"Circumscribe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when papa's so anxious. Do say what you saw!" Thus urged by his sister, the blind man describes the occurrence from his point of view, carefully and conscientiously. The care and conscience are chiefly needed to limit and circumscribe a sudden image of a lady of irreproachable demeanour besieged by an unexpected dog. So sudden that it merely appeared as a fact in space, without a background or a foothold. It came and went in a flash, Adrian said, leaving him far ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... medicines, even though these were not based on traditional doctrine. Where observed fact conflicts with theory, the fact cannot be ignored. Credulity of physicians, he indicated, may do the world "more mischief" than any other profession, but nevertheless he condemned those who would try to "circumscribe, or confine the operations of nature, and not so much as allow themselves or others to try, whether it be possible for nature, excited and managed by art, to perform divers things, which they never yet saw done, ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... marks for this quality, and so many bad marks for that. Biographers will weigh me grocerwise, as Kant weighed the Deity. Ugh! You can only be judged by your peers or by your superiors, by the minds that circumscribe yours, not by those that are smaller than yours. I tell you that when they have written three tons about me, they shall as little understand me as the Cosmos I reflect. Does the pine contradict the rose or the lotusland the iceberg? I am Spain, I am Persia, I am the North Sea, I am the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... numberless; and yet, notwithstanding, all hangs together; all things are linked one to another in the closest connection. The savants therefore find themselves in a strange embarrassment. They are obliged to circumscribe more and more the field of their researches, on pain of losing themselves in an endless study; and, on the other hand, in proportion as science advances, the mutual relation of all its branches becomes so manifest that it is ever more and more clearly ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... exculpate himself from the charge of ingratitude, would have led the Cardinal to accede to a reconciliation with his long-estranged benefactress; but he soon silenced these natural impulses to dwell only upon the dangers of her reappearance in France, which could not, as he believed, fail to circumscribe his own absolute power—a power to which he had laboriously attained not more by genius than by crime—which had been cemented by blood, and heralded by groans. Nor was this the only consideration by ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... reception. composition &c. (inclusion in a compound) 54. V. be included in &c.; come under, fall under, range under; belong to, pertain to; range with; merge in. include, comprise, comprehend, contain, admit, embrace, receive; inclose &c. (circumscribe) 229; embody, encircle. reckon among, enumerate among, number among; refer to; place with, arrange with, place under; take into account. Adj. included, including &c. v.; inclusive; congener, congenerous; of the same class &c. 75; encircling. Phr. a maximis ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of theories. Thus, prompted by certain analogies, we ascribe electrical phenomena to the action of a peculiar fluid, sometimes flowing, sometimes at rest. Such conceptions have their advantages and their disadvantages; they afford peaceful lodging to the intellect for a time, but they also circumscribe it, and by-and-by, when the mind has grown too large for its lodging, it often finds difficulty in breaking down the walls of what has become its ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... coat and then assisted Nell to circumscribe with the gown, from heels to head, her stunning figure, neatly encased in Adair's habit, which now consisted only of a jaunty shirt of white, gray ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... unquestionably do in fact exist. But in this exceptional case, in which a high social function is, for important reasons, bestowed on birth instead of being put up to competition, all free nations contrive to adhere in substance to the principle from which they nominally derogate; for they circumscribe this high function by conditions avowedly intended to prevent the person to whom it ostensibly belongs from really performing it; while the person by whom it is performed, the responsible minister, does obtain the post by a competition from which no full-grown citizen of the male sex is legally ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... Sparzanium." From specimens subsequently found by Dr. Fleming, and on which he has erected his species Parka decipiens, it seems evident that the nearly circular bodies (which in all the better preserved instances circumscribe the small polygonal ones) were set in receptacles somewhat resembling the receptacle or calyx of the strawberry or rasp. Judging from one of the specimens, this calyx appears to have consisted of five pieces, which united in a central stem, and were traversed ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... He had a great deal of very exquisite feeling for what is refined and elevated, but clearly it is a moral rather than an aesthetic delicacy that he exhibits, and aesthetically he exercises his sweeter and more sympathetic sensibility within the same rigid limits which circumscribe that of Lebrun. He has, indeed, less invention, less imagination, less sense of composition, less wealth of detail, less elaborateness, no greater concentration or sense of effect; and though his color is more agreeable, perhaps, ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... change in the objects which the name is habitually employed to denote; with the least possible disarrangement, either by adding or subtraction, of the group of objects which, in however imperfect a manner, it serves to circumscribe and hold together; and with the least vitiation of the truth of any propositions which are ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... great attention at Thonon, on the other side of the Lake of Geneva; and the bishop was anxious lest these new doctrines should spread, and he himself should get into trouble at Rome on their account. He now wanted to circumscribe Madame Guyon's sphere of influence by getting her to become prioress of a convent at Gex. He evidently thought that by having her here under some restraint, and by keeping her close to the duties of the cloister, ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... those experiences must ultimately determine our understanding of life. We know instinctively that if we grow contemptuous of our fellows, and consciously limit our intercourse to certain kinds of people whom we have previously decided to respect, we not only tremendously circumscribe our range of life, but limit ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... chill doth circumscribe the dreaming man because the spring is cold! The fragrant whiff which wafts itself into man's nose, is ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... spirit, any more than a spirit was made by the world. But in this case, does not the theologian, according to his own assertion, acknowledge himself to be the true atheist? Does he not, in fact, circumscribe the attributes of the Deity, and deny his power, to suit his own purpose? Yet these men demand implicit belief in doctrines, which they are obliged to maintain by the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... of the mind is not so much to draw up, and hale forward, as to know how to range, direct, and circumscribe itself. It holdeth for great what is sufficient, and sheweth her height in loving mean ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... doth circumscribe the dreaming man, because the spring is cold. The fragrant whiff, which wafts itself into man's nose, is ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... away its poor, futile glimmer against such mighty odds was understood, standing there with no encompassing walls to mark the boundary of its field. It was like the struggle of a man who stands alone in the vastness of life with no definite aim to circumscribe his endeavor, wasting his feeble illumination upon a little ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... dreaded still more dangerous consequences from the claims of their own sovereign, who resided among them, and who, in many other respects, possessed such unlimited authority. They therefore deemed it absolutely necessary to circumscribe this branch of prerogative; and accordingly, in the preceding session, they passed a bill against the establishment of any ecclesiastical canons without consent of parliament.[*] But the house of lords, as is usual, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... the same time elective, is, in my opinion, to entertain two incompatible designs. To reduce hereditary royalty to the condition of an elective authority, the only means that I am acquainted with are to circumscribe its sphere of action beforehand, gradually to diminish its prerogatives, and to accustom the people to live without its protection. Nothing, however, is farther from the designs of the republicans of Europe than this course: as many of them only owe their hatred ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... not be opened, the other two being read by the Bramins only. They say that there are seven orbs, above which is the seat of God; and they hold that God knoweth not of petty things, or, if he doth, regardeth them not. They circumscribe God in place or dimensions, alleging that he may be seen, but far off as in a mist, and not near or clearly. They believe in the existence of devils or evil spirits; but that they are so bound in chains, as to be incapable of doing hurt. They call man Adam, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... turned out political opponents, and thus created vacancies, in order that he might fill them with his own friends. I think the number of removals and appointments is said to be two thousand. While the administration and its friends have been attempting to circumscribe and to decry the powers belonging to other branches, it has thus seized into its own hands a patronage most pernicious and corrupting, an authority over men's means of living most tyrannical and odious, and a power to punish free men for ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... Debussy's work when each note opens a prospect. There are moments when the music of "Pelleas," the fine fluid line of sound, the melodic moments that merge and pass and vanish into one another, become the gleaming rims that circumscribe vast darkling forms. There are portions of the drama that are like the moments of human intercourse when single syllables unseal deep reservoirs. The tenderness manifest here is scarcely to be duplicated in musical ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... kind of fatality inherent in his nature, loved "to circumscribe himself," according to the happy expression of Rousseau; and he profited, rather than otherwise, by living entirely to himself; for he had long been, indeed he always was, the man who, at twenty-five, writing ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... a cause of many unnecessary Processes. For when I consider how short were the Lawes of antient times; and how they grew by degrees still longer; me thinks I see a contention between the Penners, and Pleaders of the Law; the former seeking to circumscribe the later; and the later to evade their circumscriptions; and that the Pleaders have got the Victory. It belongeth therefore to the Office of a Legislator, (such as is in all Common-wealths the Supreme Representative, be it one Man, or an Assembly,) ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... them to absolute slavery; of the preliminary measures she had already taken by erecting forts upon many of the great rivers of their neighborhood; of the ulterior intentions she thus announced to circumscribe their pastoral lands, until they would all be obliged to renounce their flocks, and to collect in towns like Sarepta, there to pursue mechanical and servile trades of shoemaker, tailor, and weaver, such as the freeborn ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... world, that trade was free by the great law of nature, and that neither France, England, nor the United Provinces, were to receive edicts on this great subject from Spain and Portugal. It was absurd to circumscribe commercial intercourse at the very moment of exchanging war for peace. To recognise the liberty of the States upon paper, and to attempt the imposition of servitude in reality, was a manifest contradiction. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sciences—divide different objects thus between them, philosophy cannot, in its turn, come forward as a particular science, having a distinct object, the designation of which would be sufficient to characterise and circumscribe it. Such was always the traditional conception: such will ours continue to be. For, as a matter of fact, every object has a philosophy and all matter can be regarded philosophically. In short, philosophy ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... or party has authority to circumscribe the inalienable right of Ireland to the largest measure of national self-government it may be in ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... objectionable character, and fully established the fact not only of a future intention to infringe the rights of the emancipated classes, but of the actual commencement and extensive progress of a Colonial system for that purpose. The object of the laws is to circumscribe the market for free labour—to prohibit the possession or sale of ordinary articles of produce on sale, the obvious intention of which is to confine the emancipated classes to a course of agricultural servitude—to give the employers ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... Catholicity and renewed power of the church only add to the malice, if not to the influence, of sectarians, in their efforts to make use of this odious persecution of servant boys and servant girls, of widows and orphans, to build up their own tottering conventicles, and to circumscribe the giant strides of what they ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... exercendi lacertos et dilatandi cervicem, ac latera firmandi. Cum tibi feliciter sagina cesserit, et tori creverint: nec vires unquam opimi bovis, nec pondus aequabis. Adice nunc, quod maiore corporis sarcina animus eliditur, et minus agilis est. Itaque, quantum potes circumscribe corpus tuum, et animo locum laxa. Multa sequuntur incommoda huic deditos curae. Primum exercitationes, quarum labor spiritum exhaurit, et inhabilem intentioni ac studiis acrioribus reddit; deinde copia ciborum subtilitas animi impeditur. Accedunt pessimae notae, mancipia in magisterium ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... that circumscribe the Bed of Death have other emblems carved upon them too; there is a double frieze of oak above the pillars, and on it appears the skull and crossbones, the spade and mattock, the fragments of pitiful anatomy that marked the ghastly trade of sexton in the sixteenth century. In the covered ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... amount of territory, at the present moment, and thus enlarge the sphere of influence which the republic exerts over the natives, and put it beyond the power of the nations, adverse to her interests, to circumscribe her in the noble efforts she is making ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... than one, themselves conspicuous there. Some minds are tempered happily, and mixt With such ingredients of good sense and taste Of what is excellent in man, they thirst With such a zeal to be what they approve, That no restraints can circumscribe them more Than they themselves by choice, for wisdom's sake. Nor can example hurt them. What they see Of vice in others but enhancing more The charms of virtue in their just esteem. If such escape contagion, and emerge Pure, from so foul a pool, to shine abroad, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... thou wert crimson with the crimson sky, Lovers have gazed upon thee, and have thought Their mingled lives should flow as peacefully And brightly as thy waters. Here the sage, Gazing into thy self-replenished depth, Has seen eternal order circumscribe And bound the motions of eternal change, And from the gushing of thy simple fount Has reasoned to the ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... within the inexorable limits of possibility. They have only begun to discover how narrow these limits are to them. Unexpected obstacles have arisen on every side, and the soaring purposes of the rebellion have vainly beaten their bruised and wearied wings against the solid walls which circumscribe them within the humble limits of their present uncertain hopes and expectations. The Federal Government, on the other hand, has not changed its purpose, as avowed in the beginning, to restore the national authority, in its unity ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... made a play about Clarissa Harlowe, felt moved to deprecate anticipated public resentment of the liberties that he had taken with Richardson's novel. Yet it is difficult to see why the abundant details of that excellent though protracted narrative should not be curtailed, in order to circumscribe its substance within the limits of a practical drama. Jefferson was blamed for condensing and slightly changing the comedy of The Rivals. Yet the author, who probably knew something about his work, deemed it a wretchedly defective piece, and expressed the liveliest ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... measurement intermediate between a long and moderate human step or pace, between the third of the length of the body of a tall and short man, etc. etc. Professor Smyth has collected several of the estimations thus adduced by Newton as "methods of approach" to circumscribe the length of the Sacred Cubit, and omitted others. Adding to eight of these alleged data, what he mistakingly avers to be Sir Isaac's deduction of the actual length of the Sacred Cubit in British inches—(namely, 24.82 instead of 24.753)—as a ninth quantity, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... other reason, but because we have been accustomed to the evils so long. But let public error be tolerated in human society; in the kingdom of God nothing but his eternal truth should he heard and regarded, which no succession of years, no custom, no confederacy, can circumscribe. Thus Isaiah once taught the chosen people of God: "Say ye not, A confederacy, to all to whom this people shall say, A confederacy:" that is, that they should not unite in the wicked consent of the people; "nor ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... whom he ought as a Magistrate (Isaiah XLIS. 23) 'to bow down with his face toward the earth and lick up the dust of her feet,'—her to subject to his political drifts and conceived opinions by mastering her revenue, and so by his examinant Committees to circumscribe her free election of ministers,—is neither just nor pious: no honour done to the Church, but ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... that river as the boundary between the Indian Territory and Texas, to the one hundredth degree of longitude west from Greenwich, and with that meridian south, to the Rio Grande and the Gulf—dividing the western from the eastern half of Texas—we circumscribe very fairly the exact region of country in which the slaveholding epidemic is violent and intense, and throw within the limits of the great Northern Republic all of the region in which freedom is already established, and all that in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... do here give this public notice that my resolutions are to circumscribe within this discourse the whole stock of matter I have been so many years providing. Since my vein is once opened, I am content to exhaust it all at a running, for the peculiar advantage of my dear country, ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift |
