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Basic   /bˈeɪsɪk/   Listen
Basic

adjective
1.
Pertaining to or constituting a base or basis.  "The basic ingredients" , "Basic changes in public opinion occur because of changes in priorities"
2.
Reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible without loss of generality.  Synonyms: canonic, canonical.  "A canonical syllable pattern"
3.
Serving as a base or starting point.  Synonym: introductory.  "Basic training for raw recruits" , "A set of basic tools" , "An introductory art course"
4.
Of or denoting or of the nature of or containing a base.



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"Basic" Quotes from Famous Books



... Abstract to the Concrete Domain, Unwrought Natural Sound, bearing its proportion of meaning, furnishes the great basic department of language, which, for the reason that it is basic, is usually regarded as the whole of language, namely, ORAL SPEECH, or SPEECH LANGUAGE, as ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... himself, "How widespread is the interest in my subject? How much will it appeal to the average individual? What phases of it are likely to have the greatest interest for the greatest number of persons?" To answer these questions he must review the basic sources ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... Raja Yoga, to which this series of lessons is devoted, teaches, as its basic principle, the Control of the Mind. It holds that the first step toward Power consists in obtaining a control of one's own mind. It holds that the internal world must be conquered before the outer world is attacked. It holds that the "I" manifests itself ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... sat, waiting for the new steamer to make her landing, and much excited were they over the iron bowels of this puffing kayak of the white men. An Eskimo generally lets you know what he thinks, and this is a basic difference between him and the Indian. An Indian is always trying to impress you with his importance; he thinks about his dignity all day and dreams of it at night. The Mackenzie River Eskimo is ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... out for the Birds. That brightly plumaged fantasy has an aerial wit and colour all its own. But there are certain works in which a man finds himself at an angle of vision where there is an especially felicitous union of the aesthetic and emotional elements which constitute the basic qualities of his uniqueness. We recognize these works as being welded into a strange unity, as having a homogeneous texture of ecstasy over them that surpasses any aesthetic surface of harmonic colour, ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... are daily teaching us new lessons in dietetics, some of which are of commanding importance. One of the most significant of these is the necessity for taking account of the nature of the ash left by a foodstuff in the body. There are basic or alkali-ash foods and acid-ash foods. Foods of the latter class when freely used cause acidosis. Meats are high up in the list of acid-ash foods. It is for this reason that such animals as the lion and flesh-eating men have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... made which, moved by the power of electricity or steam, shall form a successful flying-machine, the outlook may be altogether different. To judge it sanely, let us bear in mind the difficulties which are encountered in any flying-machine. The basic principle on which any such machine must be constructed is that of the aeroplane. This, by itself, would be the simplest of all flyers, and therefore the best if it could be put into operation. The principle involved may be readily comprehended by the accompanying figure. A M is the ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... Of course the telegraph was still far from an accomplished fact. Without the improved electro-magnets and the relay of Professor Henry, Morse had not yet even the basic ideas upon which a telegraph to operate over considerable distances could be constructed. But Morse was possessed of Yankee imagination and practical ability. He was possessed of a fair technical education ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers

... greater inducement to evolve; and that the above chain of reasoning simply goes to prove that the poor man is more of an animal—less evolved. On the other hand, from an evolutionary standpoint, the animal faculties are the most basic of all. A sound stomach is more necessary than a highly developed brain, and good reproductive faculties are essential; because the first demand of evolution is plenty of material. It does not follow that our typical poor man is more of an animal, is less evolved, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... components, their oxides, and basic zinc sulphate, and transfers cadmium and lead oxide, also lead, magnesium, and lime sulphate, into insoluble carbonates. Iron and manganese, when present as protoxide, are dissolved; of iron sesquioxide but traces, and of cadmium oxide in statu nascendi ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... railroad brotherhoods and the executives of the railroad lines to Washington for a conference in August, and attempted without success to bring them to an agreement. A program to which he eventually gave his approval provided for the concession by the employers of the basic eight-hour day, with other issues left over until the working of this proposal could be studied. The railroad executives refused this, and while the negotiations were thus at a deadlock it became known that the brotherhoods had secretly ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan

... he knew, there might be some merit in the girl's idea; he knew that philosophers had talked of the "basic goodness of mankind" for centuries. But he had a hunch that Leda was going about it wrong. Still, this was no time to argue with her. She seemed calmer now, and he didn't want to upset her any more than ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... else before the immensity of desire that possessed him was of the slightest concern; but not a syllable was spoken. A sharp line was ploughed between his brows; his breath came in short choked gusts, he was utterly the vessel of his longing, and yet an ultimate basic consideration, lost in the pounding of ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... be joyous and natural, boy and woman, fun and frolic; but always the pride was there, vibrant, tense, intrinsic, the basic stuff of which she was builded. She was a woman, frank, outspoken, straight- looking, plastic, democratic; but toy she was not. At times, to him, she seemed to glint an impression of steel—thin, jewel-like steel. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... which a diver feels when receiving no response to a tug upon the life line. He felt like a unit suddenly hurled against the universe. Every possible human help was removed, bringing him face to face with basic forces. His brain cleared, his swollen and inflamed eyes came to their own, and his aching arms recovered their strength. The fresh shock had thrown these manifestations so far into the background of his consciousness that they were unable ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... occasions during the following weeks he had them brought from their cells and spent an hour or so with them at lunch or dinner. Crowley evidently needed an audience beyond that of his henchmen. The release of his basic character, formerly repressed, was progressing geometrically and there seemed to be an urgency to ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)

... greatest care has been taken to make sure that the omission of names and changes in locale has in no way altered the basic facts because this report is based on the facts—all of the facts—nothing of significance ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... excepting the amendments which ended slavery as the result of the Civil War, only the last three, passed in recent years partly through the relaxing influence of the world war, mark a serious departure from the basic principles of the Constitution. ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... impress him with a sense of my deep and critical appreciation of what I had read in his three volumes. I spoke enthusiastically of most of it, but took exception to the basic idea in a ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... later we passed an act for the establishment and maintenance of an efficient and honest civil service in the Philippine Islands. This measure was of basic importance. We had stipulated before leaving Washington that no political appointees should be forced upon us under any circumstances. The members of the second commission, like their predecessors of the first, were firm in the belief that ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... provided otherwise than by his efforts. He is born into an order of reason which, by obedience to the law and light of reason within him, he has developed into the stately fabric of organised, social, political, intellectual, in a word, civilised life. But, I would repeat, the basic facts of this life are none of our creation; they are our discovery, and no more the invention of man than America is the invention of Columbus. Hence, with the master-poet of Hellas, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... ignoring of the rightful function of sex, and the perversion of the sane and natural laws of reproduction. It is in marriage, in the sane and normal activities of that unit of our whole social system—the family—that reproduction develops nature's basic principle of perpetuation in the highest and worthiest manner, in obedience to laws ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton

... basic fact which underlies all the questions that are discussed on the political platform at the present moment. That singular fact is that nothing is done in this country as it was done twenty ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson

... died along of me,' said Hazel stubbornly—for, although grateful for the festive meal, she could not let her basic rule of life slip—'if Foxy died along of me, I'd die too. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... Winston, Weiss, and your father will help Dr. Morrison do the basic design work on a system to go into a ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine

... navigation amidst the swamps of his native Lincolnshire, until his last illness laid him low, he was ever an eager student. Intelligent curiosity and a desire to know the best that the best minds could teach were a basic part of his character. We find him counselling Ann Chappell, at about the time when he became engaged to her:* (* Flinders' Papers.) "Learn music, learn the French language, enlarge the subjects of thy pencil, study geography and astronomy and even ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... system, in theology, philosophy and operation, of Christianity. It is of its esse; its great original, revolutionary and final contribution to the wisdom that man may have for his own, and it follows inevitably from the basic facts of the Incarnation and Redemption, which are also its ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... Long-Term Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear Weapons Detonations, a highly technical document of more than 200 pages, is now available. The present brief publication seeks to include its essential findings, along with the results of related studies of this Agency, and to provide as well the basic background facts necessary for informed perspectives on ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

... lands out of use, and some still lie idle and neglected, to excite the wonder of the social and economic student. To use the abandoned lands of the East, equal rates on agricultural products is a basic necessity. ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... of metal form the basic principle of the modern galvanic battery, and led directly to Alessandro Volta's invention of his "voltaic pile," the immediate ancestor of the modern galvanic battery. Volta's experiments were carried on at the same time as those of Galvani, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... regarded the number of clearly stressed ones. The derived English system adopted from the French (1) rime and (2) identical line-length, and retained from the Anglo-Saxon (3) regularity of stress. (4) It largely abandoned the Anglo-Saxon regard for quantity and (5) it retained alliteration not as a basic principle but as an (extremely useful) subordinate device. This metrical system, thus shaped, has provided the indispensable formal basis for making English poetry admittedly the greatest in ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... idleness with their want among the workers, no peonage or sweatshop, no child-labor factory, ever came into being, save from the same source. Nor have famine and plague been as much "acts of God" as acts of too prolific mothers. They, also, as all students know, have their basic causes in over-population. ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... reasoning for itself. Motherhood is therefore the supreme privilege of womanhood. It cannot be superseded, hence the fundamental factor in any system of race culture, or in any system of infant mortality, must tend to raise the quality and the intelligence of motherhood as a basic necessity. Motherhood at the present time, though the most important and sacred profession in the world, is almost exclusively carried on by unskilled labor. The maternal instinct is deeply rooted and universal; its absence must be regarded as an abnormality, or as a product ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... for engineering operations, both at home and abroad, it proved exceedingly remunerative. Extensive works for the application of the process were erected at Landore, where Siemens prosecuted his experiments on the subject with unfailing ardour, and, among other things, succeeded in making a basic brick for the lining of his furnaces which withstood the intense ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... however, must differ largely from this, and must be effected principally by representation. The globe in relief, therefore, presents to him his basic idea, and all his future study of the world will but expand and modify this idea, until at length, if the study is properly continued, the ...
— Discoverers and Explorers • Edward R. Shaw

... good luck with bright blankets and cotton cloth. Our beads did not happen here to be in fashion. Probably three months earlier or later we might have done better with them. The feminine mind here differs in no basic essential from that of civilization. Fashions change as rapidly, as often and as completely in the jungle as in Paris. The trader who brings blue beads when blue beads have "gone out" might just as well have stayed at home. We bought a number ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... the left-handed tartrate. These discoveries at the opening of Pasteur's career brought him at once to the front among the scientific men. He followed them with a profound investigation into the symmetry and dissymmetry of atoms, and reached the conclusion that in these lay the basic difference between inorganic and organic matter, between the absence of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... entry gives the basic form of government (e.g., republic, constitutional monarchy, federal republic, parliamentary ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... The basic doctrine of Socialism, upon which the great edifice of Socialistic theory has been reared, may be summed ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... for others to make such comparative study as they would like, I now feel free to use a classification which lends itself more easily to a discussion of the origin and evolution of Negro Rhyme. The basic principle used in this classification is Origin and under each source of origin is placed the various classes of Rhymes produced. It has seemed to the writer, who is himself a Negro, and has spent his early years in the midst of the Rhymes and ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley

... staining here set forth must for long remain the methods to be utilised in future work. His differential staining, in which he utilised the special affinities that certain cells and parts of cells have for basic, acid and neutral stains, was simply a foreshadowing of his work on the affinity that certain cells and tissues have for specific drugs and toxins; the study of these special elective affinities now forms a very wide field of investigation ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... aside as a basic principle, the reason invoked by the dramatist is positive reason, the reason of science, of justice, of rational logic. In verbose monologues, he combats the superstitions and fanaticism of the orthodox. The whole force of the Maskil's hatred ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... Kind of Symbolism. Sublimation itself is merely a symbolic expression of basic impulses. It follows the line of our make-up, which naturally and fundamentally is wont to let one thing stand for another and to express itself in indirect ways. Sublimation says: "If I cannot recreate ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... Christiana, which may well be translated "The Teachings of Christianity," contains the basic elements of the religion which the missionaries were trying to spread among the unbaptized in the remote regions of the world, it was the most useful handbook they had. A summary of the contents of ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous

... WRITING FLUID.—Dissolve Basic or Soluble Prussian Blue in pure water. This is the most permanent and beautiful blue ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... has suddenly flashed before the world as the greatest leader in the French Army after Joffre, and who in that remark at Nancy gave the index to the basic quality of his character as a General. General Foch is today in command of the northern armies of France, besides being the chief Lieutenant and confidant of Joffre. Joffre conceives; Foch, master tactician, executes. He finds the weak point; if there is no weak ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... soil and the green grass. They dwell beneath the apple-blossoms. How fine a thing it is that our American President is preaching the doctrine of the American home so forcefully that he impresses the Nation and the world with these basic truths ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... school. We continued, however, to keep the "Industrial Plank" in our platform, and year after year some industry was added until we now have fourteen industries in constant operation. Agriculture is the foremost and basic industry of the institution. We do this because we are in a farming section and ninety-five per cent of the people depend upon agriculture for ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards

... Library, especially those offering unique or unusual testimony on aspects of the American experience, available to a much wider circle of users than those few people who can come to Washington to use them. This meant that the emphasis of AM, from the outset, has been on archival collections of the basic material, and on making these collections themselves available, rather than selected or ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly

... of poetry Macpherson drew upon the stylistic techniques of the King James Version of the Bible, just as Blake and Whitman were to do later. As Bishop Lowth was the first to point out, parallelism is the basic structural technique. Macpherson incorporated two principal forms of parallelism in his poems: repetition, a pattern in which the second line nearly restates the sense of the first, and completion in which the second line picks up part of the sense of the first ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson

... of Character. Basic Ideas of Morality. "Give All or Nothing!" Rules of Honorable Warfare. ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... other mental qualities in which he is at one with them. The mental qualities in which men differ from one another are the acquired qualities of intellect and character; but the qualities in which they are at one are the innate basic passions of the race. A crowd, therefore, is less intellectual and more emotional than the individuals that compose it. It is less reasonable, less judicious, less disinterested, more credulous, more primitive, more partisan; and hence, as M. Le Bon cleverly ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... little avail in the German Volkslied, that is the simple folksong, and in that large body of German verse which is patterned after it. Here the basic principle is the number of accented syllables. The number of unaccented syllables varies. A measure (i.e., a foot) may have either one or two unaccented syllables, in the real Volkslied often three. (A measure without an unaccented syllable, so common in older verse, ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various

... consider the issues at stake, the number of troops engaged, or the destructive forces let loose, the ordinary narrow conceptions of mutual assistance, financial and other, with their jealous care of flaccid interests, cannot be persisted in. The basic principle on which it behoves the allied Powers to sustain each other's vitality can only be the community of resources within the limits traced by national needs. For our cause is one and indivisible, and a success of one of the Allies ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... County, Pennsylvania." (Laughter and applause.) I understand now why the young man was so sanguine, why it wasn't necessary to be born again, even under the auspices of the Great Spirit. It is very gratifying indeed to be in the midst of a great county of this kind that has made one of the great basic industries so successful. It takes three things to make a really great nation; it takes great natural resources, it takes great policies and it takes great people. We have nations in this world where the resources, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... promote the establishment of substantial autonomy and self- government in Kosovo; to perform basic civilian administrative functions; to support the reconstruction of key infrastructure and ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the sous-secretaire of the Pan-Deuteronomaniad delegation, who took me out to dinner that same night, paid 127 francs (including theatre tickets) before he proved to my satisfaction that the basic civilization of Funicula Island ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various

... something of a problematic figure and in many ways an unconvincing hero for a play with ostensibly, a strong moral theme. His basic character is presented as that of an honest uncomplicated soldier; in his first appearance(2.1), he has already been slighted by the Dons, and presents an unkempt appearance and rails against the 'pied-winged butterflies' of the effete ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker

... its significant features from the Arte da lingoa de Iapam completed in 1608 by Joo Rodriguez, is in a strict, scholarly sense less valuable than its precursor. However, if used with the Arte as a simplified restatement of the basic structure of the language, Collado's Grammar offers to the student of the Japanese language an invaluable ancillary tool for the study of the colloquial language ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado

... advantages that of having public opinion on their side. It is equally understandable that Governments, for political or military reasons, often endeavor to conceal their real intentions until the decisive moment. In this matter, however, as in the conduct of war itself, there exists the basic principle, acknowledged throughout the civilized world, that no methods may be employed which could not be employed by men of honor even when they are opponents. One cannot, unfortunately, acquit Russia of the charge of employing improper policies ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... Constantinople, a Rajputana, and a Bengal. I do not mean that these are absolutely fixed things; they may have receded or expanded. But these are the more permanent things; these are the field, the groundwork, the basic reality; these are fundamental forces over which play the ambitions, treacheries, delusions, traditions, tyrannies of international politics. All boundaries will tend to reveal these fundamental forms as all clothing tends to reveal the body. You may hide the waist; you will only reveal ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... dried meat were all pounded up in a well made granite mortar, on the top of which, oftentimes, a basket hopper was fixed by means of pine gum. Some of these mortars were hewn from steatite, or soapstone, others from a rough basic rock, and many of them were exceedingly well made and finely shaped; results requiring much patience and no small artistic skill. Oftentimes these mortars were made in the solid granite rocks or boulders, found near the harvesting and ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... frequently; to work and play together; to transact business; and to gossip of neighborhood affairs. In Virginia it was otherwise. In Virginia families lived on separate farms and each farm was of necessity a community within itself. Life was geared to the basic fact that tobacco was the money crop, and also was the real source of the financial strength and stability of the colony. Each family required a farm of sufficient acreage to raise tobacco as well as food-stuff and cattle; and throughout the whole colonial period ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon

... on a whaling voyage in the Arctic, once—a voyage that was to have been for three years and which had terminated in shipwreck at the end of six months. While his imagination was fanciful, even fantastic at times, he had a basic love of reality that compelled him to write about the things he knew. He knew whaling, and out of the real materials of his knowledge he proceeded to manufacture the fictitious adventures of the two boys he intended to use as joint heroes. It was easy work, he decided ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... always been a replica of the mind of every other churchman. Personally, I feel grateful that this has not been the case. As I say my creed and begin "I believe in God, the Father Almighty," I realize that the aspect of even such a basic belief as this, is the same in no two minds; that it shifts from land to land and from age to age. I know that God, as he is, is past human knowledge and that until we see Him face to face we can ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... as a nation and as individuals, we are ever going to enter into our inheritance, these defects must be remedied. But before trying to discuss remedies, it will be well to locate responsibility. Are our basic educational principles unsound, or merely our educational practises unsatisfactory? Are the educational leaders of the country all wrong in theory? Have their heads been so high among the clouds that they have not seen the real boy and his homely task? Or have they seen clearly and mapt out ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... amid considerable confusion, with Marcia Dayne appointed from the Fort Adams District, and the council excused to draft the basic laws for the week, the faculty was introduced, ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... vermin, throwing international morality to the winds, looking upon treaties as "scraps of paper," regarding themselves as the salt of the earth, the chosen of the Lord, appropriating the Supreme Being as did the colossal egotism of old Israel, and quickly getting down to the basic principle of savage life—that ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... shot at it; but the elementary couldn't be bluffed, and no shot at it would tell. It betrayed you at once. You must have it. You must have it as you had the circulation of your blood, as something so basic that you didn't need to consider it. That was her next discovery, as with Beppo tugging at the end of his ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... the basic excellence of this man's character that he was popular among his fellows, who, liking the man, overlooked the amateur ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse

... perception, and understanding through Shock and Awe on the grounds that this idea is not new and that such an outcome may not be physically achievable or politically desirable. On the first point, we believe the use of basic principles of strategy can stand us in good stead even and perhaps especially in the modern era when adversaries may not elect to fight the United States along traditional or expected lines. On whether this ability can and should ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... proceeds to apply his laws of "Reason and Nature" as criteria by which to test the validity of Shakespeare's effects and to discover the cause of these effects. The results he achieves are in part conditioned by his interpretation of his basic terms. Reason and Nature had been invoked by many previous critics; but to Anonymous these words are not what they were to Boileau and Pope. They particularly have nothing, or next to nothing, to ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous

... few traces might remain—his Beta curve, for instance, whatever that was. But Bill Forrester would be gone. Somehow, the idea of a revenant Beta curve didn't make up for the basic loss. ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett

... notes available there is no excuse for offending the ears and taste of your audience by continually using the one note. True, the reiteration of the same tone in music—as in pedal point on an organ composition—may be made the foundation of beauty, for the harmony weaving about that one basic tone produces a consistent, insistent quality not felt in pure variety of chord sequences. In like manner the intoning voice in a ritual may—though it rarely does—possess a solemn beauty. But the public speaker should shun the monotone ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... careless way of treating herself and everybody round her an unsuspected root of loyalty towards Alice and Martin that put up a hedge between herself and Gilbert. There was also something in the fine basic qualities of her undeveloped character that unconsciously made her resent this spoiled man's assumption of the fact that, married or not, she must sooner or later fall in with his wishes. She was in no mood for self-analysis, however, because that meant the renewal of the pain ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... better world for the sake of a higher race. The emphasis on child-welfare has a social rather than a sentimental basis. The family is our great chance to determine childhood and so to make the future. The child of today is basic to the social welfare of tomorrow. He is our chance to pay to tomorrow all that we owe to yesterday. The family as the child's life-school is thus central to every social program ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... matter of politics," he said, when the proposal had been given time to sink in. "America is supposed to be a free country, with a representative government elected by the suffrages of the people; do you mean to say that you and a few of your friends ignore the basic principles of democracy to such an extent that you nominate and elect anybody you please to any office ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... us see what we can make out of a brief, general, sentimental consideration of political democracy, and whence it has arisen, with regard to some of its current features, as an aggregate, and as the basic structure of our future literature and authorship. We shall, it is true, quickly and continually find the origin-idea of the singleness of man, individualism, asserting itself, and cropping forth, even ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... into its basic elements, its individual members. But into the individuals who really formed its basis, that is, the ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... sands of the Basin hold huge reserves of water with a fundamental relationship to the whole river system, whose basic dependable sources lie in these aquifers' outflow to the surface. Around the metropolis, some ground water is being taken from wells even now to supplement the overall supply and to satisfy the whole demand ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... we are framing which is so noticeable among English writers during the past three years. He asked me a remarkable question, and the answer which I gave him suggested certain contrasts which seemed to me of basic importance for us all. He said: "I have been reading books by Sherwood Anderson, Waldo Frank and Ben Hecht and Konrad Bercovici and Joseph Hergesheimer, and I can see that they are important books, but I feel that the essential point to which all this ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... coarsely crystalline and almost granitic character, while their outer portions present a strikingly scoriaceous or slaggy appearance, remains to be noticed. It is, that though the predominant felspar in them is always of the basic type, yet they not unfrequently contain free quartz, sometimes in very large proportion. This free quartz is in some cases found to constitute large irregular crystalline grains in the mass, just like ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... strings a strain sounds like a basic motive, answered with harmonies in the wood. In further strings lies the full tenor of quiet reflection, with sombre color of tonal scheme. Motives are less controlling probably in Franck than in any other symphonist,—less so, at any rate, ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... have to fight some of the time, yes," rejoined Banion; "but we'll have to travel all the time, and we'll have to graze our stock all the time. On that one basic condition our safety rests—grass and plenty of it. We're on ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... world, the Harn had needed only the three basic types of mobile units. There were other standard types, however, for dealing with more complicated situations. As it happened, a couple of carrier embryos were at just about the right stage. With a little forcing, they could be brought on in not too long a time. Meanwhile, ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams

... though not obvious, relation between investigation in biology or zoology and the observation and comparison of those organic forms which we call forms of literature and works of art. Yet the notion that a poem or a speech should possess the organic structure, as it were, of a living creature is basic in the thought of the great literary critics of all time. So Aristotle, a zoologist as well as a systematic student of literature, compares the essential structure of a tragedy to the form of an animal. And so Plato, in the Phaedrus, makes Socrates say: ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper

... you see, Vi? It may not be Bart Neely they wheel back here after the operation." He motioned for her to bend closer for the sound of his voice was becoming weaker. "In my field I've seen a lot of crazy reactions to loss of basic ability. Personality reversals brought about by loss of hearing, impotency, or even the inability to bear a child." He stroked the back of her hand with his finger. "Bart Neely without a voice-box might be a stranger. I'm not ...
— The Alternate Plan • Gerry Maddren

... a landscape; from its low swelling summits rise at intervals the powerful master cones of Shasta, Rainier, Adams, Hood, Baker, and others. Fujiyama, the celebrated mountain of Japan, may be cited as a familiar example of the basic mountain form, the single-cone volcanic peak. Vesuvius is a familiar example of simple complication, the double-cone volcano, while Mauna Loa in Hawaii, including Kilauea of the pit of fire, a neighbor volcano which it has almost engulfed in ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... chapter "Collaboration between the Manufacturers" it is shown that the production of which the French industry has been deprived, consisted entirely of Thomas, or Basic (Bessemer) Steel ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.

... attended the Chicago University of Commerce for four years, and the Princeton Graduate School in Interstellar Engineering four more—essential preparations for the successful Federation trader. In Chicago Martin had absorbed the basic philosophy of the Federation: the union of planets and diverse peoples, created by trade, was an economy eternally prosperous and eternally growing, because the number of undiscovered and unexploited planets was infinite. The steady expansion of the trade cities kept demand always one jump ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox

... thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... to the interpretation of the word used in this book, is a pictured cloth, woven by an artist or a talented craftsman, in which the design is an integral part of the fabric, and not an embroidery stitched on a basic tissue. With this flat statement the review of tapestries from antiquity until our time may be read without ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... the fan, quite as astonished as Kitty. Then he broke into low, rollicking laughter, which Kitty, because her basic corpuscle was Irish, perforce had to join. For all her laughter she ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... and faint as though indeed it were the lute of Andalusia, the low, slow, deep throb of a guitar!... My whole heart stopped. I was no more than a focused demand of life. Reason was gone from me, not intellect but emotion—that is its basic thing after all, emotion born on earth but reaching to the stars.... I listened, not hearing.... It was the air we had heard long ago, a love song of old Spain, written, perhaps, before DeSoto and his ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... satisfy his own emotions of guilt and terror, or the imaginary emotions of the imaginary being he had offended. A modern man in the same predicament would probably not think of religion at all, at any rate in the earlier stages; he would say it was a case for deeper ploughing or for basic slag. Later on, if disaster followed disaster till he began to feel himself a marked man, even the average modern would, I think, begin instinctively to reflect upon his sins. A third characteristic flows from the first. The uncharted region surrounds us ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... views and clear as to the course he meant to take. He was so eloquent in his discourse and so full of that divine spark of enthusiasm, that he was always listened to, no matter how unpalatably Tory the basic principles of his utterances were. He never posed as anything but an aristocrat, and while he whimsically admitted that in the present day to be one was an enormous disadvantage for a man who wished to get on, he endeavored to palliate the misfortune by lucid explanation ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... Mr. Curtis had a broad, loving nature and sympathies, and if the people had discovered them, they would have liked him. But the reserve which comes with culture makes one largely conceal one's true feelings. Super-refinement puts a man out of sympathy with much that is basic in humanity, and it needs a great love, or a great sacrifice of feeling, to condone it. It is hard work for what Watts calls a tough, and such a man, to ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... was not patented yet, I believe, though he told every one that the patent was applied for and he expected to get a basic patent in ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... esteem is demanded for these opinions and words—for the opinions, because they are mine and my mental property, and for the words, because they are the free expression and use of that property. And yet the basic principle remains that injury to the honor of individuals generally, abuse, libel, contemptuous caricaturing of the government, its officers and officials, especially the person of the prince, defiance of the laws, incitement ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... object of a church fair should be to strengthen the church, to propagate the Gospel, and to bring the world nearer to its God." That is Dr. Conwell's idea of the purpose of a church fair and the basic principle on which The Temple fairs are built. They always open on Thanksgiving Day, the anniversary of Dr. Conwell's coming to the church and continue for ten days or two weeks thereafter. These fairs are most carefully planned. The membership, of course, know that a fair ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... they let us live because, every so often, one of us gives up and joins them. And they don't think we can ever break out. They're much too smug. It's the basic defect of all power-elites, and ...
— Forever • Robert Sheckley

... rumbled, "a few interesting problems solved, and the Metamorphizer will change the basic structure of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... thing about his employer—that no echo out of his past or the past of his father would make the man discharge him. Indeed, taking him all in all, there was under the kindliness of Joe Pollard an indescribable basic firmness. His eyes, for example, in their habit of looking straight at one, reminded him of the eyes of Denver. His voice was steady and deep and mellow, and one felt that it might be expanded to an enormous volume. Such a man would not fly off into snap judgments ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... mill is pertinent to the development of linkages "in great," being the first of a new class of machine tools that over the next 50 or 60 years came to include nearly all of the basic types of heavy chip-removing tools that are in use today. The development of tools was accelerated by the inherent accuracy required of the linkages that were originated by Watt. Once it had been ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson

... This is the basic difference between great men and little ones—the little ones are concerned solely with to-day; the great ones think only of the future. They have gained that largeness of vision and of understanding which perceives the pettiness of everyday affairs and which disregards them for greater ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... Benezet was influenced by Woolman may be a matter of speculation and debate. The consideration of primary importance is the increasing interest manifested in abolition. The Friends were beginning to realize that slavery was contradictory to the basic principles of their organization. Woolman's real opportunity, therefore, came at the memorable Yearly Meeting of 1758, in Philadelphia—the meeting which Whittier has seen fit to term "one of the most important ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... the followers of Jefferson that Democracy was a fixed quantity, rising out of the bedrock of the Constitution, while Federalism, Whiggism and Republicanism were but the chimeras of some prevailing fancy drawing their sustenance rather from temporizing expediency and current sentiment than from basic principles and profound conviction. To make haste slowly, to look before leaping, to take counsel of experience—were Democratic axioms. Thus the fathers of Democracy, while fully conceiving the imperfections of government and meeting as events required the need alike of movement and ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... might they not do to make our sordid cities more beautiful, more companionable? And yet at the present moment every city is full of young people who are utterly bewildered and uninstructed in regard to the basic experience which must inevitably come to them, and which has varied, remote, ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... indeed, to know the facts so that we could take proper action toward saving the timber still left to the public. But of far more importance was the light that this history (and the history of our other resources) throws on the basic attitude, tradition and governmental beliefs of the American people. The whole standpoint of the people toward the proper aim of government, toward the relation of property to the citizen, and the relation of property to the government, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... liberties with several more or less commonly accepted theories, but I assure you that those theories have not been violated altogether in ignorance. Some of them I myself believe sound, others I consider unsound, still others are out of my line, so that I am not well enough informed upon their basic mathematical foundations to have come to any definite conclusion, one way or the other. Whether or not I consider any theory sound, I did not hesitate to disregard it, if its literal application would have interfered with the logical development of the story. In "The Skylark of Space" ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... from the soil and stream and the simple heart of man, older than Mother Moscow, old beyond any human name to attach to them. True and anonymous, these songs. The lips that first sung them never knew that they had breathed the basic gospel which does not die, but moves from house to house around the world. Indeed, the melodies were born of the land and the sky, like the mist that rises from the earth when the yellow sun comes up from the south, and the "green noise" of ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort

... combinations, through the effect of a spontaneity whose nature we have attempted to describe. It always tends to realize itself in degrees that vary from mere momentary belief to complete objectivity. Throughout its multiple manifestations, it remains identical with itself in its basic nature, in its constitutive elements. The diversity of its deeds depends on the end desired, the conditions required for its attainment, materials employed which, as we have seen, under the collective name "representations" ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... that the liquor had been having some effect. Either that, or she had a basic flaw of loquacity that no one else had discovered. Pembroke decided he would have to cover ...
— The Perfectionists • Arnold Castle

... of real estate is our prime concern. By unification of our efforts, we have maintained these values over a good many years. But as you know, a good business organization never rests on its laurels. Sometimes, even basic ...
— Get Out of Our Skies! • E. K. Jarvis

... Subject officer will report to commander, SCN Scorpius with detachment of nine men. Senior non-commissioned officer and second in command, Koa, A.P., Sergeant-major, SOS. Serial two-nine-four-one. Commander Scorpius will transport detachment to coordinates given in basic cruiser astrocourse, delivering orders to detachment enroute. Take full steps for maximum security. This is Federation priority A, Space Council ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage

... against want by his inherited estates; was moved by the agitations that compelled France to attempt to grasp suddenly the liberties and happiness we had gained in our revolution and, by his devout love of France, to search out and subject to the test of reason the basic principles of free government that had been embodied in our Constitution. This was the mission of De Tocqueville, and no mission was ever more honorably or justly conducted, or concluded with greater eclat, or better results for the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... priest who bows devoutly to the oracle may yet, even unconsciously, direct the oracle to the utterance of his desire. And if my father was—as I suspected—considering a recession from plural marriage, he had as justification the basic "revelation," given through "Joseph the Prophet," commanding that the people should hold themselves in subjection to the government under which they lived, "until He shall come Whose right ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... What is the basic principle of my system? It is, Learn by Thinking. What is Attention? It is the will directing the activity of the intellect into some particular channel and keeping it there. It is the opposite of mind-wandering. What is thinking? It consists in finding relations between ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)

... Endemann, "it is evident that it must be strongly acid; but when this solution is exposed to light, in the presence of the organic substances of the paper, the acidity of the solution disappears, we obtain potassium and sodium sulphates, basic chromium sulphate, salt and vanadic acid. While, therefore, the unchanged parts of the paper remain acid, the changed parts acquire a neutral reaction, and while the first will readily assimilate bases, the second will not. Exposed in an atmosphere laden with ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois

... it, but one becomes attached to you. You can make even a home pleasant. And if a man once cared for you it is improbable that he would cease to care just because you are no longer young. I take my stand on the basic fact that there certainly has been a mutual attachment. ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... verging on an emotional storm, but he trusted to his powers of persuasion, and her basic affection for him, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... last star before dawn. Yet her white beauty framed in hanging hair shone like some rare thing that had passed through fire and come out unscathed and purified in the passing. "Il faut souffrir pour etre belle" is a frivolous French saying, but, like many frivolous phrases, has its basic roots in the truth. It was true enough of Christine Chaine in that hour. She had suffered and was beautiful. Dour old Andrew McNeil gave a sigh for the years of life that lay behind him, and a glance at the face of the other man; then, like a wise ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... your last letter it is quite evident that there has been a radical change in your originally sound and inspired ideas, and which clearly indicates to me that a discussion and exchange of basic concept would be fruitless. I'm rather hurt that you question my integrity with the statement about the "slick, calculating, career-minded cult of Ph. Deism." Moreover, I would appreciate, if possible, the return ...
— On Handling the Data • M. I. Mayfield

... on foot resulting in the solution of many human problems not unlike the riddle of Swedenborg, and occasionally far more complicated than that presented in his case. All these solutions, in the last analysis, rest on the basic discovery that human personality is by no means the single indivisible entity it is commonly supposed to be, but is instead singularly unstable and singularly complex. It has been found that under some unusual stimulus—such as an injury, an illness, or the strain of an intense emotion—there ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... we'll just have to be patient until RCR goes through. Try to remember how difficult it is for the human mind to comprehend our love, even with the aid of mathematics. As rationaloids we fully understand the basic attraction which they call magnetic theory. All humans know is that if the robot sexes are mixed a loss of efficiency results. It's only normal—and temporary like human love—but how can we explain it ...
— The Love of Frank Nineteen • David Carpenter Knight

... few well-chosen sentences I have explained to 'Senath the basic rules of hygiene and of this house regarding water and its uses. She has decided to stay and accept the inevitable weekly bath, but she warns me fairly that if she goes "into a decline," I must take the responsibility with ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... 30, 2009 and subject to subsection (d), the Secretary may carry out a pilot program under which the Secretary may exercise the following authorities: (1) In general.—When the Secretary carries out basic, applied, and advanced research and development projects, including the expenditure of funds for such projects, the Secretary may exercise the same authority (subject to the same limitations and conditions) ...
— Homeland Security Act of 2002 - Updated Through October 14, 2008 • Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives



Words linked to "Basic" :   programing language, plural form, chemical science, plural, rudimentary, commodity, alkaline, fundamental, chemistry, standard, programming language, primary, base, basal, good, alkalic, incidental, radical, first, underlying, trade good, elemental, elementary, grassroots



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