"Attribute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the queen wanted to ride," said Henry, peevishly. "The spring weather attracted her, and since I, alas! do not possess God's exalted attribute of ubiquity, I was, no doubt, obliged to come to the resolution of being deprived of her presence. There is no horse capable of ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... theory gives to historical questions are like the replies of a man who, watching the movements of a herd of cattle and paying no attention to the varying quality of the pasturage in different parts of the field, or to the driving of the herdsman, should attribute the direction the herd takes to what animal happens ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... born here is distinguishable by his gait from among an hundred other men, so remarkable are they for a pliability of sinews, and a peculiar agility, which attends them even to old age. I have heard some persons attribute this to the effects of the whale oil, with which they are so copiously anointed in the various operations it must undergo ere it is fit either for the European ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... even you would consider satisfactory; for we have just had to contend with a Revolt of Islam, and we still find in Russia exactly the qualities which you recognised and described. We have a great statesman whose methods and eloquence somewhat resemble those you attribute to Laon and Prince Athanase. Alas! he is a youth of more than seventy summers; and not in his time will Prometheus retire to a cavern and pass a peaceful millennium in twining ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... it possible to trace this attribute of barbarism among the Turks? If so, what does it do for them, and whence is it supplied? You will recollect, I have not been unwilling in a former Lecture to acknowledge what is salutary in Mahometanism; certainly it embodies in it some ancient and momentous ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... the senat grudge at the free & liberall granting of a grace in that behalfe, and perceiued how they refused to attribute diuine honors vnto him, in recompense of so foolish an enterprise, it wanted little that he had not slaine them euerie one. From thence therefore he went vp into a throne or royall seate, and calling therewith the common people about him, he told them ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (3 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... shall obey unconditionally every mandate of persons in authority. We must at least limit the definition to such mandates as are general, and issued in the deliberate form of laws. Order, thus understood, expresses, doubtless, an indispensable attribute of government. Those who are unable to make their ordinances obeyed, can not be said to govern. But, though a necessary condition, this is not the object of government. That it should make itself obeyed is requisite, in order that it may accomplish some other purpose. ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... the company's rules," wrote the manager of a large organization which has been very successful in handling men and making money. "It is a tradition, an instinct. It is an attribute of the general tone, of the dominating influence of the management in all its relations. It is a part of the general tone, the honor, the integrity of the company. For three generations it has been looked upon as an inheritance to be preserved and kept irreproachable. Employees ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... characters throw discredit on the tradition that Il Francia died from jealous grief caused by the sight of Raphael's 'St Cecilia.' As Il Francia was seventy years of age at the time of his death, one may well attribute it to physical causes. Il Francia had at least one son, and another kinsman, painters, whose paintings were so good as to be occasionally confounded ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... contrivance and proceeds to discover and rectify the faulty part. It is true that in this and numberless similar situations a man's movements may be guided by his observation of omens; but if, after obtaining good omens, he has success in trapping, he does not attribute the successful operation of the trap to any, activity other than its purely mechanical movements; though it may be, and probably in some such cases is, true that the Kayan believes the omen bird to have somehow intervened to direct the animal towards the trap, or to prevent the animal being warned ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... matters a tuppenny cuss why she's fighting, so long as she helps us to lick the Hun and does it quickly." But it does matter. The reasons for her having taken up arms make all the difference to our respect for her. Here, then, are the reasons which I attribute: enthusiasm for the ideals of the Allies; admiration for the persistency of their heroism; compassionate determination to borrow some of the wounds which otherwise would be inflicted upon nations which have already suffered. A small band of pioneers ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... gatherings of the city. These singular artifices on the part of the old man made every one suppose him the possessor of Oriental riches. Consequently the narrators of that region—the home of the tale in France—built rooms full of gold and precious tones in the Fleming's house, not omitting to attribute all this fabulous wealth ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... dark-coloured soil is also found in the ridges about some of these lakes we must look deeper for the original cause of such depressions in those extensive plains; and may attribute them either to cavities or protuberances in the lower rocks, which may not have been sufficiently filled or covered by the superincumbent deposits: or they may be due to partial subsidences in a ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... "I am not vain," said he, with that self-knowledge which is so general an attribute of human beings; "no man less so, nor am I jealous; but I respect myself, and I could never be content to share your time and your regard with Colonel Dujardin, nor with a much better man. See now; he has made me arrogant. Was ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... were expressed by various titles and epithets in the mystic hymns and litanies, which the artists endeavored to represent by various forms and characters of men and animals. The great characteristic attribute was represented by the organ of generation in that state of tension and rigidity which is necessary to the due performance of its functions. Many small images of this kind have been found among the ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... your remarks that you do not understand my notions (whether or no worth anything) about modification; I attribute very little to the direct action of climate, etc. I suppose, in regard to specific centres, we are at cross purposes; I should call the kitchen garden in which the red cabbage was produced, or the farm in which Bakewell made the Shorthorn cattle, the specific centre of these SPECIES! And ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... 50' east. It is worthy of being mentioned, that in the year 1797, and near the same place, I observed the variation to be 19 deg. 40' west, on board His Majesty's ship Reliance; and as the compass was upon the binnacle in both cases, the sole cause to which I can attribute this great difference is, that the ship's head was west, instead of E. by S. The true variation could not be far from the mean of the two observations, since it was 26 deg. at the Cape of Good Hope. In the English Channel, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... offer advice, he grew savage and taunted Will with his own unearned good fortune. Blanchard, weary after a day of tremendous physical exertion, made sharp answer. He felt his old admiration for Clem Hicks much lessened of late, and it nettled him not a little that his friend should thus attribute his present position to the mere accident of a windfall. He was heartily sick of the other's endless complaints, and now spoke ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... government in which they were laboring. That there were occasional instances of the disregard of this regulation by the enthusiastic members of the order may be supposed, but it will be unjust and unfounded to attribute to this society a settled policy of interference in the affairs of the nations where they ...
— Japan • David Murray
... creature's countenance—it had neither eye-brows or lashes. The ears were small and rested flat against the skull, which was noticeably round, though the face was quite flat. The creature had small feet, beautifully arched and plump, but so out of keeping with every other physical attribute it possessed as to ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... states "the cost of the mansion now building for Mr. Hope, in the Rue St. Dominique, including furniture and objects of art, is estimated at six hundred thousand pounds!"—[If this is an attribute of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... of still is frequent in Elizabethan writers (Abbott, Sec. 69). I was all ear. Warton notes this expressive idiom (still current) in Drummond's 'Sonnet to the Nightingale,' and in Tempest, iv. l. 59, "all eyes." All is an attribute of I. ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... senate said: "While contemplating the causes that produce this auspicious result, we must acknowledge the excellence of the constitutional system, and the wisdom of the legislative provisions; but we should be deficient in gratitude and justice, did we not attribute a great portion of these advantages to the virtue, firmness, and talents of your administration, which have been conspicuously displayed in the most trying times, and on the most critical occasions: it is, therefore, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... perseverance in his character was already setting into firm, unyielding mould—the one trait to which Russell H. Conwell, the preacher, the lecturer, writer, founder of college and hospital, may attribute the success he has gained. This childish escapade was the first to strike fire ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... very much to the interest of the meetings. The speeches were interspersed with the rehearsals of the different traditions of the causes of the declension of the Indian nations, and regretting the slowness of the progress of their civilization, and attribute to temperance, to be the great cause of the retard of their advancement ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... them. The child opened its eyes, yawned three or four times, was christened and died. This is all I know." The miracle is not one that will find much credit nowadays. But the devout custom was at least simple and intelligible enough, though it afforded an excellent occasion to attribute witchcraft to the one among those maidens who was not of ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... but they would soon fall again into heathen ways, and their people show no disposition to abandon heathen ways. In all this there is nothing to surprise or discourage us. It must be slow work, carried on without observation amidst many failures and losses and disappointments. If I wished to attribute to secondary causes any of the results we notice, I might say that our having lived at Mota two or three months each year has had a great deal to do with the difference between the Banks and the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in another direction for one more foot in depth, when it again turned, taking an ascending direction to the next nearest hole. I have no doubt that all their little habitations communicate with each other. The greater part of the people were sick to-day, and I was inclined to attribute their indisposition to the meat of the bull which had been killed the ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... sleep for ever; that, considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... his sister knew of the estrangement between Jean and his home. They had puzzled their heads in vain as to the reasons for Jean's retirement to the Rue St. Jacques, but were inclined to attribute it to politics ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... truly affected, as his words have shown him to be. He doubted whether Isabella Gonzales had ever loved him; her scream and fainting might have been caused by surprise, or even the heat. He had been too ready to attribute it to that which his own heart had first suggested. O, if he only dared to address her now-to see her, and once more to tell how dearly and ardently he loved her still-how he had cherished her by the camp fires, in the battle- ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... was a man of the most persistent perseverance, patience, and unflinching courage, coupled with that determination of character which has been the saving attribute of nearly all our famous mountaineers from the earliest days. His men, too, were all used to the privations and hardships that a life on the border demands, for Missouri, at the time of the expedition, was a wilderness in the most rigid definition ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... draught nor breath of wind, no drive of spray nor wash of sea. We were in the heart of peace in the midmost centre of the storm. Margaret was in high spirits, and her laughter vied with the clang of the jiggermast. Mr. Pike was gloomy, but I knew him well enough to attribute his gloom, not to the elements, but to the inefficients futilely freezing on the yard. As for me, I looked about at the four of us—blue-eyed, gray-eyed, all fair-skinned and royal blond—and somehow it seemed that I had long since lived this, and that with me and in me were ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... upon the ground, when they are in their flight over certain 'neighbouring fields hereabouts: a relation I should not have made, if I had not received it from several credible men. But those who are less inclined to heed superstition, attribute it to some occult quality in the ground, and to somewhat of antipathy between it and the geese, such as they say is betwixt wolves and scyllaroots: for that such hidden tendencies and aversions, as we call sympathies and antipathies, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... but that to say thus and so was preposterous; and that if the advertising had not been adjusted with such generous recognition of the claims of the different papers, he should have known the counting-room was at the bottom of it. As it was, he could only attribute it to perversity or stupidity. It was certainly stupid to condemn a magazine novelty like 'Every Other Week' for being novel; and to augur that if it failed, it would fail through its departure from the lines on which all the other prosperous magazines had been built, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... men, in a thousand grounded aircraft, shouted curses that made no sound. They waved weapons that were utterly futile. They were as impotent as so many ghosts. Their voices made not even the half-heard whisper one may attribute to ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... pronounceable. He also was one of the principal disciples, called Buddha's "left-hand attendant." He was distinguished for his power of vision, and his magical powers. The name in the text is derived from the former attribute, and it was by the latter that he took up an artist to Tushita to get a view of Sakyamuni, and so make a statue of him. (Compare the similar story in chap. vi.) He went to hell, and released his mother. He also died ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... the theory of the thing. The laws of Nature warn every man who uses tobacco for the first time, that he is dealing with a poison. Nobody denies this attribute of the plant; it is "a narcotic poison of the most active class." It is not merely that a poison can by chemical process be extracted from it, but it is a poison in its simplest form. Its mere application to the skin has often produced uncontrollable nausea and prostration. Children ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... of all this is, that, despite all one may affirm to the contrary, the one grand essential, the peculiar and individualizing attribute of Christmas is—the dinner. The parson may think of his preaching (and if he ever does so, surely most of all on this day) and the virtuous may think of the poor; the old may remember the young, and the young be pardoned for only remembering ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... you make up your mind, you are not easily thwarted; but you will find that your fancy for me will soon pass. It is only a fancy, Hal. Take a look in the glass, and you will see reflected there the figure of a stalwart man who is purely virile, possessing not the slightest attribute of the weaker sex, therefore your love is merely a passing flame. I do not impute fickleness to you, but merely point out a masculine characteristic, and that you are a man, and only a man, pure and unadulterated. ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... friends," continued the Professor "and the heartier they are the better; might even be convivially inclined—if so tempted—but prudent—in a degree," loiteringly concluded the speaker, as though unable to find the exact bump with which to bolster up the last named attribute. ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... grown sufficiently to protect the surface of the soil from the sun and wind, this effect entirely ceased; and I know not that any other inconvenience was experienced from the same source, unless we attribute to this, as may fairly be done, the destruction of the purity of the well. This formerly afforded very good water; and, since that period, it has much improved. When the corporations of Southwark and Moyamensing shall introduce, as it is to be hoped they will, the Fairmount water into their ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... difficulty: If we attribute the daily rotation to the higher region of the heavens, we should have to endow it with force and power sufficient to carry with it the innumerable host of the fixed stars—every one a body of very great compass and much larger than the earth—and all the planets, although the latter, like ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... chase. Some savage races, such as the North American Indians, consider it to be most unlucky to slay a deer without first propitiating the great Deer God, the chief of the Deer Folk, and in fact they attribute most of the ills to which flesh is heir to the likelihood that they have omitted some of the very involved ritual of the chase. It will be remembered that Tristrem of Lyonesse also had an incurable wound, and there are other like ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... and law, in science, letters, art and philosophy, all the building of the culture and civilization that still remain the foundation stones of human society, was the work of the few free subsisting on the many un-free. But freedom, liberty, is an attribute of the soul and it may exist even when the body is in bondage. The slaves of antiquity were free neither in body nor in soul, but with the coming of Christianity all this was changed, for it is one of the ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... though you have courage in an heroical degree, yet I ascribe it to you but as your second attribute: mercy, beneficence, and compassion claim precedence, as they are first in the Divine nature. An intrepid courage, which is inherent in your Grace, is at best but a holiday kind of virtue, to be seldom exercised, and never but in cases of necessity: affability, mildness, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... on the field of battle. Theodoric, king of the Visigoths, was killed. Some chroniclers name Meroveus as king of the Franks, settled in Belgica, near Tongres, who formed part of the army of Aetius. They even attribute to him a brilliant attack made on the eve of the battle upon the Gepidians, allies of the Huns, when ninety thousand men fell according to some, and only fifteen thousand according to others. The numbers ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... intermediate stage, even in the clay, when the work passes completely out of the sculptor's hands and is carried forward by his assistant,—the work on which the latter is employed, however, obviously requiring not the least exercise of creative power, which is essentially the attribute of the artist. To perform the part assigned him, it is not necessary that the assistant, should be a man of imagination or refined taste,—it is sufficient that he have simply the skill, with the aid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... my friend, who sat listening with the deepest and most respectful attention, "do you attribute the change?" ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... know to what I can attribute my timidity. Possibly it arises from the fact that until recently my writing met with uniform rejection and failure. For years I wrote secretly in order that few persons might know how miserably I failed. I answered upon a question that ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... under this Constitution asunder the Confederation." The charge that the Constitution was framed and its adoption obtained by men of property and wealth is undoubtedly true, but it is a mistake to attribute unworthy motives to them. The upper classes in the United States were generally people of wealth and so would be the natural holders of government securities. They were undoubtedly acting in self-protection, but the responsibility rested ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... not in the fruit but in some nerve irritant, tea, for example, the effects of which are more acutely felt under the new regime. The nervous system tends to become much more sensitive upon a vegetarian, especially fruitarian, diet, and people often attribute their increased nervousness and irritability to the diet when it is simply that they now react more quickly to poisons. This is not a bad thing, on the contrary, it shows that the system has become more alert. Under the old regime we tend ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel
... Although this author wholly avoids the use of psychological terms, seeking to limit himself to a strictly objective presentation of results, it is clear from an unpublished manuscript (thesis for the Doctorate of Philosophy, deposited in the Library of Harvard University) that he would attribute to monkeys simple forms of ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... other words, what is true being found no longer consistent with what we have been accustomed to call beauty, the latter would cease to be an object of desire, though something widely alien to it might usurp its name. If beauty be devoid of independent right to be, and definable only as an attribute of truth, then undoubtedly the cynosure to- day may be the scarecrow of to-morrow, and vice versa, according to our varying conception ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... an attribute of youth, and possibly the years bring views of marriage which are impossible to the younger generation. No girl, in her wildest moments, ever dreams of marrying a widower with three or four children, yet, when she is well on in her thirties, ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... any heart but the unfeeling Shylock's; saying, that it dropped as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath; and how mercy was a double blessing, it blessed him that gave, and him that received it; and how it became monarchs better than their crowns, being an attribute of God himself; and that earthly power came nearest to God's, in proportion as mercy tempered justice; and she bid Shylock remember that as we all pray for mercy, that same prayer should teach us to show mercy. Shylock only answered her ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... said, "my father was robust and active in spite of his age. He was cheerful, busy, and optimistic. But he fell into a decline. It has not been a sudden sapping of his strength. If it were that I should not worry so much; I'd attribute it to disease. But every day something of vitality goes from him. He is fading almost from hour to hour, as slowly as the hour hand of a clock. You can't notice the change, but every twelve hours the hand makes a complete revolution. It's as if his blood were ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... sweetness of his smiles, his ready courtesy to all, and the brilliant sallies that escaped his lips which set the whole table sometimes in a roar. He possessed that ready adaptability to circumstances which is often an attribute of the highest birth. The motherly heart of Mistress Devenish went out to him at once, and she would fain have known something of his history, and how it came that so fair and gentle a youth was wandering thus alone in ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... be permitted to retire to their town. This was positively refused, and a warning sent to him not to come there. These chiefs say that the whole of the tribes who lost warriors in the late action, attribute their misfortune to the Prophet alone; that they constantly reproach him with their misfortunes, and threaten him with death; that they are all desirous of making their peace with the United States, and will send deputations to me for that purpose, as soon as they are informed that ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... profession was in the hands of women, to which we may attribute that country's almost entire exemption from infantile diseases, a fact which recent discoveries fully authenticate. The enormous death-rate of young children in modern civilized countries may be traced to woman's general ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... purest feeling. To be sure, his best and earlier work has all of that delightful extravagance and amorous colouring peculiar to the age. But there is reflected a homely dignity and mobile, felicitous vein in which the poet seems endowed with every attribute of a melodist. Exquisite, graceful and diverse he, at times, would soar to flights of highest inspiration and bedeck the page with gems of rarest worth. In the heptasyllabic couplet he ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... youth?' 'Yes, it is.' 'Has he only new gods, or none at all?' 'None at all.' 'What, not even the sun and moon?' 'No; why, he says that the sun is a stone, and the moon earth.' That, replies Socrates, is the old confusion about Anaxagoras; the Athenian people are not so ignorant as to attribute to the influence of Socrates notions which have found their way into the drama, and may be learned at the theatre. Socrates undertakes to show that Meletus (rather unjustifiably) has been compounding a riddle in this part of the ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... bargaining and begging I realised that contrary to my previous opinion he was not gifted as a friend, and did not attribute any importance to friendship. His affection for Bosie Douglas even had given place to hatred: indeed his liking for him had never been founded on understanding or admiration; it was almost wholly snobbish: he loved the ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... wonderful milkers. I have kept them for years in Calcutta for the use of my children, and once took two of them with me to Marseilles by the 'Messageries' Steamers. I prefer them to the larger goats of the North-west. My children have been singularly free from ailments during their infancy, and I attribute the immunity chiefly to the use of goats' milk drawn fresh as required. Of the wild goats, to which I must now confine my attention, there are two groups, viz. the true goats and the antelope goats. Of the former there is a sub-genus—Hemitragus—which have no feet-pits, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... learn, O my loved lord, That which no mortal tongue can rightly say; The soul, imprisoned in her house of clay, Holpen by thee to God hath often soared: And though the vulgar, vain, malignant horde Attribute what their grosser wills obey, Yet shall this fervent homage that I pay, This love, this faith, pure joys for us afford. Lo, all the lovely things we find on earth, Resemble for the soul that rightly sees, That source of bliss divine which gave us birth: Nor have we first-fruits or ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... a representation of Wanstead Assembly; the figures in it were drawn from the life, and without burlesque. The faces were said to bear great likenesses to the persons so drawn, and to be rather better coloured than some of his more finished performances. Grace, however, was no attribute of his pencil; and he was more disposed to aggravate, than to soften ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... which he distributes to the Chinese at the same price as the good ones, and keeps the money for them. It is said that the governor has money taken from the royal treasury secretly at night. Thus do they say, and attribute things to the governor by so many and so diverse roads, that one is scandalized on hearing them—both about the royal revenues and about other particular things in the matter of profit. What I know for certain is that the governor does ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... at her from under narrowed brows. "But why attribute so much importance to it?" he asked. "To be sure, it may have some bearing upon our investigation, although at present I can see no connecting link. You feel, perhaps, that the violent emotions superinduced by that secret interview, ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... in the former cases, when it varied between thirty and forty per cent. Must we attribute this result to the difficulties to be overcome? Can the Mason-bees have lost their way in the maze of the forest? It is safer not to give an opinion: other causes intervened which may have decreased the number of those who ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... was womanly; she was well bred; she possessed every attribute that in theory he admired; yet she had never awakened this sparkling interest, this attraction which was pungently flavoured with surprise that he could be so strangely attracted. He could gaze unmoved by the hour on Margaret's smooth loveliness; but the tantalizing ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... simplicity and dignity, recalling the works of Sammichele. Wilton House, Coleshill, the Villa at Chiswick, and St. Paul's, Covent Garden, are the best known of his works, showing him to have been a designer of ability, but hardly of the consummate genius which his admirers attribute to him. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... that I can see, by the readiness with which I avoid obstacles and find my way even in strange and untried scenes. Do not try to make them think I am not in my right mind, or you will drive me into the very condition you attribute to me." ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... How can they know that these men were inspired in a wonderful manner, without ascribing to themselves a still more wonderful inspiration? Therefore they extend the gift of inspiration to the fathers of the church; they attribute to them those very things which the majority have incorporated in the canons of the councils; and there again, when the question arises how we know that of fifty bishops twenty-six were inspired and twenty-four were not, they finally take the last desperate step, and say that infallibility and inspiration ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... strip such as so hang'd themselves, and let them hang out naked. This the story sayes cured that madnesse. But on the other side, the same Graecians, did often ascribe madnesse, to the operation of the Eumenides, or Furyes; and sometimes of Ceres, Phoebus, and other Gods: so much did men attribute to Phantasmes, as to think them aereal living bodies; and generally to call them Spirits. And as the Romans in this, held the same opinion with the Greeks: so also did the Jewes; For they calle mad-men Prophets, or (according as they thought the spirits good or bad) Daemoniacks; ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... the world as well as the devil its due— that it is to a feeling, a settled persuasion of this sort, lying deeper than the surface brutalities and snobbishnesses visible to all, that we must attribute the contempt, seemingly so cruel and so ungrateful, the world ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... in the garden or conservatory before breakfast, and how delicious those hours were when the birds and I had it all to ourselves; and I hardly know which sang the loudest, for I was very happy, very happy indeed, without knowing why. I think this unreasoning and unreasonable happiness is an attribute ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... attribute this tired feeling to the freedom from strain after our nerve-racking work of the last few weeks, while I hazarded the opinion that our purely meat diet had made us lazy. Probably it was due ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... Stone, you would take all kinde of meates and drinkes, that would breede grauell in the Kidneys, and then when you were forced to auoyde much winde out of your stomacke, and much grauell in your Vrine, that you should attribute the thanke thereof to such nourishments as bred those within you, that behoued either to be expelled by the force of nature, or you to haue burst at the broad side, ...
— A Counter-Blaste to Tobacco • King James I.
... then than now (see Nissen's chapter on malaria in Italy, p. 410 foll.). In an interesting paper on Malaria and History, by Mr. W.H.S. Jones (Liverpool University Press), which reached me after this chapter was written, the author is inclined to attribute the ethical and physical degeneracy of the Romans of the Empire ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... fair, and differs materially from selecting the produce of fifteen trees from a large plantation, and giving the average return of what might be obtained from cacao cultivation. Last year these trees did not average more than 2 lbs. per tree, and I attribute the increase of crop to the thinning out of both the cacao ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... of the second branch, seeing his mother's disgrace since the great affair of the poison, hated me mortally. He carried his treachery so far as to attribute to me the misfortunes of Olympe, saying, and publishing all over Paris, that I had incited accusers in order to be able to deprive her forcibly of her superintendence. This post, which had been sold to me for four hundred thousand francs, had been ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... their son; and he knew that, if he lived long enough, an hour would call him to stand up for the rights of his grandson. Perhaps it was partly in view of this, that he had for years been an abstainer from strong drink; but I am inclined to attribute the fact chiefly to his having found the love of it gaining upon him. "Damn the drink!" he had been more than once overheard to say, "it shall know which of us is master!" And when Simon had made ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... man looked over the mules' backs for a moment of inward cogitation. He was not surprised at the news but he was surprised at something in his Missy's manner, a lack of the joyfulness, that he, too, had thought an attribute of all intending brides. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... us did at the time; but we learned subsequently that the Esquimaux attribute all their ill-luck to a certain fiend, or demon, in the form of a huge black man. We have, therefore, accounted for their strange fear and aversion to the negro on that ground. They thought he was the Devil,—their ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... dread Valley of the Shadow of the Drug through which they are continually straying, I can not say. They seldom smile, and their laughter is of such an extraordinary and sardonic nature—so purely a mechanical spasm, quite independent of any mirthful attribute—that to this day I am doubtful whether I ever saw a Chinaman laugh. A theatrical representation by natives, one might think, would have set my mind at ease on this point; but it did not. Indeed, a new difficulty presented itself—the impossibility of determining whether the performance was ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Parisians, low as they have fallen, are not so lost to every impulse of honour as to be ready to welcome back in triumph the prime cause of their degradation, the man of December and of Sedan. Titania, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, idealizes the weaver, and invests him with every noble attribute, and then as soon as she regains her senses, turns from him with disgust and exclaims, "Oh, how mine eyes do loathe thee now." So it was and so it is with Paris and Napoleon, "None so poor to do him ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... Nevertheless, the arrangement of a separate nursery has its disadvantages. Nurses are sometimes not sufficiently educated to have much appreciation of the mental processes of the child. If the children are restless and nervous they are content to attribute this to naughtiness or to constipation, or to some other physical ailment. Their time is usually so fully occupied that they cannot be expected to be very zealous in reading books on the management of children. ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... great a charm for the spectator, to the sculptured full figure that always presents itself face to face with you, and in entire relief. The grand passions, which are commonly sparing of words, are in his system condemned to speak much, and to explain themselves too much.... To what shall we attribute that respectful somnolence which nowadays reigns over the audience during the recitation of Alfieri's tragedies, if they are not sustained by some theatrical celebrity? You will certainly say, to the mediocrity of the actors. But I hold that the tragic effect ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... deducible from the phenomena; and as the idea of infinite power, with which it is manifestly inconsistent, does by no means so naturally present itself to the mind, as long as only a very great degree of power, a power which in comparison of all human force may be termed infinite, is the attribute with which the Deity is believed to be endued. Manichean hypothesis is by no means so easily refuted. That the power of the Deity was supposed to have limits even in the systems of the most enlightened heathens is unquestionable. ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... please, they are more powerful advocates against themselves than a thousand scribblers like me can be in their favor. If I were even possessed of those powers which his Grace, in order to heighten my offence, is pleased to attribute to me, there would be little difference. The eloquence of Mr. Erskine might save Mr. ***** from the gallows, but no eloquence could save Mr. Jackson from the effects ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Mr. Allison, "is the very essential nature of God—not love of self, but love of creating and blessing others, out of himself. Love of self is a monster; but love of others the essential spirit of true manhood, and therefore its noblest attribute." ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... introduced into the War Office, of whom I formed one myself. Instigated thereunto by that gushing fountain of unimpeachable information, the Press, the public were during the early part of the war disposed to attribute all high crimes and misdemeanours, of which the central administration of the nation's military forces was pronounced to have been guilty, to the "dug-out." That the personnel of the War Office was always set out in detail at the beginning ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... significance of the miracle of love, which must precede the miracle of birth, as the necessary beginning of the unfoldment of the individual up to his highest estate—the repository of infinite possibilities. Love, then, my dear one, is the highest and holiest attribute of the human soul: that inspiring, controlling force, which wings the soul to such sublime spiritual heights, as are far above and beyond the storms of common passions, and the evil influences ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... that this experiment afforded a striking proof of India tea differently affecting a dead and a living fibre; this he considered as the greatest effect of a medicine. But, with deference to so distinguished an author, I cannot but attribute this astringency of the skin to the particular properties of India tea; for all physical as well as medical experience proves that vegetable produce afford some that are astringent, and others that are relaxant, of the dead as well as the living ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... right," I said, interposing in a shaken voice which vibrated in two hearts; "yes, the noblest privilege conferred by reason is to attribute our virtues to the beings whose happiness is our work, and whom we render happy, not from policy, nor from duty, but from ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... he answered, with a gladness in his voice which I venture to attribute in part to his satisfaction at finding that I had some practical sense in me. "We'll ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... because they were the fathers of lawful children; others, because they could give a good account who their own fathers were, which not every one of the rabble that poured into the city at first could do; others, from patronage, their word for protection of inferiors, the origin of which they attribute to Patron, one of those that came over with Evander, who was a great protector and defender of the weak and needy. But perhaps the most probable judgment might be, that Romulus, esteeming it the duty of the chiefest and wealthiest ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... on the life of our Lord, the more one is convinced that the doctrine of the virgin birth is a vital essential; without it Christianity falls to pieces. Let us go at the matter the other way round. If we attribute to our Lord a natural birth, we come at once to the dilemma of having to admit that he was merely an individual human person,—in an unsurpassed relationship with God, it is true, but still a human person. That doctrine makes Christ historical, some one to go back to, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... distinction between God and man, we rub out all moral distinctions as well. If we are not other than He is, how can we act other than He wills? If we hold that the soul is only "a finite mode of God's infinite attribute of thought," part of "the necessary expression of the infinite attributes of eternal Being," the sense of sin can be no ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... the last speaker is correct," he said. "I can corroborate it to a small extent. This morning I was confined to my bed with the beginnings of a bad influenzal cold. At midday I developed the Blue Disease, and now I am as well as I have ever been in the whole of my life. I attribute my cure to ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... guilt annexed to such conduct as that which we attribute to Le Sage, is an invidious topic, not necessarily connected with our subject, and upon which we enter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... river flowing tranquilly, and which in itself gives no evidence of motion, save when it meets with some inert point of resistance. This point of resistance has the effect of action in itself, and you attribute to it all the eddies and ripples produced. You must see that your own immobility is the cause of the phenomena of life which give you your apparent existence;—our individuality to you may be just as much the effect of your personality; you find us only responsive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... uninvolved proportion; still, in the most characteristic buildings, a certain portion of their effect depends upon accumulation of ornament; and many of those which have most influence on the minds of men, have attained it by means of this attribute alone. And although, by careful study of the school, it is possible to arrive at a condition of taste which shall be better contented by a few perfect lines than by a whole facade covered with fretwork, the building which ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... and the total exclusion of ecclesiastics from all share in the councils of Venice became an enduring mark of her knowledge of the spirit of the Church of Rome, and of her defiance of it. To this exclusion of papal influence from her councils the Romanist will attribute their irreligion, and the Protestant their success. The first may be silenced by a reference to the character of the policy of the Vatican itself; and the second by his own shame, when he reflects that the English Legislature sacrificed their principles to expose ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... injustice to a person like Margaret, always more enthusiastic than philosophical, to attribute to her anything like a system of theology; for, hopeful, reverent, aspiring, and free from scepticism, she felt too profoundly the vastness of the universe and of destiny ever to presume that with her span rule ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... habitually in the sigmoid flexure of the colon may cause a hydrocele, or a varicocele, by pressing on the spermatic veins of the left side. It is quite true that these two last-named affections appear more frequently on the left side than on the right; and it seems to me much more rational to attribute them to the above-mentioned circumstance than to the fact that the left spermatic veins open, at a disadvantageous right angle, into the ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... use. This knowledge which he claimed to possess was tested by actual demonstration during the trial for his life. His superior skill in planning was universally admitted by his fellow workmen. He did not, however, attribute this superior influence to sorcery, conjuration or such like agencies, for he had the utmost contempt for ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... and absolutely unconscious of their own fatal gift, until awakened to it by the results. Why, therefore, should there be any thing to shock, or even to surprise, in the power claimed by my brother, as an attribute inalienable from primogeniture in certain select families, of conferring knightly honors? The red ribbon of the Bath he certainly did confer upon me; and once, in a paroxysm of imprudent liberality, he promised me at the end of certain months, supposing that I swerved from my duty by no atrocious ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... ridiculous, of course, to attribute this cure to such follies, but at the same time I think it would be wrong to assert that they did not in any way contribute to it. As far as the apparition of the beautiful queen is concerned, I have always deemed it to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... needs to be courageously stated by those who have looked a little below the surface that her faults have not been those which are attributed to her by a large proportion of European countries, and by a portion of her own people. These appear to attribute this war to a sudden impulse on her part of Imperial ambition and greed, and to see in the attitude which they attribute to her alone, the provocative element which was chiefly supplied from the other side. There will have to be a Revision of this Verdict, ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... laughing,—for he possessed, as a useful attribute of his situation, a tenacious memory, which recollected every one with whom he was brought into casual contact,—"Ye are the self-same traitor who had weelnigh coupit us endlang on the causey of our ain courtyard? but we stuck by our mare. Equam ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... recently been unwell, Yusuf amongst the rest. They take little care of themselves, and attribute their illness to the ghaseb. I expect we shall have them ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... considered an attribute of log-cabins; but I can testify to the beauty of many that stood upon the banks of Blue,—among them the house of Bays. The main building consisted of two ground-floor rooms, each with a front door and a half-story room above. A clapboard-covered porch extended across the entire front of ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... We can hardly wonder at the step, however we may regret it; and if one of the reasons adduced in defence of it savours somewhat of the fallacy known as ... non cause, pro cause, we may perhaps attribute that rather to the maladroitness of Miss Meteyard's advocacy than to the weakness of Mr. Wedgwood's logic. The fact, however, that this "excellent, even over-anxious father" was shocked at a neglect which imposed ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... which surmounts the central crossing is, without question, a reminiscence of much that has been accepted as good Gothic form in the great central-towered English churches. Up to a certain point this can hardly be denied; but this rather weak, effeminate spire, which forms such an unusual attribute of a French cathedral, more than qualifies its right to a place in the first rank of spires. As for the rest of the exterior, it is a melange of nearly every known architectural style. Undeniably fine in parts, like "the curate's egg," if a time-worn ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... ancient philosophers attribute infinitude to the first principle, as is said (Phys. iii), and with reason; for they considered that things flow forth infinitely from the first principle. But because some erred concerning the nature of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... can only be credited with a text in the sense in which every large experience, of its own accord, conveys its lesson. It was to the author a picture of the world as he saw it; and it is to us a mirror in which every attribute of his genius, every peculiarity of his nature, is reflected without distortion. After the audacious though brilliant opening, and the unfortunately pungent reference to the poet's domestic affairs, we find in the famous storm (c. ii.) a bewildering epitome of his prevailing ...
— Byron • John Nichol |
