeling she had never before given them. Antonio, beside his love for the abstruse sciences, had a pretty turn for music; and never did philosopher touch the guitar more tastefully. As, by degrees, he conquered the mutual embarrassment that kept them asunder, he ventured to accompany Inez in some of her songs. He had a voice full of ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... reference to such a functionary; and "an era of glorious progress" would be the only way of characterising his administration. Indeed, a glance over a Mexican book or article or speech seems to show that the writer has made use of every elegant and abstruse word in the dictionary. In a dissertation upon any subject he seems called upon to begin from the very beginning of things, desde la creacion del mundo—"from the beginning of the world," as the Spanish-American himself sarcastically says at times. Perhaps this is a habit acquired from the ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... is about to be sacrificed, and that, too, while half the mystery of its strange powers is yet a secret. Here is a man who has never entered the doors of a college or a university, and yet by the sheer might of his innate gifts has made himself such a colossus in abstruse learning that the ablest of our scholars are but pigmies in his presence. By the evidence of Professor Mather, Mr. Surbridge, Mr. Richmond, and other men qualified to testify, this man is as familiar with the broad domain of philology as common men are ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... abstruse and consummately occult. The ancient philosophies were of two kinds,—exoteric, those that the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and esoteric, those that nobody could understand. It is the latter that have most profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... was expounding, in set terms, the most abstruse of his pious doctrines, the head of the tub whereon the good man stood gave way, and the preacher was lost from before the eyes of the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... years before Saint Thomas settled the Church dogma, a monk of Citeaux or some other abbey, a certain Alain of Lille, had written a Latin poem, as abstruse an allegory as the best, which had the merit of painting the scene of man's creation as far as concerned the mechanical process much as Thomas seems to have seen it. M. Haureau has printed an extract (vol. I, p. 352). Alain conceded to the weakness of human thought, that God was working in time ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... away into a discussion of possible variants, so technical and be-sprinkled with abstruse words and formulae that I could not follow them. Freylinghuisen, of course, had all this sort of thing at his fingers' ends—post-mortems were his every-day occupation, and no doubt he had been furbishing himself up, since this last one, in preparation for the inquest, ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... in Stettin would not give up the place, on any representative or secondary authority; not without an express order in his King's own hand. Which, as his King was far away, in abstruse Turkish circumstances and localities, could not be had at the moment; and involved new difficulties and uncertainties, new delay which might itself be fatal. The end was, the Russians and Saxons had to cannonade the man out by regular siege: they then gave up the ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... which are at once the inspiration and the happiness of all good men—how madly he rested on the conviction that religion is an abstract matter, and has nothing more to do with life and conduct than any other abstruse branch of metaphysics. But in spite of this unsound state of things, the gentleman possessed all the showy surface-virtues that go so very far towards eliciting the favourable verdict of mankind. He prided himself upon a delicate, a surprising sense of honour. He professed himself ready to part ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... teaching before that time. Secondly, the Editor wishes to dissuade the student from beginning the study of Nietzsche by reading first of all his most complicated works. Not having been properly prepared for them, he will find the Zarathustra abstruse, the Ecce Homo conceited, and the Antichrist violent. He should rather begin with the little pamphlet on Education, the Thoughts out of Season, Beyond Good and Evil, or the Genealogy of Morals. Thirdly, the Editor wishes to remind students ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... unsophisticated. And do you know," she went on, "that what most surprises me is the number of reading, thoughtful people among those who do manual labor. I doubt if on your side of town the, best books, the real fundamental and abstruse books, are so read and discussed, or the philosophy of life is so seriously considered, as in certain little circles of what ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... by a student of Epicurean philosophy largely influenced by Lucretius. It would be difficult to make a stronger case short of a contemporaneous attribution. Has not Vergil himself referred to the Aetna in the preface of his Ciris, where he thanks the Muses for their aid in an abstruse poem (l. 93)? ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... extensive researches in the British Museum into the history of Paracelsus, the great leader in sixteenth century medical science; but in the poem the facts are subordinated to a minute analysis of the spiritual history of Paracelsus. The poem was too abstruse in subject and style to bring Browning popularity, but his genius was recognized by important critics, and, though he was but twenty-three, he was admitted into the foremost literary circles of ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... above the flutter of the printed leaves that the journeymen withdrew as they rose, and replaced, white, unsullied and damp as they came together again. Along the walls the apprentice setters stood before the black formes and with abstruse, deliberate or hesitating expressions, made swift snatches at the little leaden dice. The sifting sound of the leads going home and the creak of the presses with the heavy wheeze of one printer, huge and grizzled like a walrus, pulling ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... indefinite, garbled &c (indistinct) 447; perplexed &c (confused) 59; undetermined, vague, loose, ambiguous; mysterious; mystic, mystical; acroamatic^, acroamatical^; metempirical; transcendental; occult, recondite, abstruse, crabbed. inconceivable, inconceptible^; searchless^; above comprehension, beyond comprehension, past comprehension; beyond one's depth; unconceived. inexpressible, undefinable, incommunicable. unpredictable, unforeseeable. Phr. it's Greek ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... confidence in your knowledge of the state of inefficiency existing in your regiment. Only I will beg you to remember in future that I am the judge as to the capabilities of movement of the units composing this column. But let us discuss the prospects of peace, or some other less abstruse subject than the Mount Nelson Light Horse. In the meantime, colonel, just to emphasise what I have said, my Intelligence officer has orders to go out to those farms over there to see if he can get suitable ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... enabled to discuss with precision, and to explain with clearness, the principles of the science of human nature, which are in themselves on a level with the capacity of every man of good sense, and which only appeared to be abstruse from the unprofitable subtleties with which they were loaded, and the barbarous jargon in which they were expressed. The deepest doctrines of morality have since that time been treated in the perspicuous ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... the curb till the victoria disappeared. Of what he was thinking I don't know; but he finally muttered "James?" in an inquiring way, and made for the club, shaking his head, as if suddenly confronted by a remarkably abstruse problem. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... it (to the outsider) so graphically as the (intelligent) tourist; just as the man who has science at his fingers' ends does not succeed so well as the man with whom science has not yet become second nature, in making an abstruse subject popular. ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... of their relation to the bodily organs. It should be expected that such careful and pains-taking experiments, as are necessary to establish a science, will be preceded by intuitive judgments and accredited observations, which may be, for a time, the substitutes of those more abstruse ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... danger of having the attention turned from important to unimportant things. The same thing is perceived in judicial documents which often reveal the fact that the dictator permitted himself to be led astray by unskilful witnesses, or that he had himself been responsible for abstruse, indirect memories. The real thinker will almost always be chary of words, because he retains, from among the numberless images which are attached to his idea, only those most closely related to his immediate ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... subject of establishing a mission among them. He felt it his duty to have translated the message sent to the Indians by the Missionary Society. The poor savages listened courteously to this long piece of abstruse theological narrative and argument, but they must have been terribly bored, notwithstanding Mr. Bacon's efforts to 'express the ideas in language better adapted to the capacity and more agreeable to their ways of speaking.' No wonder that Little Otter was ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... positively refuse. I will not say another word. There are limits. Only an abstruse theologian with a taste for the more recondite niceties of obscure heresies could ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... be hoped that he succeeded in settling any medical points of a knotty character that might be hovering in his brain, and certain it is that he had become quite absorbed in an abstruse matter connected with physiology, when his ears were startled, and he was at once aroused to a full consciousness of where he was, and why he had come there, by the distant sound of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... foot on Europe and the other on Asia, was influenced by her voluptuous climate in the choice of her marriage institutions; she received them from the East, where her philosophers, her legislators and her poets went to study the abstruse antiquities of Egypt and Chaldea. The absolute seclusion of women which was necessitated under the burning sun of Asia prevailed under the laws of Greece and Ionia. The women remained in confinement within the marbles of the gyneceum. The country was reduced to the condition of a ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... of the city is not greater than the prosperity of the largest number of its component individuals," replied the mayor, in a somewhat altruistic and economically abstruse argument on the floor of the council ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... great Dictionaries, from whence were taken the Materials of the Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences, which usually made the First Part of this Paper, we find that besides their containing many Things abstruse or insignificant to us, it will probably be fifty Years before the Whole can be gone thro' in this Manner of Publication. There are likewise in those Books continual References from Things under one Letter of the Alphabet to those under another, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... not only in the somewhat rarefied atmosphere of abstruse science that international cooperation is vital to the progress of civilization. All our economic problems, all the questions of securing the rights of labor, all the hopes of freedom at home and humanity abroad, rest upon the creation of ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... teachers of science that ever lived. Handsome, enthusiastic, overflowing with vitality, and with a learning broad and deep, his students found in him a real inspiration to intellectual endeavor. His lectures, however technical and abstruse their subjects, were of an incomparable clarity and simplicity. He was one of the first to advocate the teaching of science to women, not in its technical details, but in ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... of those sciences which involve long mathematical calculations. In fact, the stating of the problem to be solved is the most important element in the calculation; and that is so thoroughly a labour of common sense that an utterly uneducated man may, and often does, state an abstruse problem clearly and correctly; seeing what ought to be proved, and perhaps how to prove it, though he may be unable to work the problem out, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... lady, it is not for me to enter into discussion of subjects so abstruse, so far removed at least from my proper trend of thought—our proper trend of thought, if you please. I must admit that act of folly, yes. But I must also end the ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... given me an inward reassurance. Also, in recording the lives of Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, and Sri Yukteswar, I have thought it advisable to omit many true miraculous stories, which could hardly have been included without writing, also, an explanatory volume of abstruse philosophy. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... Ingenious, performed by a Society of Gentlemen;" appeared in 1708, and seems to have been a weekly periodical, and to have been soon discontinued. The greater part of it consisted of questions and answers. Information was desired on all sorts of abstruse and absurd points—some scriptural, others referring to natural philosophy, or to matters of ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... abstruse arts I profess not, but yield the palm and victory to mine adversary, that great learned Mr. Camden, with whom, yet, a long experimented navigator may contend about his chart and compass, about havens, creeks, and sounds; so I, an ancient herald, a little dispute, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... never supplant the works of Plato and Aristotle, and though his method might prove useful in every branch of knowledge,—even in the most abstruse points of logic and metaphysics,—yet there has never been a Baconian school of philosophy, in the sense in which we speak of the school of Locke or Kant. Bacon was above or below philosophy. Philosophy, in the usual sense of the word, formed but a part of his great scheme of knowledge. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... biographer, "prevailed in him to such a degree, that he has been frequently known, by his intimates, to retire late at night from a tavern to his chambers, and there read, and make extracts from, the most abstruse authors, for several hours before he went to bed; so powerful were the vigour of his constitution and the activity of his mind." It is to this passage, no doubt, that we owe the picturesque wet towel and inked ruffles with which Mr. Thackeray has decorated him in Pendennis; ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... was filled with wonder, and asked the babe of many abstruse things, receiving answers beyond his understanding. So, at last convinced, he put the babe down, ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux
... old beau, as her majesty calls Mr. Bryant, to dinner, and he made me my best day out of the ten days of our Windsor sojourn. He has insisted upon lending me some more books, all concerning the most distant parts of the earth, or on subjects the most abstruse. His singular simplicity in constantly conceiving that, because to him such books alone are new, they must have the same recommendation ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... the flat surfaces on which Prof. Rowland rules the beautiful diffraction gratings now so well known over the scientific world, as also other plane surfaces for heliostats, etc., etc. I am now approaching the border land of what may be called the abstruse in science, in which I humbly acknowledge it would take a vast volume to contain all I don't know; yet I hope to make plain to you this most beautiful and accurate method, and for fear I may forget to give due credit, I will say that I am indebted to Dr. Hastings for it, with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... hills two miles out of town; I have a cottage (which was Mr. Geach's) a quarter of a mile farther. He is what you may call a speculative man: he reads a good deal, knows a little and wants to know more, and is fond of speculating on the most abstruse and unattainable points of science and philosophy. You would be astonished at the number of men among the captains and traders of these parts who have more than an average amount of literary and scientific taste; ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... contains a consideration of almost every topic under the sun, mostly with some verse of the Pentateuch for a pretext. All of which is analyzed and explained in the minutest and keenest fashion, discussions on abstruse subjects being sometimes relieved by an anecdote or two, a bit of folklore, worldly wisdom, or small talk. Scattered through its numerous volumes are priceless gems of poetry, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Theophilus, often said, lay his destiny. "In all other respects, he is only," said the father, "a nobler youth than common; but in this singular endowment he has something supernatural to man. He is without fear—he knows not what it is; and, with a dexterity inconceivable, accomplishes the most abstruse and difficult purposes. In his lessons, such is his aptitude, that he learns as if he had brought knowledge with him into the world; and in field-sports, the chase, and all exercises, he possesses an ardour and courage by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... superior to man, behind the visible screen of nature. Obviously the conception of personal agents is more complex than a simple recognition of the similarity or contiguity of ideas; and a theory which assumes that the course of nature is determined by conscious agents is more abstruse and recondite, and requires for its apprehension a far higher degree of intelligence and reflection, than the view that things succeed each other simply by reason of their contiguity or resemblance. The very beasts associate the ideas of things ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... body of capitalists, finding no other outlet for their savings, gave an unnatural stimulus to production, by buying up and storing immense quantities of our home manufactures. This they must have done upon some abstruse but utterly false calculation of augmented demand from abroad, making no allowance for change of season, foreign fluctuation, or any other of the occult causes which influence the markets of the world. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... life and most of the necessities, my mother wit, always conspiring with a wild imagination for something to occupy my tune, led me at last to invade the field of invention. With appropriate contrariety, an unfamiliar and hitherto almost detested line of investigation now attracted me. Abstruse mathematical problems which had defied solution for centuries began to appear easy. To defy the State and its puny representatives had become mere child's play. So I forthwith decided to overcome no less a ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... meant to have written you an Essay on the Metaphysics of Typography, but I have not time. Take a few hints, without the abstruse reasons for them, with which I mean to favour you. 18 lines in a page, the line closely printed, certainly more closely printed than those of the 'Joan;'[49] ('Oh, by all means, closer, W. Wordsworth') equal ink, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... the nucleus of a commercial airplane business. We had designed and built here in our own shops several very successful seaplanes and amphibians. Charlie's brilliant mathematical mind was of the greatest aid, except when he was too far lost in his abstruse speculations to descend to things commercial. Mathematics is painful enough to me when it is used in calculating the camber of an airplane wing. And pure mathematics, such as the theories of relativity and ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... profusion of sweets, palls the appetite and becomes disgusting. A man might as soon think of filling his stomach with sweetmeats, as going through a long debate filled with pompous epithets and sounding language. If we have any doubt of its being ridiculous, let us only suppose a man arguing an abstruse subject in metaphysics, in the blank verse of Milton, or the exact rhymes of Pope. The absurdity is the same, only different in degree. I would not be understood to cut off an extempore speaker from sublime expressions; because I do not suppose these to be inconsistent with simplicity ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... contemplated with astonishment the indefatigable perseverance which has borne him triumphant through the acquirement of such a language. If the simple request for something to eat presented such apparently insurmountable obstacles to pronunciation, what must the language be in its dealings with the more abstruse questions of theological and metaphysical science? Imagination stood aghast ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... at that table I can't well comprehend. It has been usual, I confess, in some of our Courts upon earth, to have a privileged jester, called the king's fool. But in the Court of Heaven one should not have supposed such an officer as Jupiter's fool. Your allegorical theology in this point is very abstruse. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... aghast at the intelligence. The grave young citizen, who had silently taken his part in life close by them in their daily lives—not mixing much with them, it was true, but looked up to, perhaps, all the more—the student of abstruse books on theology, fit to converse with the most learned ministers that ever came about those parts—was he the same with the man now pouring out wild words to Lois the witch, as if he and she were the only two present! A solution of it all occurred to them. He was another victim. Great ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... understand a pleading, there are so many volumes about the subject and so many bookcases of decisions they would furnish a house. All this may appear flippant, but the subject is so absurd, abstruse, and abnormal to a man of business, that it is almost impossible to make it understandable. A partial list of authorities on the subject sounds like a chapter from Alice in Wonderland: Pepper on ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... notable that this conversion might bring others in its train. Moreover the maiden herself interested him. But it was not so easy to go about it. Pocahontas's knowledge of English did not extend beyond the simplest expressions; and he found it necessary to translate the long and abstruse theological dogmas into familiar terms. He had almost despaired of making her comprehend until he recalled how his Master had taught in parables. So he retold the incidents of His life in stories which held the Indian maiden spellbound. ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... as we do, but serious sentences, or moral precepts. They also practise the use of the bow, and are taught to ride. In every city, town, and almost in every village, I have been told that there are public school for teaching the more abstruse sciences. ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... 'At their going out, some say the Lord General said to young Sir Harry Vane, calling him by his name, That he might have prevented this; but that he was a juggler, and had not common honesty.' 'O Sir Harry Vane,' thou, with thy subtle casuistries and abstruse hair-splittings, thou art other than a good one, I think! 'The Lord deliver me from thee, Sir Harry Vane!' 'All being gone out, the door of the House was locked, and the key, with the mace, as I heard, was carried away by Colonel Otley,' and it is all over, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... high authority say about Shakespeare? He had "a deep technical knowledge of the law," and an easy familiarity with "some of the most abstruse proceedings in English jurisprudence." And again: "Whenever he indulges this propensity he uniformly lays down good law." Of Henry IV., Part 2, he says: "If Lord Eldon could be supposed to have written the play, I do not see how he could be chargeable with having ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... spared from his extensive practice to intercourse with his patient. He first of all ordered that Clare should be kept absolutely quiet; in cheerful society, if possible, but not allowed to read too many books, or to discuss abstruse subjects. It might have been difficult to carry out these orders; but, fortunately, friend Rippingille, the painter, was drinking pale ale at Bristol for the season, so that Clare, having nobody to lead him through his favourite taverns and concert-rooms, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... philosophy embraced those studious minds addicted to a species of inquiry which rejected the poetical form, as well as the poetical spirit. It may be observed, that the more limited the reading public, the more abstruse are generally prose compositions; as readers increase, literature goes back to the fashion of oral communication; for if the reciter addressed the multitude in the earlier age, so the writer addresses a multitude in the later; literature, therefore, commences with poetical fiction, and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have occasion to mention with a tribute of sincere gratitude. My father was a singular instance of a man rising to eminence in a profession for which nature had in some degree unfitted him. He had indeed a turn for labor, and a pleasure in analyzing the abstruse feudal doctrines connected with conveyancing, which would probably have rendered him unrivalled in the line of a special pleader, had there been such a profession in Scotland; but in the actual business of the profession which he embraced, in that sharp and intuitive perception which ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... concentrating all the powers of the mind on abstruse study!" Abishai muttered to himself as he descended the hill. "Hadassah is going mad; her judgment is giving way under ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... heavy-hearted by reason of the loss of Prince Ahmad; whereupon bethought the Grand Wazir of a certain witch famed for the Black Art who could conjure down the stars from heaven; and who was a noted dweller in the capital. So going to the Sultan he spake highly of her skill in knowledge of the abstruse,[FN337] saying "Let the King, I pray thee, send for this sorceress and enquire of her concerning his lost son." And the King replied, "'Tis well said: let her be brought hither and haply she shall give me tidings of the Prince and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... that this idea may seem to be "too abstruse" for the minds of some of our students at first reading—it may appear like an assertion of a Being who is Non-Being. But, be not too hasty—take time—and your mind will assimilate the concept, and will find that it has a corresponding Truth imbedded in its inmost recesses, and then it ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... them a weight of meaning they could not carry, as when Fletcher in The Purple Island designed to allegorize all that the physiology of his day knew of the human body, or Donne sought to convey abstruse scientific fact in a lyric. It gave men a passion for pure learning, set Jonson to turn himself from a bricklayer into the best equipped scholar of his day, and Fuller and Camden grubbing among English records and gathering for the first time materials of scientific value for English history. ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... to be than a yellow primrose by the river's brim?" David finished for her. "I don't know, I'm sure. I'm a mere man and such questions are too abstruse for me, as I told your Aunt Margaret the other day. Now I think of it, though, you don't look unlike a yellow ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... change the subject, asked why the public were forbidden to approach the Serapeum, her companion told her that since his return from the Circus Caesar had been devoting himself to astrology, soothsaying, and other abstruse matters, and that the noise of the city disturbed him. He was very learned in such things, and if she only had time she could have told Melissa wonderful things. Thus conversing, they crossed the square, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... abstruse, confused, intricate, mixed, complicated, conglomerate, involved, multiform, composite, entangled, manifold, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the circle of the cabinet. Mr. Burke raised himself from an obscure situation, by the greatness of his abilities, and his unrivalled genius. Never was distinction more nobly earned. Of every species of literary composition he is equally a master. He excels alike in the most abstruse metaphysical disquisition, and in the warmest and most spirited painting. His rhetoric is at once ornamented and sublime. His satire is polished and severe. His wit is truly Attic. Luxuriant in the extreme, his allusions are always striking, and always happy. But to enumerate his ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... too deeply absorbed in his calculations to notice these comings and goings. Apparently he had been led into the most abstruse mathematical regions. Nothing short of the triple integration of transcendental functions should have been adequate to produce those lines of anxious care in his face as he slowly covered sheet ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... Where is the proof of it? It is true that it fortifies and invigorates minds which have, to start with, plenty of grip and interest; but pure classics are, as the results abundantly prove, too hard a subject for ordinary minds, and they are taught in too abstruse and elaborate a way. If it were determined by the united good sense of educational authorities that Latin and Greek must be retained at all costs, then the only thing to do would be to sacrifice all other subjects, and to ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... other. He cast his eyes upwards and his lips twitched. The most casual observer could have seen that he was engaged in calculations of an abstruse and ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... that of eminent domain, that it actually used in its operations property belonging to the State, and that these facts in themselves gave the State the right to supervise its management, and even, if necessity arose, to control it—all this may have been recognized as an abstruse legal proposition, but it occupied no practical place in the business consciousness of that time. Naturally the first step of the railroads was therefore to contest the constitutionality of the laws, and while these suits were pending they resorted to various expedients to evade these laws ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... Susie in, and he rose with a smile to greet her. She had been in Paris for some time, and they had seen much of one another. He basked in the gentle sympathy with which she interested herself in all the abstruse, quaint matters on which he spent his time; and, divining her love for Arthur, he admired the courage with which she effaced herself. They had got into the habit of eating many of their meals together in a quiet house opposite the Cluny ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... i. 23. 3 See the Ch'un Ch'iu, under the seventh year of duke Chao,— 秋, 郯子來朝 . ministers. The sacrifices to the emperor Shao-hao, the next in descent from Hwang-ti, were maintained in T'an, so that the chief fancied that he knew all about the abstruse subject on which he discoursed. Confucius, hearing about the matter, waited on the visitor, and learned from him all that he had to communicate [1]. To the year B.C. 525, when Confucius was twenty-nine years old, is referred his studying music under a famous master of the name of Hsiang [2]. ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... word when he can think of a longer one, and never by any possible chance knows the meaning of any long word he uses or ever gets it in the right place; yet he will serenely venture an opinion on the most abstruse subject and back it up complacently with quotations from authors who never existed, and finally when cornered will slide to the other side of the question, say he has been there all the time, and come back at you with your own spoken arguments, only with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I am doing. I was going to ask you to burn—or, at least, get rid of—all my philosophical literature. It is in the bookcases in your rooms. The fact is, I never cared much for abstruse studies." ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... itself, and the creamy, shadow-fretted streets of the Sabbath belong more to some Southern region than to Battersea or Barnsbury. The very houses have a detached, folded manner, like volumes of abstruse theological tracts. From every church tower sparks of sound leap out on the expectant air, mingling and clashing with a thousand others; and the purple spires fling themselves to heaven with the joy of a perfect thought. ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... of Otis's power lay in his adequate preparation for the life of an advocate. Bred to the law at a time long before the pathway had been smoothed by the multiplication of elementary works and other modern improvements, he yet fully mastered that abstruse science, which perhaps does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding than many of the other kinds of learning put together. As a sufficient foundation for his later legal studies he had pursued at Harvard, the foremost college ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... conception it has never been surpassed. In bringing it forward Mr. Gladstone spoke five hours, and during that length of time held the House spellbound. The speech was delivered with the greatest ease, and was perspicuity itself throughout. Even when dealing with the most abstruse financial detail his language flowed on without interruption, and he never paused for a word. "Here was an orator who could apply all the resources of a burnished rhetoric to the elucidation of figures; who could make pippins and cheese interesting ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... the elder, who had risen early to prepare a few brief remarks suited to the occasion; Standish, who was always afoot to fire his sunrise gun; and Bradford, who valued the quiet morning hour in which he might allow his mind to dwell upon those abstruse and profound subjects so dear to his heart, and yet never allowed to intrude upon the business of the working day. So, while Winslow with his wife's assistance did on his more festive doublet and ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... company should be made up by some method out of the mass, and what so good a method as that of natural selection [laughter] and the inclusion, within these walls, of the ladies? It is a little hard upon the rational instincts and experience of man that we should take up the abstruse subjects of philosophy and of evolution, of all the great topics that make up Mr. Spencer's contribution to the learning and the wisdom of his time, at this end ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... why these somewhat abstruse disquisitions were necessary for our immediate purpose, and I can promise those who have hitherto followed me on this rather barren and rugged track, that they will now be able to rest, and command, from the point of view which we have reached, the whole panorama of the mythology ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... question was not so abstruse; it was a practical matter of business to be handled as Weed or Evarts handled their bargains and jobs. Minister Adams held the convenient belief that, in the main, Russell was true, and the theory answered ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Women often crowded the court-rooms to hear him, and as often astonished him, not only by the patience, but the visible enjoyment with which they were wont to sit out his argument to the end,—even when the topic was too dry to interest them, or too abstruse for them to understand his discourse.... His oratory was not of that strong, bold, and impetuous nature which is often the chief characteristic of the highest eloquence, and which is said to sway the Senate with absolute dominion, and ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... persons who professed a knowledge of the business, which they had acquired in two or three months, and tho' those men were esteemed distillers, and in possession of all the necessary art, in this very abstruse science; I soon found them to be ignorant blockheads, without natural genius, and often, ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... which a freer inquiry affords. The temporarily important may be the less important in the long run. A practical adjustment of detail may produce immediate benefits in the way of improved industrial processes and more rapid and economical production, but some seemingly obscure discovery in the most abstruse reaches of scientific theory may eventually be of untold ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... its first ancestor, Adam, came originally from India, and that during the (period of the) Chau State the Sacred Writings were already in existence. The Sacred Writings, embodying Eternal Reason, consist of 53 sections. The principles therein contained are very abstruse, and the Eternal Reason therein revealed is very mysterious, being treated with the same veneration as Heaven. The founder of the religion is Abraham, who is considered the first teacher of it. Then came Moses, who established the Law, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of learning. It may be discovered either in the choice of a subject, or in the manner of treating it. He is undoubtedly guilty of pedantry, who, when he has made himself master of some abstruse and uncultivated part of knowledge, obtrudes his remarks and discoveries upon those whom he believes unable to judge of his proficiency, and from whom, as he cannot fear contradiction, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... amongst those, who profess themselves scholars, and have a just value for every other part of literature. By metaphysical reasonings, they do not understand those on any particular branch of science, but every kind of argument, which is any way abstruse, and requires some attention to be comprehended. We have so often lost our labour in such researches, that we commonly reject them without hesitation, and resolve, if we must for ever be a prey to errors and delusions, that they shall ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... infant schools as "natural history." Here, however, the resemblance between counterpoint and mathematics ends, for the simplicity of genuine contrapuntal style is a simplicity of emotion as well as of principle; and if the style has a popular reputation of being severe and abstruse, this is largely because the popular conception of emotion is conventional and dependent upon an excessive ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... to theories of this kind, in order to vindicate the value and dignity of Liberal Knowledge. Surely the real grounds on which its pretensions rest are not so very subtle or abstruse, so very strange or improbable. Surely it is very intelligible to say, and that is what I say here, that Liberal Education, viewed in itself, is simply the cultivation of the intellect, as such, and its object ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Scripture. In compounding this mixture, Jews and Christians vied with each other. In this process the sacred books were used as a fetich; every word, every letter, being considered to have a divine and hidden meaning. By combining various scriptural letters in various abstruse ways, new words of prodigious significance in magic were obtained, and among them the great word embracing the seventy-two mystical names of God—the mighty word "Schemhamphoras." Why should men seek knowledge by observation and experiment in the book of Nature, when the book of Revelation, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... replied Father Waite. "For, though I may know that there are very abstruse mathematical principles, yet I may be utterly unable to demonstrate or use them. But now," he went on, "we are brought to other vital questions concerning us. They are, I think, points to which the theologian has given but scant thought. If we conclude that there is a God, we are confronted ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the advocates of potato-digging and other practical pursuits, than defended by their legitimate protectors. It is not to be denied that there is a powerful element of Materialism among us, and that too often we neither appreciate nor respect the earnest, abstruse scholar. The progress of humanity must be shouted in popular catch-words from the house-tops, and the noisy herald appropriates the laudation of him who in pain and weariness traced the hidden truth. We hear men of enlarged thought ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... and both able and learned and earnest men have taken opposite sides on the subject of the will under the party names of Necessitarians and Libertarians. This is not the time, nor am I the man, to discuss such abstruse subjects; but those students who wish to master this great matter of the will, so far as it can be mastered in books, are recommended to begin with Dr. William Cunningham's works, and then to go on from them to a treatise ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... Austria and the Finns in Russia strive for their full autonomy within these empires, but they have very little shown of a desire to become a separate state. An opinion that wars for abstruse benefits never asked for can under no circumstances be regarded as liberation wars would wrong nobody because it would apply to all, but it may contribute much to have designs given up which otherwise would uselessly cause bloodshed and ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... straitened circumstances; but a small pension from the state allowed Abel to enter Christiania University in 1821. His first notable work was a proof of the impossibility of solving the quintic equation by radicals. This investigation was first published in 1824 and in abstruse and difficult form, and afterwards (1826) more elaborately in the first volume of Crelle's Journal. Further state aid enabled him to visit Germany and France in 1825, and having visited the astronomer Heinrich Schumacher (178-1850) at Hamburg, he spent six months in Berlin, where he became ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... as far beyond the place where he found them, as Sir Isaac did after him. The former first taught the method of expressing curves by equations. This geometry which, thanks to him for it, is now grown common, was so abstruse in his time, that not so much as one professor would undertake to explain it; and Schotten in Holland, and Format in France, were the only men who ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... necessary to establish, to illustrate, and to decorate that side of the question he supported. He stated his matter skilfully and powerfully. He particularly excelled in a most luminous explanation and display of his subject. His style of argument was neither trite and vulgar, nor subtle and abstruse. He hit the house just between wind and water. And not being troubled with too anxious a zeal for any matter in question, he was never more tedious, or more earnest, than the pre-conceived opinions and present temper of his hearers required; to whom he was always in perfect ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... annual premiums and reserves. It is a matter of no very abstruse mathematics (in principle) to find the equivalent of this single premium in any one of many other forms of premium payment. The processes are mainly but variations of present worth and compound interest calculations. Such ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... demonstrate some chemical theory, so it is possible that the flame of culture may be cherished without kindling a conflagration, and truth transmitted from sire to son without the construction of edificial monsters too big for the knees, too abstruse for the brains, and too great for the lifetime of humanity. I am not a very constant reader of Mr. Robert Browning, but I own to many a pleasant grin over his Sibrandus Schafnabrugensis dropped into the crevice of the plum-tree, and afterward pitifully reclaimed, and carried to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... wedded. In this field much valuable work has already been accomplished; but it has been done largely by workers accustomed to take the scholar's point of view, and their writings are addressed rather to trained minds than to immature learners. To find an advanced grammar unencumbered with hard words, abstruse thoughts, and difficult principles, is not altogether an easy matter. These things enhance the difficulty which an ordinary youth experiences in grasping and assimilating the facts of grammar, and create a distaste for the study. It is therefore ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... few great masters of style, and among them Berkeley holds an undisputed place. He succeeded, too, in the most difficult department of intellectual labour, since to express abstruse thought in language as beautiful as it is clear is the ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Ghostseer' is a well-told and readable yarn, with only just philosophizing enough to give it a touch of dignity. In the second book it runs off into a quagmire of abstruse speculation, Schiller had got the idea—and it interested him for personal reasons—of carrying his hero through a debauch of skepticism. This he thought would give weight and distinction to the book. So the Prince's philosophic ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... notes and recollections of his college sermons assure me, he was apt to handle, and that vigorously, the high topics of theology. He gave us not milk alone, but strong meat. Yet have I seldom known a man so remarkable for making an abstruse subject plain to ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... book of nearly three hundred pages. As usual, ANDERSEN is not abstruse in his way of putting things. His narrative is adapted alike for the juvenile mind and for the adult. There is no periphrasis in it. One understands his meaning at a glance; therefore the book should be a very ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... scumbling—no repetitions; all seems prepared at once for the glaze, which, simple as the painting is, gives to it with fearless hand the richness and glow of Correggio. All imitations of this master are complicated compared to this, and how complicated and abstruse does it make all attempts of the present day to give similar effects in colouring! Here is one figure in outline upon the prepared board, with even the finger-marks in colour of the painter himself. Here is the preparation of the figures painted up at once, and, strange to say, with solid and ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... and, fully persuaded of his own complete knowledge of nature, was pleased to be very facetious at my expense. Finally, he graciously advised me to pay some regard to the opinions of people skilled in these abstruse matters, and not to expose myself on my return by publishing such absurd ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... honourable opponent had, in discussing a question so abstruse as that concerning the origin of moral obligation, made some unguarded admission inconsistent with the spirit of his doctrines, we should not be inclined to triumph over him. But no tenderness is due to a writer who, in the very act ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... published his preliminary work—a series of highly abstruse and very controversial equations—back in '80. The paper had appeared in a journal that was circulated only in the United States and was not read by the majority of mathematical physicists. Like the ...
— What The Left Hand Was Doing • Gordon Randall Garrett
... hearing him sing, "There are only two singers in the world, I and the Englishman." Braham had one great advantage over his rivals in this, that his knowledge of the science of music in all its most abstruse difficulties was thorough. Skillful adept as he was in all the refinements of executive technique, his profound musical grasp and insight made all difficulties of interpretation perfect child's-play. Our readers will recall an illustration ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... On January 4th the British Fleet had been at war seventeen months—roughly seventy-four weeks (anyone can count them up; there is nothing abstruse about my statistics). In a word, it might almost be said, with some approach to accuracy, that it has been in the throes of the struggle for a year and a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... difference between the authors of the Bible and the Chinese sage,—that he did not like to talk of spiritual things; indeed, of them he was ignorant, professing no interest in relation to the working out of abstruse questions, either of philosophy or theology. He had no taste or capacity for such inquiries. Hence, he did not aspire to throw any new light on the great problems of human condition and destiny; nor did he speculate, like the Ionian philosophers, on the creation or ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord |
