"Activity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Louis XIV. no more than his ministers, the Duke of Savoy no more than the King of Spain; but that remarkable woman had mentally aimed at that as the supreme object and end of her aspirations. For its realisation she combined her measures, therefore, with an activity so ardent, with an accuracy of perception so marvellous through the mesh of intrigues which spread from Versailles to Turin and to Madrid, that she succeeded in getting herself accepted simultaneously by the three courts, through ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Egyptian year. A Brigade of the 53rd Division, consisting of Royal Welsh Fusiliers and Herefords, spent a night at Hill 70 on their way to occupy a defensive line between Romani and Mahamadiyeh on the coast. There was an obvious increase in aerial activity on both sides, and camel and other traffic on the ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... early Gothic sculptors, on the other hand, fail in all points of refinement, but hardly ever in expression of action. This distinction is of course one of the necessary consequences of the difference in all respects between the repose of the Eastern, and activity of the Western mind, which we shall have to trace out completely in the inquiry into the nature of Gothic.] while the bright coloring and disregard of chiaroscuro cannot be regarded as imperfections, since they are the only means by which the figures could be rendered clearly intelligible ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... that matters," said a laughing voice above him, and suddenly a man in a white yachting-suit, slim, dark, with a monkey-like activity of movement, stepped out from the spreading ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... have been pronouncedly musical. His father was a physician, but his mother was a musician. His early musical training was given to him exclusively by his mother. The following was prepared when he was twelve years old and at that time he was apparently a perfectly healthy child, with the normal activity of a boy of his age and with a little more general education in addition to his music than the average child at fifteen or sixteen possesses. He spoke French, German (fluently) and Spanish, but little English. Despite the fact that he had received numerous honors from European monarchs and ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... practised in three ways. Sometimes the interior man operates, above all activity and all virtue, by simple introspection in joyous love. And here he meets God without intermediary. And from the unity of God a simple light shines in him, and this light shows him darkness, nakedness, and nothingness. He is ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... the right of men collectively to bargain for humane objects that have at their base the mutual protection and welfare of those engaged in all industries. Labor must not be longer treated as a commodity. It must be regarded as the activity of human beings, possessed of deep yearnings and desires. The business man gives his best thought to the repair and replenishment of his machinery, so that its usefulness will not be impaired and its power to produce may always be at its height and kept in full vigor and motion. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... conversely, have produced some admirable literature while they were developing some very ugly tendencies. To say the truth, literature seems to me to be a kind of by-product. It occupies far too small a part in the whole activity of a nation, even of its intellectual activity, to serve as a complete indication of the many forces which are at work, or as an adequate moral barometer of the general moral state. The attempt to establish such a condition too closely, seems to me to lead to a good many very edifying ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... and in that mood of secretly exhilarated mental activity which is induced by riding on a fast train. We were looking over the June Atlantic. We smiled gently to ourself at that unconscious breath of New England hauteur expressed in the publisher's announcement, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... not prevent their retaining so much of hypocrisy as is needful, in any assemblage of men, if people are to look upon one another without feelings of horror and disgust. There even prevailed, in this workshop in full activity, a seemly appearance of harmony and union, a oneness of feeling created by the thought, lofty or commonplace, of the author, a spirit of order which compelled all rivalries and all illwill to transform themselves ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... said, had shown rare zeal and activity at the time of the election, employing in her husband's service all those little arts which enable her sex to succeed in politics, as well as in everything else they set their minds to. No lady ever more completely ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... and thence at five o'clock afternoon, Saturday, wrote Sir W. Coventry newes thereof; so that we do much fear our missing them. Here come in and talked with him Sir Thomas Clifford, who appears a very fine gentleman, and much set by at Court for his activity in going to sea, and stoutness everywhere, and stirring up and down. Thence by coach over the ruines, down Fleete Streete and Cheapside to Broad Streete to Sir G. Carteret, where Sir W. Batten (and Sir J. Minnes, whom I had not seen a long time before, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Astonished at the duenna's activity, and puzzled to discover the cause, the servants flocked around her, but to all their inquiries she gave no other answer but interjections and exclamations, and such harsh guttural sounds, that they began to suspect that the good dame had ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... also the psychological, it represents the organic and psychological personality of the criminal. Every one of us inherits at birth, and personifies in life, a certain organic and psychological combination. This constitutes the individual factor of human activity, which either remains normal through life, or becomes criminal or insane. The anthropological factor, then, must not be restricted, as some laymen would restrict it, to the study of the form of the skull or the bones of the ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... of influence continues after death, and may be called unconscious immortality or conserved social energy. Personality is organized into instruments, tools, books, institutions. Over these forms of activity death and years have no power for destroying. The swift steamboat and the flying train tell us that Watt and Stephenson are still toiling for men. Every foreign cablegram reminds us that Cyrus Field has just returned ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... dignity, beauty, satisfaction for us. If it were a profound struggle for something that was coming to life in us, a struggle that we were convinced would bring us to a new freedom, a new life, then it would be a creative activity, a creative activity in which death is a climax in the progression towards new being. And ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... of religious warfare dying out; the world seemed to many, about 1775, as on the verge of some great and far-reaching change in methods of living and in government, and about ready to enter a new era and make rapid advances in nearly all lines of human activity. The change came, but not in quite the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... beautiful country walks she took, which she was sure Francis or Elsie would appreciate far better than she could do. She contrasted the activity and full life of the gentlemen of the house with the languid idleness of Mrs. Phillips and the busy idleness of her sisters-in-law, and thought it very unjust that all the work of the world should be done by the one sex and so little left for the other. She had ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... their personal prowess. Daaga stood six feet six inches without shoes. Although scarcely muscular in proportion, yet his frame indicated in a singular degree the union of irresistible strength and activity. His head was large; his features had all the peculiar traits which distinguish the Negro in a remarkable degree; his jaw was long, eyes large and protruded, high cheek-bones, and flat nose; his teeth were large and regular. He had a singular cast in his eyes, not quite amounting to that ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... activity, and disliked smoking; and was too matter-of-fact in her ideas, to conceive that these indulgences, merely from force of habit, might have ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... and laying the foundation of higher criticism. Then he formed a class-library, delivered lectures on Roman literature in all its stages, and introduced the study of general history. From this period dates the incessant activity which he has displayed in educational, and especially University reform. At the time he commenced his work, the subject was a very disagreeable one to Scottish ears, and he had to bear the apathy not only of his fellow-countrymen, but also of his fellow-professors. He has ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... reached the bottom I would have waited for him, but my activity had warmed me up, and as a cool evening breeze was beginning to blow I thought it better not to stop and take cold. Half an hour after my arrival at the hotel I came down to the court, cool, fresh, and dressed for dinner, and just in time ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... got up, as if he were just awake, yawned, stretched himself, and took another position a few yards off, where he pretended to play with his tail, occasionally looking over his shoulder at the coveted delicacies. At length the shop-man gave signs of activity, and the bandar was on the alert; the man went to his back room, the bandar cleared the street at one bound, and in an instant stuffed his pouches full of the delicious morsels. He had, however, overlooked some hornets, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... year she had grown even more attractive. Though small of stature, there was nothing insignificant about her; indeed, she was of the striking type which attracts immediate attention, even of the casual observer. Always planning some activity, or involved in some scheme to further her own interests, she was a creature of perpetual animation. This very vivacity was one of her chief charms among ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... should not be regarded as hors de combat, or enfeebled, at such times and thus hamper the movement of the tribe in case a sudden flight was needed, the shamans or medicine men taught that strength, activity and vigor were just as possible at that time as any other. "Those Above" commanded that it be so. Hence all the sanctity and seriousness of a religious rite was thrown around these dances, and though the Indians of to-day have lost many ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... be first, because we are made so, to wit, by another, "By the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." Now to be made righteous, implies a passiveness in him that is so made, and the activity of the work to lie in some body else; except he had said, they had made themselves righteous; but that it doth not, nor doth the text leave to any the least countenance so to insinuate: Nay, it plainly affirms the contrary, for it saith, by the obedience ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a farmer's profits. He discusses the drill-culture, (for wheat,) which, he says, is well, provided "the soil is not excessively heavy, or encumbered with large, loose stones, and provided the most vigilant superintendence, the most prompt activity, which has no such day as to-morrow in its calendar,[O] combine to speed the plough; in this case I admit," he says, "its superiority over the old and general methods." And again he says,—"It requires ten times more of labor, of vigilance, of attention, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... special manures are to be avoided. On the contrary, great benefits are derived from their judicious employment, and the circumstances under which they are admissible may be readily gathered from what has already been said. They are agents which bring into useful activity the dormant resources of the soil, they restore the proper balance between its different constituents, and supply the excessive demand of some particular elements. Thus, for instance, in a soil containing ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... meet them at every turn. Near the James, and other large rivers, it is a common occurrence to see, not thousands only, but tens of thousands of blackbirds in a single field at one time. They often go in flocks covering acres on acres of ground, and with their ceaseless activity and endless trilling, present an appearance of which city-bred people can form no adequate idea. Of course they destroy a vast amount of peanuts in a short time, unless ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... made the value of land as a producer of food utterly dependent upon the activity of lime, and at the same time gave it some power to shirk its work. In a normal soil is a percentage of lime that came from the disintegration of rock of the region or was transported by action of water on a huge scale. Possibly rarely would it be in insufficient ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... the sun and the globes that roll around him; between the Sun and the planets there would be a continual exchange, a never broken circle, an unending 'come and go' of beamy emissions, which would engender and nourish in the solar world motion and activity, thought and feeling, and keep burning everywhere the ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... to remind you of certain conclusions worked out in an article 'Cyclic Law in History,' which appeared some time back in The Theosophical Path:—that there are, for example, three great centers of historical activity in the Old World: China and her surroundings; West Asia and Egypt; Europe. Perhaps these are major facets of the dodecahedron. Perhaps again, were the facts in our knowledge not so desperately incomplete, we should find, as in the notes and colors, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... but it was wrong to leave me on the way side thus, having agreed to pay the sum demanded. At my age one walketh not without fatigue, Excipenda tamen quaedam sunt urbium, as Philostratus says, meaning, 'that old limbs lose their activity, and seek the ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... I reported to the adjutant, telling him where I could be found at need, and promising to send in further reports if Dr. Khayme's camp should be moved. At this period of the campaign there was but little activity anywhere along our lines; in fact, the lines had not been fully developed, and, as there was a difficult stream between us and the enemy, there was no room for enterprise. Here and there a reconnaissance would be made in order to learn something of the position ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... hierarchy {HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} which is given by God, is God-inspired and divine, a divinely acting knowledge, activity, and completion, we must show from the supernal and most Holy Scriptures to those who through hierarchical secrets and traditions have been initiated into the holy consecration.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Jesus, the most divine and most transcendent spirit, the principle and the being ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... large-size music paper, such as he considered suitable for an ambitious character like Jimson's. 'And now to work,' said he, when he had satisfied his appetite. 'We must leave traces of the wretched man's activity.' And ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... this race will have in building religions? The greatest is this: they have such small psychic powers. The over-activity of their minds will choke the birth of such powers, or dull them. The race will be less in touch with Nature, some day, than its dogs. It will substitute the compass for its once innate sense of direction. It will lose its gifts of natural intuition, premonition, and rest, by encouraging ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... has been justly described as 'one of the most atrocious villains that India ever produced'. He first came into notice in 1804, as an officer in Holkar's service, and in the following year opposed Lord Lake at Bharatpur. A treaty made with him in 1817 put an end to his activity. The Pindharis were organized bands of mounted robbers, who desolated Northern and Central India during the period of anarchy which followed the dissolution of the Moghal empire. They were associated with the Marathas in the war which terminated with ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... workshop we had in the engine-room. The smithy was at first on deck, and afterwards on the ice; tinsmith's work was done chiefly in the chart-room; shoemaker's and sailmaker's, and various odd sorts of work, in the saloon. And all these occupations were carried on with interest and activity during the rest of the expedition. There was nothing, from the most delicate instruments down to wooden shoes and axe-handles, that could not be made on board the Fram. When we were found to be short of sounding-line, a grand rope-walk was constructed on the ice. It proved to be a ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... activity and while the others cut Peter's coat away and found the wound he got Hammonton and a doctor on the 'phone. It was twelve miles away but he promised to be at Black Rock House inside ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... all kinds,—in woman, in art, and in inanimate nature. Though he would have been broadly characterized as a young man, his face bore contradictory testimonies to his precise age. This was conceivably owing to a too dominant speculative activity in him, which, while it had preserved the emotional side of his constitution, and with it the significant flexuousness of mouth and chin, had played upon his forehead and temples till, at weary moments, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... him hold a box of diamonds in his hand, he presented it with a becoming grace to the princess. The princess's surprise may be easily imagined. Moreover, Briscambril made a sign for Pierceforest to come and dance with him. The most celebrated dancers were not to be compared with them in activity. But the princess, troubled that she could not guess from whence this curious present came, dismissed the dancers sooner than she would otherwise have done, though she was ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... risk matrimony. Here, too, he was hampered by another consideration. It was intolerable for him to think of Rose's wealth and his paltry twelve hundred per year. An ambition which had always slumbered within his mind awoke to full strength and activity. He began to sit up late at night and write articles for the papers and magazines. He had got one accepted, and received a check which to his inexperience seemed promisingly large. In spite of all his anxiety he was exalted. ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... already exhausted the less eager activity of the other children; and they had betaken themselves to occupations that did not admit of his companionship. Laurence sat in a recess near the book-case, reading, not for the first time, the Midsummer ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... attentively listen, diligently study, and patiently learn the lessons He would teach us. And so we see that the Holy Spirit does not set aside our powers and faculties, but seeks to awaken and stir them into full activity, and develop them into well- rounded perfection, and thus make them channels through which He can ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... of music and of many voices filled the Grande Allee. The long rows of booths and marquees, dancing-rooms, gymnasiums, toy-tables, bonbon tables, fruit-stalls, &c. &c. were surrounded by busy crowds: all was activity and cheerfulness. In a large open space in the midst, a short distance from the front of the chateau, the flowery throne, gorgeous in variety and vividness of colours, was set up on a dais on the greensward. The band of celebrants, with Julia and her train in their midst, advanced. Little ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... including textiles, is to become more and more seasonal and to build to meet maximum demands and competitive trade conditions more effectively. This necessarily brings it about that a large number of employes are required for the industry during its period of maximum activity who are accordingly of necessity left idle during the period of slackness." (Senate Document 870, 62d Cong., 2d ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... sap of youth stirred in the heart of Jacques, in which the remembrance of the old love awoke new aspirations for new ones. Besides Jacques belonged to the race of artists and poets who make passion an instrument of art and poetry, and whose mind only shows activity in proportion as it is set in motion by the motive powers of the heart. With Jacques invention was really the daughter of sentiment, and he put something of himself into the smallest things he did. ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... and to succour! He looks down from amid the glory, and His calm repose does not involve passive indifference to His servant's sufferings. Into it comes full knowledge of all that they bear for Him, and His rest is not the negation of activity on their behalf, but its intensest energy. Just as one of the Gospels ends with a twofold picture, which at first sight seems to draw a sad distinction between the Lord 'received up into heaven and set down ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Medica, a work of enormous labor, was well under way; and other literary projects were actively planned; when, suddenly, the summons came which, in an instant, with the shears of fate, slit the strand of this activity. The rest of the story may be told in the words of the biographer appointed by the Medical Society of the County of Philadelphia to prepare a memoir of ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... careful search failed to reveal Washington. Still he could be heard to groan at intervals. Bill and Tom came and aided in the search, while Mrs. Johnson, who was worried at the unusual activity, asked what the ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... honours in 1746, when his elder brother, Henry, the third duke, died without children.-D. [After the death of Sir William Wyndham, which happened in 1740, Lord Noel Somerset was considered as the rising head of the Tory interest. "He was," says Tindal, "a man of sense, spirit, and activity, unblameable in his morals, but questionable in his political ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... excitement of the time, Will had, indeed, forgotten to keep his automatic busy. He now began shooting as fast as the weapon would carry the lead away, and bruin seemed to take offense at the activity with which the bullets flew about him. He was bleeding in several places, and was in a perfect frenzy ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... disturbed me at the time it was written; not so the present, since the appearance of a note from the illustrious cause of my sudden decampment has driven the "natural ruby from my cheeks," and completely blanched my woebegone countenance. This gunpowder intimation of her arrival (confound her activity!) breathes less of terror and dismay than you will probably imagine, from the volcanic temperament of her ladyship; and concludes with the comfortable assurance of present motion being prevented by the fatigue of her journey, for which my blessings are due to the rough ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... and friend that Concord Bridge had long since yielded to the edacious tooth of Time. But he answered me to this effect: that there was no greater mistake of an authour than to suppose the reader had no fancy of his own; that, if once that faculty was to be called into activity, it were better to be in for the whole sheep than the shoulder; and that he knew Concord like a book,—an expression questionable in propriety, since there are few things with which he is not more familiar than with the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... ex-centric movement likely. For useful purposes, Genoa was already at his disposal; the French subsistence department was, by his plans, to collect there rations of corn for sixty thousand men for three months, preparatory to an advance. For the same object the coasting activity redoubled along the Riviera, from Toulon to the French front. By November 1st a hundred sail—transports and small ships of war—had assembled fifteen miles behind Borghetto, in Alassio Bay, whither Nelson had chased them. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... energy in the state of action; the immediate operative cause of creation, its type or its agent. With the latter or atheistic schools, Dharma is Diva natura, matter as the sole entity, invested with intrinsic activity and intelligence, the efficient ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Gustav was enjoying a moment of unaccustomed respite from activity, for his most exacting beneficiaries were not sufficiently awake to demand a service of him. He had administered bouillon and lemonade and cracked ice by the gallon; he had scattered sandwiches and ginger cookies broadcast among them; he had tenderly ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... disposal in exploring the sources of that river, according to my instructions and in hopes of discovering a better country. My anxiety about the safety of the depot brought me more speedily to this determination. During the wet and cold weather there might be less activity among the savage natives, but it was not probable that the tribe which had collected 500 men to attack Captain Sturt would be quiet in my rear after having lost some of their number. To be in detached parties amongst a savage population was perilous in proportion to the length of time we continued ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... grief and pity beating faster and faster in her heart. Ah! how pale and wan and piteously still he lay there, with the ghastly white bandages round his head, and one helpless, languid hand hanging over the bedside! How changed from that glorious creature, all youth, health, strength, and exulting activity, whom it had so long been her innocent idolatry to worship in secret! How fearfully like what might be the image of him in death, was the present image of him as he lay in his hushed and awful sleep! She shuddered as the thought ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... at Valcartier was really a wonderful place. Rapidly the roads were laid out, the tents were run up, and from west and east and north and south men poured in. There was activity everywhere. Water was laid on, and the men got the privilege of taking shower-baths, beside the dusty roads. Bands played; pipers retired to the woods and practised unearthly music calculated to fire the breast of the Scotsman with a lust for ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... the first results of the missionary's activity from the half-caste trader in whose house they lodged. He stopped the doctor when he passed the store and came out to speak to him on the stoop. His fat ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... of our prize-ring champions; but their paunchy figures and sluggish movements render any further comparison impossible, as they neither practise nor appreciate what we call training. Size and weight are prized more than activity in the limited arena to which their performances are confined: so, instead of walking down superabundant flesh, they endeavour to increase it, dieting themselves on rice and fish, which is far from productive of any Bantingite result. The illustration ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... short a time remained in which I should have light which restored my senses. I know I stared at the dim yellow flicker dully at first, and then with a swift returning consciousness which spurred my brain into activity. In that instant I hated, despised myself, rebelled at my weakness. Faith in Claire Mortimer came back to me in a flood of regret. If she had failed, it was through no fault of hers, and I was no coward to lie there and rot without making a stern fight for life. When I was found, those ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... Here all was activity: the day was well along for these labourers, and she had to push her way to reach the officer who would let her board ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... the uses to which any fact or fancy can be put, the infinite number and delicacy of the mental feelers, thrust out in all directions, which belong to the creative brain and keep it in tremulous and restless activity, are quite enough so to differentiate the possessor of these endowments from his fellow mortals as to make comparison impossible. Shakespeare the actor was by the common consent of his enemies one of the deftest fellows that ever made use of other men's materials—'Convey, the wise it call.' ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... recovered from a dangerous sickness; and after being shipwrecked at sea, and travelling with very few attendants through roads that were infested with the enemy, he at last came up with him. This activity gave great satisfaction to his uncle, who soon conceived an increasing affection for him, on account of such indications of character. After the subjugation of Spain, while Caesar was meditating an expedition against the Dacians and ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... of him which I did not say in public speeches or published letters while he was living and in the fulness of his strength, activity and power. History deals with Benedict Arnold, with Aaron Burr, with the evil counsellors of Charles I. and Charles II., with Robespierre, with Barere and with Catiline, upon their merits, and draws from their ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... unfavourable situation, with all nature, vegetable and animal, against him, he had actually created a paradise amid the wilds. There was nothing wonderful in any thing I saw around me; but there was such an air of neatness and comfort, order and activity, in the people and in their cottages, that I almost thought myself in England; and I could not forbear exclaiming,—"How could all this be ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... islands are in general above the middle size, and well made; they walk very gracefully, run nimbly, and are capable of bearing great fatigue; though, upon the whole, the men are somewhat inferior, in point of strength and activity, to the Friendly islanders, and the women less delicately limbed than those of Otaheite. Their complexion is rather darker than that of the Otaheitans, and they are not altogether so handsome a people. However, many of both sexes ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... 3 corporals, 1 clerk, 1 cook, and 35 enlisted men selected for their intelligence, activity, and daring; volunteers, if possible to be obtained, as the service ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... from those involved in the war. After London, with all her theaters open, and her machinery of amusement almost unimpaired, Paris no doubt seems like a city on whom great issues weigh. But to those who lived through that first sunlit silent month the streets to-day show an almost normal activity. The vanishing of all the motorbuses, and of the huge lumbering commercial vans, leaves many a forgotten perspective open and reveals many a lost grace of architecture; but the taxi-cabs and private motors are almost as abundant as in peace-time, ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... those general benefits which come from high intellectual action. Thus, I think, we often owe to them the perception of immortality. They impart sympathetic activity to the moral power. Go with mean people, and you think life is mean. Then read Plutarch, and the world is a proud place, peopled with men of positive quality, with heroes and demigods standing around us who will not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... is the day to begin. Or, if it is night when you run across these lines, drop this book and trot yourself around the block a few times. Then come back and you'll enjoy it more than you would otherwise. Activity makes for happiness as nothing else will and once you stir your blood into little bubbles of energy you will begin to think of other means of keeping your bodily house in order. Unless you make a first effort the chances are you will do very little real ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... Christian philosophy, as expounded by "the angelic doctor," St. Thomas Aquinas, in Catholic schools. Then the dogmas being in this wise sheltered, he adroitly maintains himself in equilibrium by giving securities to every power, striving to utilise every opportunity. He displays extraordinary activity, reconciles the Holy See with Germany, draws nearer to Russia, contents Switzerland, asks the friendship of Great Britain, and writes to the Emperor of China begging him to protect the missionaries and Christians in his dominions. Later on, too, he intervenes in ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... purchases you must go to the Gostinny Dvor,* or Bazaar, which consists of long, symmetrical rows of low-roofed, dimly-lighted stores, with a colonnade in front. This is the place where merchants most do congregate, but it presents nothing of that bustle and activity which we are accustomed to associate with commercial life. The shopkeepers stand at their doors or loiter about in the immediate vicinity waiting for customers. From the scarcity of these latter I should say that when sales are effected the profits ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... cases of peloria. In instances where the organs are formed successively in spiral order, we meet with such changes as median prolification, petalody, and phyllody. All these are alterations which we might anticipate from the activity of the growing point being checked at a certain stage in the one case, while it is continuous in the other. This relationship between the definite and indefinite modes of growth and the form of the several organs of the flower, is more constant in reality than it may appear to be ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... their rightful allegiance; and also to execute deserved punishment upon all who do harm to his servants. (Ps. cv, 15.) In the exercise of his rightful authority, he has set before this church an "open door" of liberty, of opportunity, of activity; that she may put forth her "little strength" in keeping Christ's word and confessing his name amidst opposition, reproach and violence; for it is obvious, that when impostors fail to reach their objects by deceit, they will resort to forcible measures. Because this church was unable to ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... I intimated above, that I suspected, 'tis not equally good) and if the season of the year do make no disadvantagious difference, the degree of Cold, that may be produced by no more than one pound (if not by less) of Sal Armoniack, may, within its own Sphere of Activity, be much more vehement, than, I presume, you yet imagine, and may afford us excellent Standards to adjust seal'd Weather glasses by; and for several other purposes, For I remember that in the Spring, about the end of ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... Full of earnest activity was king Wan, And his fame is without end. The gifts (of God) to Ku Extend to the descendants of king Wan, In the direct line and the collateral branches for a hundred generations[2]. All the officers of Ku Shall (also) be illustrious from ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... scenery, as well as no mean artist with pen and pencil. Scott's novels and Byron's Childe Harold formed much of his reading at a time when most boys are content with the stories of Ballantyne or Mayne Reid. The range of his mental activity until he entered Oxford at eighteen was very wide. He was interested in mineralogy, meteorology, mathematics, drawing and painting. What probably expanded his mind more than all else was the education of travel. His father spent about half his time journeying through ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... of the station was lightened on the following morning at ten minutes to eleven when Mr. Garnet arrived to catch the train to Axminster, by several gleams of sunshine and a great deal of bustle and movement on the various platforms. A cheery activity pervaded the place. Porters on every hand were giving their celebrated imitations of the car of Juggernaut, throwing as a sop to the wounded a crisp "by your leave." Agitated ladies were pouring forth questions with the rapidity of machine guns. Long queues surged at the mouths of the booking offices, ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... board must seem intolerable to the Canadian, accustomed as he was to a life of liberty and activity. Events were rare which could rouse him to any show of spirit; but that day an event did happen which recalled the bright days of the harpooner. About eleven in the morning, being on the surface ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... he spends the larger portion of his time idly rocking in a convenient arm chair, exerting neither body nor mind nor will, that which might be gained by proper nutrition is largely nullified by lack of physical exercise and mental activity. ...
— How to Eat - A Cure for "Nerves" • Thomas Clark Hinkle
... round of Madras must surely be impressed with the numerous signs of its educational activity. Apart from the multitude of juvenile schools in every part of the crowded city, the number of academic institutions is large, and educational buildings are amongst the most prominent of its edifices. Our tourist, putting himself in charge of a guide at the Central Station ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... A.D. 400 and A.D. 960, in spite of the interval of activity under the T'ang dynasty, produced, it would seem, but few bronzes, and those few were of no distinct or noteworthy style. Under the Sung dynasty the arts revived, and to this time some of the most splendid specimens of inlaid ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... In the activity which followed, Robert of Normandy took no part. He leaned against a tree with his arms folded upon his breast, his eyes upon the slain bear which half of the party were hastily converting into steaks and hide. The men muttered to each other that the Southerner was in ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... sometimes the other sex has gained what has seemed an advantage over the other, just as in the development of any man's individual life, his brain may gain a seeming advantage over his stomach, so that it has more than its fair share of nourishment and activity. Arguing from such a case, we might declare the brain superior to the stomach in power, health and function; but in the long accounting, all such temporary superiorities are wiped out. So with men and women, seeming advantages for either are gained only at the expense ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... former post, drew himself up to his full height, and stood grasping his homely weapon, prepared for the worst, and not altogether unelated with a proud consciousness of his own natural advantages of activity, stature, strength and daring. Minutes rolled on; the silence was broken by some one at the inner door; he heard the bolt gently withdrawn. He raised his weapon with both hands; and started to find the intruder was only Alice. She came in with bare feet, and pale as ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... still in the background, and longing to take a more prominent part, helped it on as much as possible. Pinet, who had been a confidential agent of the Duc d'Orleans, himself told the Duc de Penthievre that D'ORLEANS had monopolised all the corn. This communication, and the activity of the Count Fersen, saved France, and Paris in particular, from perishing for the want of bread. Even at the moment of the abominable masquerade, in which Her Majesty's agents were made to appear the enemies who were starving the French people, out ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... under these unfortunate circumstances an activity nearly equal to that of the Emperor. This general of hosiery made a commercial campaign of 1814 with splendid but ignored courage. A league or two behind where the army advanced he bought up caps and socks as the Emperor gathered immortal palms by his very reverses. The genius was ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... more than it can digest. Gluttons, both of them. Read as much as you can think about, and no more. The trouble with many of our people is that they do not read to think, but to save themselves the trouble of thinking. The mind, left to itself, insists upon activity. So ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... drummed his knotty fingers on the armchair and looked thoughtfully at the old Nestor seated at his fireside. Ninety years old! Seventy years of activity in a territory where activity was enforced, if one were to live. Strange stories, legends now, were told of the doings of this gaunt, eagle-beaked, shaggy-browed old man who now, chatted complacently of death. Very true, none living was ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... professors of the Jardin des Plantes. The shelves and cases of the galleries fairly groaned with the weight of the zooelogical riches which crowded them. From the year 1800 to 1832 the French government showed the greatest activity in sending out exploring expeditions to ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... that her action in receiving my nephew's letter was entirely due to the activity of certain atoms in the gray matter ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... his extreme suffering under the succession of terrible inflictions which left wounds never to be healed. They ended only with his life; for the complaint, which eventually mastered him, was brought into activity by his final bereavement. Nay, I must not consider even that great bereavement his final one; his call to go hence was itself the final agony of that tender, loving heart. He who had in time past been left desolate by others, was now to leave ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... Without you, madame, and the consolation of writing to you sometimes, what would become of me under the habitual weight of my sad thoughts in a town which has neither society, nor commerce, nor curiosities, nor environs; and where all intellectual activity spends itself on the making of pickled pork, soap-grease, stockings, and cotton night-caps. Dorlange, whom I shall not long call by that name (you shall presently know why) is so absorbed in steering his electoral frigate that I ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... sir," replied the old inventor. "The shadow-breaking gas with which the airships are painted confers invisibility because it absorbs sunlight. But it does not absorb the still more rapid waves, or oscillations which manifest themselves as radio-activity. On the contrary, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... from our Special War Correspondent, who is counting the butter at Copenhagen, that great activity is manifesting itself among the officers and men of the German Slack-Water Fleet. This is owing to the fact that they are learning a new German National Anthem which has just been introduced into the Fleet, set to an old English tune. A rough ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... being formed into divisions which were to act as reliefs, received orders to prevent the restoration of the ruined wall by directing an incessant storm of arrows into the gap made by the waters. But the firmness and activity of the garrison and inhabitants defeated this well-imagined proceeding. While the heavy-armed troops stood in the gap receiving the flights of arrows and defending themselves as they best could, the unarmed multitude raised a new wall in their rear, which, by the morning of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... in directing the simpler reflex acts and movements which we learn to execute without our consciousness being called upon, thus leaving the mind free from these petty things to busy itself in higher ways. The cellular matter of the cortex performs the highest functions of all, for through its activity ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... child had become a conscious maiden, and new thoughts, new feelings had sprung up within her. The first tears of sorrow had, with a mighty creative power, called all these slumbering blossoms of her heart into existence and activity, and her unconscious feelings had become ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... scarcity but because they are sought for by all students who make a study of those authors. But when we come to those more modern writers concerning whose merits tastes differ, then the collector's activity becomes a gamble. The first editions of Thomas Hardy or Rudyard Kipling may be worth more than their weight in gold in a hundred years, but it is also quite possible that succeeding generations will find in them more of the sentiments of the day than of ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... I was called, yet when I awoke a faint light proclaiming the dawn was in the sky, and sounds of activity reached my ears from the room below. I felt tired and cramped from my unnatural position, but hastened to join the others. The morning meal was already on the table, and we ate as usual, no one mentioning Chevet, thus proving the body had not been discovered. I could scarcely choke the food down, ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... as to girls, a dependent existence—a sucker from the parent growth—a home discipline of authority and guidance and communicated impulse. But henceforth it is a transplanted growth of its own—a new and free power of activity in which the mainspring is no longer authority or law from without, but principle or opinion within. The shoot which has been nourished under the shelter of the parent stem, and bent according to its inclination, is transferred to the open world, where of its own impulse ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... the conditions of the workingman were also changing rapidly: 1. The chief employers of labor were corporations and great capitalists. 2. The short voyage and low fare from Europe, the efforts made by steamship companies to secure passengers, the immense business activity in the country from 1867 to 1872, and the opportunities afforded by the rapidly growing West, brought over each year hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Europe to swell the ranks of labor. Between 1867 ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... wormwood to our old friend. He had never rated very high his own abilities or activity, but all the feelings of his heart were with the old clergy, and any antipathies of which his heart was susceptible were directed against those new, busy, uncharitable, self-lauding men, of whom Mr. Slope ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... conspicuous from afar: the stone of which they are built is peculiarly white; and at a distance scarcely any signs of decay or dilapidation are visible. On a nearer approach, however, the Vandalism of the modern French appears in full activity. For the pitiful value of the materials, this noble edifice is doomed to destruction. The arched roof is beaten in; and the choir is nearly levelled with the ground. Two cart-loads of wrought stones were carried away, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... to the horror of the situation, every volcano on the globe seemed to burst simultaneously into activity, probably through the effects of the invasion of sea water into the subterranean fire, while the strain of the unwonted weight thrown upon the coasts broke open the tectonic lines of weakness in the earth's crust, causing the most terrible earthquakes, which ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... had stormed London, supped upon bread and cheese and celery and cold rice pudding, and, without a hint of apology, offered their guests the same Spartan entertainment. But it was quite a brilliant function so far as mental activity and high spirits were concerned. We were discussing the possibilities of the Canadian preachers' ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... as I actually saw Mrs. Grose herself, and that she wanted, by just so much as she did thus see, to make me suppose she didn't, and at the same time, without showing anything, arrive at a guess as to whether I myself did! It was a pity that I needed once more to describe the portentous little activity by which she sought to divert my attention—the perceptible increase of movement, the greater intensity of play, the singing, the gabbling of nonsense, and the invitation ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... Ammidon's meaning of the word. He had not made money nor a position of importance among men of affairs. Such safety, he decided, was a dangerous possession judged by the standards he was now considering. A few thousand a year for life struck at the root of activity. It induced a critical detached attitude toward life, overemphasized the importance of the cut of a trouser and the validity of pedigree. It was a ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that John Grier was getting worn and old. The eyes were not so flashing as they once were; the lips were curled in a half-cynical mood. The old look of activity was fading; something vital had struck soul and body. He had had a great year. He had fought Belloc and his son Fabian successfully; he had laid new plans ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to think that, in the various offices which Mr. Quincy successively filled, he would have found enough to do. But his indefatigable activity overflowed. Even as a man of letters, he occupies no inconsiderable place. His "History of Harvard College" is a valuable and entertaining treatment of a subject not wanting in natural dryness. His "Municipal History of Boston" his "History of the Boston ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... received. It is the attitude of mental receptivity which is the alchemy to transmute events and circumstances into experience, and it is experience alone which determines both the quality and the trend of life. It is in activity; in doing and giving and loving, that the joy of life must be sought. And it is joy which is the normal condition rather than depression and sadness, as health and not illness is the normal state. Disease and sadness are abnormal, and if one finds himself "blue," it is his first business ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... character, then these identical twins, who start life as halves of the same whole, ought to become more unlike if they were brought up apart; and as they grew older and moved into different spheres of activity, they ought to become measurably dissimilar. On the other hand, ordinary twins, who start dissimilar, ought to become more alike when brought up in the same family, on the same diet, among the same friends, with the same education. If the course of years shows that identical twins remain ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... established, and could scarcely be restrained from rushing, like a disorderly horde of conquering barbarians, on their enemies below, and ravaging the country round. But fortunately El Feri joined to great courage and activity the rare endowments of a prudent and sagacious chief. He foresaw that the present success, if not followed up judiciously, would prove more prejudicial than favorable to their cause. It was not by a confused depredatory system that ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... her sweater. "By doing this we won't duplicate on the extras. Now, girls, try once more. Marita, let's begin on your suitcase, for that seems to be the smallest. Oh, dear, Bess, what are you doing now?" she called, as she noted an unusual activity on the part of the ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... which real vices and odious qualities are substituted for amiable and useful characteristics. By a deplorable consequence of these pretended miracles of grace we frequently see sorrow succeed to enjoyment, a gloomy and unhappy state to one of innocent gayety, lassitude and chagrin to activity and hilarity, and slander, intolerance, and zeal to indulgence and gentleness; nay, what do I say? cruelty itself to humanity. In a word, superstition is a dangerous leaven, that is fitted to corrupt ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... days draw to a close, I find myself looking forward with beating heart and bright anticipations to what the future holds of activity for me. My share in the work of the world may be limited; but the fact that it is work makes it precious. Nay, the desire and will to work ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... feeling fear, I was possessed with a sense of awe and wonder such as I have never known. I seemed to be gazing at the personified elemental forces of this haunted and primeval region. Our intrusion had stirred the powers of the place into activity. It was we who were the cause of the disturbance, and my brain filled to bursting with stories and legends of the spirits and deities of places that have been acknowledged and worshipped by men in all ages of the ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... the poet's life at Ravenna were marked by intense literary activity. Over a great part of the year was spread the controversy with Bowles about Pope, i.e. between the extremes of Art against Nature, and Nature against Art. It was a controversy for the most part free from personal animus, and on Byron's part the genuine ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... not be concealed, and the peculiar delicacy of my situation at the time I received it made me more circumspect of appearances, I chose to apprise my employers of it, which I did hastily and generally: hastily, perhaps, to prevent the vigilance and activity of secret calumny; and generally, because I knew not the exact amount of which I was in the receipt, but not in the full possession. I promised to acquaint them with the result as soon as I should ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... needless for me to recount here the life of busy activity that falls to a Spy in wartime. It was necessary for me to be here, there and everywhere, visiting all the best hotels, watering-places, summer resorts, theatres, and places of amusement. It was necessary, ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... remedies in disease-creating doses. The antiphlogistic treatment consists of blood-letting and the use and application of reducing remedies which directly or indirectly lessen the inflammatory or febrile action; but it is manifest that while it may lessen the activity of the diseased symptoms it also lessens the vitality of the system as a whole, and consequently its power to resist and overcome the existing diseased action; so that it is a serious question whether in many cases more is not lost than gained, and it is certain that, owing to the loss of blood ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... part of September the enemy in our front manifested great activity, feeling with cavalry at all points, and on the 13th General Van Dorn threatened Corinth, while General Price seized the town of Iuka, which was promptly abandoned by a small garrison under Colonel Murphy. Price's force was about eight thousand men, and ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... cause a vapor to arise which obscures the island with a moist and dense air. Newfoundland was for a long time considered the inhospitable residence of fishermen; but of late it has doubled its population and industry, and the activity of the British nation has added another fine colony ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... resolution, when the terrible activity of Mr. Wyvil's bow was suspended by the appearance of a ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... up in all directions like magic. The four corners of intersecting streets were the positions mostly chosen for them, and every conceivable article was used in their construction. Women and children vied with the men in activity and resourcefulness in the erection of these improvised works of defence, and the work slackened not even when shells and bullets fell ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... undertaken by General Rosecrans, and large details from my troops were furnished daily for the work. Much attention was also given to creating a more perfect system of guard and picket duty-a matter that had hitherto been somewhat neglected in the army, as its constant activity had permitted scant opportunity for the development of such a system. It was at this time that I received my appointment as a major-general of Volunteers. My promotion had been recommended by General Rosecrans immediately after the ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan |
