"Irregularity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is the same with the probability of causes, as with that of chance. There are some causes, which are entirely uniform and constant in producing a particular effect; and no instance has ever yet been found of any failure or irregularity in their operation. Fire has always burned, and water suffocated every human creature: The production of motion by impulse and gravity is an universal law, which has hitherto admitted of no exception. But there are other causes, which have been found more irregular ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... among the wintry breakers of the west coast of Ireland. Here is the lover, baffled but insistent. Here are the fierce brothers and the stern dragon husband, and you have but to make out that the marriage was compulsory, irregular and, on the ground of that irregularity, finally dissoluble, to furnish forth a theme for Marriott Watson in his most admirable and adventurous vein. You can imagine the happy chances that would have guided me to the hiding-place, the trusty friend who would have come with ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... which they affected so much to decry. For after all, it must be allowed, that nothing could be justly urged against the English government, with respect to France, except the omission of a mere form, which other nations might interpret into an irregularity, but could not construe into perfidious dealing, as the French had previously violated the peace by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... intentionally produced by crossing these extreme variations with the original form, but the possibility remains that the conditions of domestication, abundant food, security and reduced activity, lead to irregularity in the process of heredity. In any case the mere separation among different individuals of factors originally inherited together in one complex does not account for the origin of the complex or of the factors. This is ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... The one ship was sent, but as soon as her cargo had been cleared she was reloaded from others which lay in the offing, and the Spanish colonists, only too glad to enrich themselves, actively connived at the irregularity. The Spanish cruisers endeavoured to enforce respect for the treaty. They claimed, not without justice, to search English vessels seen in American waters and to confiscate forbidden cargoes. English pride rebelled, and English sailors resisted. Violent affrays took place. The ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... bodies worked diligently on a constitution, and each succeeded in making one so much like the other that, after sober reflection, it was decided that the state could be admitted under either, and if both were sent to congress that body would reject them for irregularity. So towards the end of the long session a compromise was arrived at, by the formation of a joint committee from each convention, who were to evolve a constitution out of the two for submission to the people; the result of which, after many sessions, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... a portion of this ancient road in going from Riobamba to Cajabamba. It is well paved with cut blocks of dark porphyry. It is not graded, but partakes of the irregularity of the country. Designed, not for carriages, but for troops and llamas, there are steps when the ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... gray paving stones of the court cleared of their litter, and scoured free from discoloration and grime, set with dozens of little tables immaculate in snowy napery and shiny silver, and arranged with careful irregularity at the most alluring angle. She saw a staff of Hebe-like waitresses in blue chambray and pink ribbons, to match the chinaware, and all bearing a marked resemblance to herself in her last flattering photograph, ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... respectively derived, for marriages between individuals of different tribes are generally considered discreditable. Such, marriages, however, do occasionally take place, either in consequence of domestic troubles, or irregularity of conduct in the parties, and they are of course attended with a corresponding mixture of feature. Intermarriages of the other tribes with the Bukharie are almost universally reprobated, and are attributed, when they occur, to interested ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... glosses that they found in the Hebrew MSS. from which they translated, or added of themselves; the rest is made up of what are probably original phrases but omitted from the Hebrew by the carelessness of copyists; yet none of these differences is of importance save where the Greek corrects an irregularity in the Hebrew metre, or yields sense when the ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... speech. Consider it well, the Event, the thing which can be spoken of and recorded, is it not, in all cases, some disruption, some solution of continuity? Were it even a glad Event, it involves change, involves loss (of active Force); and so far, either in the past or in the present, is an irregularity, a disease. Stillest perseverance were our blessedness; not dislocation and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the best way of avoiding undesirable relations with women lies in the cultivation of right and happy relations with them. I suppose more men have been brought through this difficult period owing to the fact that association with women of refined natures made the thought of sexual irregularity seem repulsive, than by any ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... appointments, and withal so feminine in its neatness and regularity, that, conscious of his frontier habits and experience, he felt at once repulsively incongruous. "I cannot expect, Mr. Bly," said Mrs. Brooks resignedly, "that you can share my son's extreme sensitiveness to disorder and irregularity; but I must beg you to avoid as much as possible disturbing the arrangement of the book-shelves, which, you observe, comprise his books of serious reference, the Biblical commentaries, and the sermons which were his habitual ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... medical rather than penal treatment. And against this residue must be set the very much larger number who are now ruined in health or in morale by the terrible uncertainty of their livelihood and the great irregularity of their employment. To very many, security would bring a quite new possibility ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... I had found indications that everything was not quite right in the Currumpaw pack. There were signs of irregularity, I thought; for instance there was clearly the trail of a smaller wolf running ahead of the leader, at times, and this I could not understand until a cowboy made a remark which ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... complained that the coachman who drove on that day from Bristol to Warminster was drunk and unfit to drive I have to desire you will explain the reason why you neglected to report to me so great and so disgraceful an irregularity, and also how it happened that you did not know the coachman's name when the passengers asked you for it. I ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... blasted thy gourd; thy greatest earthly delight is gone: seek it in heaven, where I hope this dear babe is; where I am sure that my Saviour is; and where I trust, through grace, notwithstanding all this irregularity of temper and of heart, that I shall ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... boys and youths that stand about the couch in his chamber. Rather the physician sits down by the man's bedside, takes his hand, feels it and explores the beat and movements of the pulse. If he discovers any irregularity or disorder, he informs his patient that he is seriously ill. Our rich man is bidden fast: on that day mid all the abundant store of his own house, he touches not even bread: and meanwhile all his slaves feast ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... may possibly belong to the marl of the gypsum of Ortiz. These clayey beds are more worthy of attention since the interesting observations of Von Buch and several other celebrated geologists respecting the cavernosity of gypsum, the irregularity of the inclination of its strata and its parallel position with the two declivities of the Hartz and the upheaved chain of the Alps; while the simultaneous presence of sulphur, oligist iron and the sulphurous acid vapours which precede the formation of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... air. If they had not been exposed the breath would have frozen their coverings, and they would have been obliged to take them off with the help of an axe—an awkward way of undressing. The interminable plain kept on with fatiguing monotony; icebergs of uniform aspect and hummocks whose irregularity ended by seeming always the same; blocks cast in the same mould, and icebergs between which tortuous valleys wound. The travellers spoke little, and marched on, compass in hand. It is painful to open one's mouth in such an atmosphere; sharp ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... the amusements, the large freedoms only of others—as if recognising in it something fairly exquisite; and at the end, while they were alone, before she had rung for a servant, he had renewed again his condonation of the little irregularity, such as it was, on which she had ventured. They had risen together to come upstairs; he had been talking at the last about some of the people, at the very last of all about Lady Castledean and Mr. Blint; after which she had once more broken ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... middle (3) foot after a strong pause is a thing so natural that our poets have generally done it, from Chaucer down, without remark and it commonly passes unnoticed and cannot be said to amount to a formal change of rhythm, but rather is that irregularity which all natural growth and motion shews. If however the reversal is repeated in two feet running, especially so as to include the sensitive second foot, it must be due either to great want of ear or else is a calculated effect, the super- inducing or ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... was followed by a protraction of the act of breathing, a reddening of the face, efforts to throw off the clothes, etc. On being roused, the sleeper testified that he had experienced a nightmare, in which a horrid animal seemed to be weighing him down.[87] Irregularity of the heart's action is also a frequent cause of dreams. It is not improbable that the familiar dream-experience of flying arises from disturbances of the ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... deceived, too, in respect to the shape of the enclosure. In feeling my way I had found many angles, and thus deduced an idea of great irregularity; so potent is the effect of total darkness upon one arousing from lethargy or sleep! The angles were simply those of a few slight depressions, or niches, at odd intervals. The general shape of the prison was ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... will catch Pomeroy before we join him. But there's time yet. We can warn Pomeroy to meet us twenty miles north-east of the spot previously arranged. I think, Captain Bolitho, we may perhaps overlook Mr. Smith's little irregularity in joining if he gives us a full account of ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... singular interest. Mr. Thistlewood had no advantages of physique, and little charm of manner; his long, meagre body never seemed able to put itself at ease; sitting or standing, he displayed the awkwardness of a naturally shy man who has not studied the habits of society. But his features, in spite of irregularity, and a complexion resembling the tone of 'foxed' paper, attracted observation, and rewarded it; his eye had a pleasant twinkle, oddly in contrast with the lines of painful thought upon his forehead, and the ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... do not grow so fast as the finger-nails, but they should be looked after and trimmed at least once a fortnight. They are much more subject to irregularity of growth than the finger-nails, owing to their confined position. If the nails show a tendency to grow in at the sides, the feet should be bathed in hot water, pieces of lint introduced beneath the parts with an inward tendency, and ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... over the task of symmetrical arrangement. M. Maxime Du Camp reports that she said to him: "When I begin a novel I have no plan; it arranges itself whilst I write, and becomes what it may." This fault shocks less in England, where genius is apt to rebel against the restrictions of form, and such irregularity has been consecrated, so to speak, by the masterpieces of the greatest among our imaginative writers. And even the more precise criticism of her countrymen has owned that this carelessness works by no ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... Mr. Goodlad, represented it to Mr. Hastings's Revenue Committee to be (what it was) the greatest and most serious disturbance that ever happened in Bengal. But, good easy man, he was utterly unable to guess to what cause it was to be attributed. He thought there was some irregularity in the collection, but on the whole judged that it had little other cause than a general conspiracy of the husbandmen and landholders, who, as Debi Sing's lease was near expiring, had determined not to pay ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a very good speech, Mr. McElwin. But I don't know that any outrage has been committed. Let us call it an irregularity." ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... and gold, a variety which never ceases to charm; skin the pallor of ancient marble, with the shadow of rose lying below the eyes, the large, gray chatoyant eyes, which answered every impulse of the brain which ruled them. The irregularity of her features was never noticeable after a glance into those eyes. At this moment both eyes and lips expressed ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... injure many a noble Thought and Passion. But Mr. Cowley's Davideis is the Medium between both; it has Gondibert's Majesty without his stiffness, and something of Spencer's Sweetness and Variety, without his Irregularity: Indeed all his Works are so admirable, that another Cowley might well be employ'd in giving them their just Elogy. His Hero is according to the ancient Model, truly Poetical, a mixture of some Faults and greater Virtues. He had the advantage of both Love ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... Rochecliffe had decorated it with a number of patches, which even enhanced its natural plainness. Yet the eyes were brilliant and expressive, and, amid his ugliness—for it amounted to that degree of irregularity—the face was not deficient in some lines which expressed both ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... foreground, a clergyman and a poet sighing for her in the middle distance, and a crowd of undefined adorers dimly indicated beyond. Her eyes and her wit are both dazzling; her nose and her morals are alike free from any tendency to irregularity; she has a superb contralto and a superb intellect; she is perfectly well dressed and perfectly religious; she dances like a sylph, and reads the Bible in the original tongues. Or it may be that ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... alien are closely related to the general question of unemployment. He suffers in an acute degree from the want of system in the regularization of industry, and the fact that we have failed to recognize unemployment, and all irregularity of employment as a condition to be met and provided against by ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... Yoshiyasu, was to be adopted by Echizen no Kami Tadanao, brother and heir to the Sho[u]gun. Tadanao "removed," left the field open to the success (and succession) of the powerful premier. Yanagizawa as tairo[u] (premier) was an irregularity in itself.] ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... by attention to the regular action of the bowels. It arises from great irregularity in ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... Milly recognized this and did not attempt the impossible. Even if she had had the money, Ernestine was not one who could be made a social figure, nor could she be ignored in her own house. The situation, as has been described, had a flavor of social irregularity, like an unauthorized union, and the social penalty must be paid. With Milly's lean purse there was not much shopping to be done, beyond the daily marketing, and it was dreary to walk the New York streets and gaze into tempting shop windows, though Milly did a good deal of that in her idle ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... and "retrogressions" of the planets were well known to the ancients. It was not to be supposed for a moment that the crystal spheres were subject to any irregularity, neither was uniform circular motion to be readily abandoned; so it was surmised that the main sphere carried, not the planet itself, but the centre or axis of a subordinate sphere, and that the planet was carried by this. The minor sphere could be allowed to revolve at a different uniform pace ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... "The Sanitarium" consists only of a cabin with a single room divided into two, and elevated on posts like a Malay house. The deep veranda which surrounds it is reached by a stepladder. A smaller house could hardly be, or a more picturesque one, from the steepness and irregularity of its roof. The cook-house is a small attap shed, in a place cut into the hill, and an inclosure of attap screens with a barrel in it under the house is the bath-room. The edge of the hill, from which a few trees have been cleared, is so steep that but for ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... possesses three stories; and in each storey, the windows are of the same sort as that described, though varying in size, and varying also in their lines athwart the house. Those of the ground floor are all uniform in size and position. But those above are irregular both in size and place, and this irregularity gives a bizarre and not unpicturesque appearance to the building. Along the top, on every side, runs a low parapet, which nearly hides the roof, and at the corners are more figures of fawns ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... is true that the function of the rhythm of poetry is to express the governing poetic emotion, and that, since the emotion in itself is fixed rather than changing, it will best do this not by mere irregularity, but by flexible movement that is contained in an external symmetry, it does not follow at all that the subject-matter which the poetic emotion is controlling, be it the "emotions" or anything else, cannot hope for expression that catches its peculiar properties. To do this in ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... Yet he had no reason to rejoice in these victories, since he did but consume his own country, until he at length ceased fighting and desired to come to an agreement with them. But his changeability and the irregularity of his conduct made them hate him still more. And when he asked them why they so hated him and what he should do to ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... either is prevalent the winds draw towards a course perpendicular to or parallel with the line of the coast. Excepting when a squall or other sudden alteration of weather, to which these climates are particularly liable, produces an irregularity, the tendency of the land-wind at night has almost ever a correspondence with the sea-wind of the preceding or following day; not blowing in a direction immediately opposite to it (which would be the case if the former were, as some writers have supposed, merely ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... trodden under foot by a Minister Plenipotentiary. Mr. Motley said that he would go with me, and we put off in his gondola to the post-office. The director received us with the utmost deference. He admitted the irregularity which the minister complained of, and declared that he had no choice but to open every foreign newspaper, to whomsoever addressed. He suggested, however, that if the minister made his appeal to the Lieutenant-Governor of Venice, Count Toggenburg would ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... judge abhors to see, What few admire—irregularity. This some vouchsafe to pardon; but 'tis hard When such a word ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... by which he had gone. On the moor, or by the burn side, there was peace and brightness; but wherever he met with man he found something to sadden him. Did they rest in a monastery, there was often irregularity, seldom devotion, always crass ignorance. The manse was often a scene of such dissolute life that Malcolm shunned to bring his sister into the sight of it; the peel tower was the dwelling of savagery; the farm ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the mountain villages he knew; they stood in a continuous row on either side of a central street of astonishing cleanness; here and there their particoloured facade was pierced by a door, and not a solitary window broke their even frontage. They were particoloured with extraordinary irregularity, smeared with a sort of plaster that was sometimes grey, sometimes drab, sometimes slate-coloured or dark brown; and it was the sight of this wild plastering first brought the word "blind" into the thoughts of the explorer. "The good man who did that," he thought, "must have been ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... emotions proper to a man the whole value of whose existence was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this mood, however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man of science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid, a hardly perceptible tremor through the frame,—such were the details which, as the moments passed, he wrote down in his folio volume. Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of that volume, but the ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an irregularity in the line of cliffs, the upper landing of the stairway is placed at the side of the hut. In the rear, a small garden is protected from the uncultivated life of the hillside by a fence of close-set pickets. Across the ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... breathing of the lungs is too weak. The second finger pulse of the right wrist is superficial and devoid of vigour, as the spleen must be affected injuriously by the liver. The weak action of the heart, and its febrile state, should be the natural causes which conduce to the present irregularity in the catamenia, and insomnia at night; the poverty of blood in the liver, and the sluggish condition of that organ must necessarily produce pain in the ribs; while the overdue of the catamenia, the cardiac fever, and debility of the respiration of the lungs, should occasion frequent ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... wait for the divorce of Mme. Malibran from her husband, which had been dragging its way through the courts. The much longed for release came in 1836, and the union of hearts and lives, whose sincerity and devotion had more than half condoned its irregularity, was sanctified by the Church. The happiness of the artistic pair was not destined to be long. Only a month afterward Mme. de Beriot, who was then singing in London, had a dangerous fall from her horse. Always passionately ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... The manner in which the earlier years of his manhood had been passed had given to his demeanour, and even to his moral character, some peculiarities appalling to the civilised beings who were the companions of his old age. The perverse irregularity of his hours, the slovenliness of his person, his fits of strenuous exertion, interrupted by long intervals of sluggishness, his strange abstinence, and his equally strange voracity, his active benevolence, contrasted with the constant ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Condensation and Elongation of slate Rocks by lateral Pressure. Lamination of some volcanic Rocks due to Motion. Whether the Foliation of the crystalline Schists be usually parallel with the original Planes of Stratification. Examples in Norway and Scotland. Causes of Irregularity in ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... are seldom kept long on the same level: double or treble rows of tiling are introduced; long sticks and irregular wood-work are occasionally attached to them, to assist the festoons of the vine; and the graceful irregularity and marked character of the whole must be dwelt on with equal delight by the eye of the poet, the artist, or the unprejudiced architect. All, however, is exceedingly humble; we have not yet met with the elevation ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... precincts, when you can as well go on foot. You cannot see things flying by you. Do not adopt the custom of most pedestrians, that of getting over the ground as rapidly as possible. Take daily walks, no matter what the weather is; but do not go too far. Irregularity in this exercise is harmful. It is far better to walk two miles daily than ten miles at one time, and fifteen a week hence. Go to see something on your walks, if you discover nothing more than a great hole in the ground; and come home with some thought ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... share in the matter than he has always in the crimes of men, and in that multitude of sins which cupidity, ambition, interest, and self-love produce in the world; the demon being always ready to seize an occasion to mislead us, and draw us into irregularity and error, employing all our passions to lead us into these snares. If what he has foretold is followed by fulfilment, either by chance, or because he has foreseen certain circumstances unknown to men, he takes to himself all ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... is for her, Lawson—land, house, trade, and money. You're pretty sure there's no irregularity in that will of ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... oblong in shape and having a portico at the eastern or principal front, had none at its western end, where, however, a portico projected north and south from either side, thus forming a kind of transept. This irregularity seems to have been chiefly owing to the necessity of preserving the different sanctuaries and religious objects belonging to the ancient temple. A view of it is given opposite. The roof of the southern portico, as shown in the view, was supported ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... and The Boy had one great superstition—to wit, Cracks! For some now inexplicable reason they thought it unlucky to step on cracks; and they made daily and hourly spectacles of themselves in the streets by the eccentric irregularity of their gait. Now they would take long strides, like a pair of ostriches, and now short, quick steps, like a couple of robins; now they would hop on both feet, like a brace of sparrows; now they would walk on their heels, now ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... German ships, on the other hand, the British Government was not able to show that the ships were really carrying contraband or that there was any irregularity in their papers. The protest of the German Government and its later announcement of certain rules which should govern such cases merely cautioned Great Britain against an undue exercise of the recognized right of visit and search. The attempt was not made to lay down ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... of the moon have not the same regularity in their meals, or time for sleep, as we have, but consult their appetites and inclinations like other animals. But they make amends for this irregularity, by a very strict and punctilious observance of festivals, which are regulated by the motions of the sun, at whose rising and setting they have their appropriate ceremonies. Those which are kept at sunrise, are gay and cheerful, like the ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... irregularity," he repeated. "But also it was of a gallantry. With a boldness and a resource and a scorn for danger that, permit me to say, mark your compatriots, you have unmasked and handed over to us one of our most ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... further, the distinct address to Christ as the Hearer of Prayer. And, note, last of all, about this matter, the singular grammatical irregularity in my text, which is something much more than a mere blunder or slip of the pen. The words which follow, viz., 'comfort' and 'stablish,' are in the singular, whilst these two mighty and august names are their nominatives, and would therefore, by all regularity, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... quarters nursing a hot and uneasy indignation. He dreaded the chaff of his comrades almost as much as the anger of his superiors. He felt as though he had been entrapped into a damaging exposure. The truth was confoundedly grotesque and embarrassing to justify; putting aside the irregularity of the combat itself which made it come dangerously near a criminal offence. Like all men without much imagination, which is such a help in the processes of reflective thought, Lieutenant D'Hubert became ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... its brilliancy once in every two hours and thirty-eight minutes. Other observers have found slightly different periods of variability, but none as long as three hours. The most interesting interpretation that has been offered of this phenomenon is that it is due to a great irregularity of figure, recalling at once Olbers' hypothesis. According to some, Eros may be double, the two bodies composing it revolving around each other at very close quarters; but a more striking, and it may ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... Brother Walker, the system was squelched. Though at the end of his term, owing largely to this irregularity, he was largely deficient in his claim, ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... relations of the soil. This we propose doing by the aid of figures. Soil examined mechanically, is found to consist entirely of particles of all shapes and sizes, from stones and pebbles, down to the finest powder; and, on account of their extreme irregularity of shape, they cannot lie so close to one another as to prevent there being passages between them, owing to which circumstance soil in the mass is always more or less porous. If, however, we proceed to examine one of the smallest particles of which soil is made up, we shall find ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... in the direction of Point Swan, and remarked, as we approached it, the heavy tide-race which used Captain King so roughly, and which subsequent surveying operations enabled us to account for, from great irregularity in the bottom, changing almost at once from 40 to 17 fathoms. We waited, having no wish to experience the full effect of the current, for slack water, and thus passed round it quietly enough; we anchored in a small bight, South 20 ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... I found Mr. Dillman's garden on Hickory street, Chillicothe, white with this plant. Some were very large and beautiful and I had an excellent opportunity to observe the irregularity in the form of the stem. Some years previous I found a garden in Sidney, Ohio, equally filled. In the fall of 1905 I was asked to drive out about seven miles from Chillicothe to see a wheat-field, the last of October, that was white ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... they set out. Their vessel was a huge hulk which looked like a floating barn: it was manned by twenty or thirty rowers, and to replenish his purse a little the fugitive took an oar. The agent who had charge of the expedition required their passports: among the number the irregularity of Piotrowski's escaped notice. The prayers and prostrations went on during the voyage, which lasted a fort-night. One morning the early sunshine glittered on the gilded domes of Archangel: the vessel soon touched the shore, and his passport was returned to him uninspected, with the small sum he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... sight this may appear startling, but I would ask the reader how he can account otherwise for the great irregularity which exists in the distances of the planets in their relation to the sun, as every known law which governs masses and density seems to be ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... children, are almost houseless and naked—destitute of everything but the rudest structures, the rudest fabrications, and the rudest tools and implements of husbandry. A large family herd together, of all ages and both sexes, in one little hut, sleep on one mat, and eat from one dish. From irregularity of habits and frequent exposure, they are often sick; and with the aid of a superstitious quackery, sink rapidly and in great ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... had given, me the assurance. The immense thickness and giddy height of the walls, the enormous strength of the massive towers, the great extent of the building, its gigantic proportions, frowning aspect, and barbarous irregularity, awaken awe and wonder. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... presumption, from the first moment he looked at her, had been in her favor. And yet, if she was beautiful, it was not a dazzling beauty. She was tall and moulded in long lines; she had thick fair hair, a wide forehead, and features with a sort of harmonious irregularity. Her clear gray eyes were strikingly expressive; they were both gentle and intelligent, and Newman liked them immensely; but they had not those depths of splendor—those many-colored rays—which illumine the brows of famous beauties. Madame de Cintre was ...
— The American • Henry James
... subeditor.... He resided with his wife and mother at Fordham, a few miles out of town, but was at his desk in the office from nine in the morning till the evening paper went to press. With the highest admiration for his genius, and a willingness to let it atone for more than ordinary irregularity, we were led by common report to expect a very capricious attention to his duties, and occasionally a scene of violence and difficulty. Time went on, however, and he was invariably punctual and industrious. With ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... eastern Tibet. The Chinese Court, desirous of avoiding unnecessary trouble, approved[968] the choice on the ground that the infant's precocious ability established his divine character but when he died in 1815 and an attempt was made to repeat this irregularity, a second edict was published, insisting that the names of at least three candidates must be placed in the golden urn and that he whose name should be first drawn must be Grand Lama. This procedure was followed but the child elected by the oracle of the urn died before ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... of great mercantile companies rests on the validity of the laws which have been ascertained to govern the seeming irregularity of that human life which the moralist bewails as the most uncertain of things; plague, pestilence, and famine are admitted, by all but fools, to be the natural result of causes for the most part fully within human control, and not the unavoidable tortures inflicted by wrathful Omnipotence ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... following serenade many of the peculiarities which I have just noticed occur. I have also adhered to the irregularity of rhyme which may be usually observed about the middle of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... being also the hour-bell of the clock. In the chime-work, by Dent, there are two hammers to several of the bells, so as to play rapid passages; and three and five hammers strike different bells simultaneously. All irregularity of force is avoided by driving the chime-barrel through wheels and pinions. There are no wheels between the weight that pulls and the hammer to be raised. The lifts on the chime-barrel are all epicycloidal ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... summons to the dancers, as Herrera suggests. This Aztec dinner-call, on a scale commensurate with a large communal household, would have been lost to history but for the special use discerned in it to decorate a tale. It recognizes the loitering habits of an Aztec household, and perhaps the irregularity of the dinner-hour. ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... { through 14th Century), as { the delightful irregularity in { line and decoration shows, {Tables, chests, presses (wardrobes), there was NO SET TYPE; each { chairs and benches or piece was an individual creation { settles. and showed the ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... terrific grandeur in the scene. The black masses of lava, whose surface, here, is of the hue and texture of cinders, are piled and jostled together with the utmost irregularity, with deep fissures between them, in the same manner, though the material is so different, as the blocks of ice in the glaciers of Mont Blanc. Sometimes these cindery surfaces undulate and take the appearance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... mail through France to Marseilles, embarked in a vessel for Alexandria, and in a few days from the time I first heard of my destination set foot in the office there. All the postal arrangements had fallen into considerable irregularity and confusion; for, as I was informed immediately on my arrival, Mr. Forbes had been in a dying condition for the last week, and of course the absence of a master had borne the usual results. I took formal possession ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... aware of it. But by what right have they done so? Everywhere else in Genesis we find events recorded in chronological order, and there is no reason why the historian should in this instance commit the irregularity of passing from the end of the seventh day to the beginning of the sixth: it is certainly much more likely that in the story of the second chapter and seventh verse he has passed on to an event which transpired at the close of the seventh day, or, still more probably, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... at our birth we received the mingled seeds of each of these passions, which is the cause of much irregularity, the sensible person hopes for better things, but expects worse, and makes the most of either, remembering that wise maxim, Not too much of anything. For not only will he who is least solicitous about to-morrow best enjoy it when it comes, as Epicurus ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... shallows overlie sand and mud, are not so good. At this season the Ustrda is flat, fleshy, and full sized; the shell has a purple border, and the hinge muscle of the savage, far stronger than that of the civilized animal, together with its exceeding irregularity of shape, giving no purchase to the knife, makes oyster-opening a sore trouble. We tried fire, but the thick-skinned things resisted it for a long time; and, when they did gape, the liquor had disappeared, thereby spoiling the flavour. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... hitherto so peculiar Beauty in King Lear, of preserving the Character even in Madness, appears strongly in Clarissa: the same self-accusing Spirit, the same humble Heart, the same pious Mind breathes in her scattered Scrapes of Paper in the midst of her Frenzy; and the Irregularity and sudden broken Starts of her Expressions alone can prove that her Senses are disordered. Her Letter to Lovelace, where, even in Madness, galling Reproach drops not from her Pen, and which contains only Supplications that she may not be farther persecuted, speaks ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... contests held annually. It is very difficult to advertise a nut contest so that every person in rural sections knows of it and moreover, even if it were thoroughly advertised in any one year, it would not be possible to get nuts from all good trees because of the irregularity in fruiting habit of nut trees. The experience of others who stage contests will ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... other than the ascenders and descenders will allow; the projections above and below the line are awkward, and interrupt the definite lines of demarkation at the top and bottom of the letter-bodies; the capitals necessarily used in connection with the small letters add to the irregularity of the line—all of which reasons combine to limit the employment of minuscule for formal or monumental uses. On the other hand, the small letter form is excellently adapted for the printed page, where the occasional capitals but tend to break the monotony, while the ascenders and descenders ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... the rest." For the understanding whereof, we may consider, that there is in mens aptnesse to Society; a diversity of Nature, rising from their diversity of Affections; not unlike to that we see in stones brought together for building of an Aedifice. For as that stone which by the asperity, and irregularity of Figure, takes more room from others, than it selfe fills; and for the hardnesse, cannot be easily made plain, and thereby hindereth the building, is by the builders cast away as unprofitable, and troublesome: ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... match was well contested, the card being often hit; which, as the Sarde guns are not rifled, may be considered good shooting, at the distance stated. The firing was continued till it was almost dark with eager zest, but much irregularity, and almost as great an expenditure of animal spirits in vociferation, as of ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... belief in the community that somewhere in this cave is concealed $100,000 in gold, seven "pony loads" in all, which was put here by an old squaw, sole survivor of a massacre by which her tribe was exterminated. Much of the irregularity of surface noted in the deposits is due to the efforts of persons trying to find ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... roared with a great laugh. "Your apology is of the finest feather, the most gracious down," said he, "but our friends must remember that in an irregularity often lie some of the most ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... things necessary for the execution might be in readiness. The canons of the Romish Church, however, denounced against ecclesiastics who should be accessory to the inflicting of any bodily injury, and the above-mentioned expressions were used to avoid the censure of irregularity. The magistrates, on their part, swore that they would faithfully execute the sentences against the persons of the heretics delivered over ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... difference in time of the withdrawal of the glaciers, due to difference in climate. Specimens occur here and there considerably below this limit, in basins specially protected from inwashing detritus, or exceptional in size. These, however, are not sufficiently numerous to make any marked irregularity in the line. The highest I have yet found lies at an elevation of about 12,000 feet, in a glacier womb, at the foot of one of the highest of the summit peaks, a few miles to the north of Mount Hitter. The basins of perhaps twenty-five or thirty are still in process ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... valiranse; this combination of tenses is unusual. We do not have here a contrary to fact condition, as might at first appear. If that were the case, the imperfect indicative could not be employed in the if-clause. This is a simple condition in past time, the irregularity being in the use of valiranse, an archaic way of expressing a sort of imperative,—debieron valerse, or vlganse. Translate, since they wished... they should ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... in vain for a sound. Then he knocked with his pen-knife on the polished steel, and presently there was an answering signal from within—a series of scarcely perceptible irregular taps. It struck him that the irregularity of the taps formed a rhythm, and after a few seconds he recognised the rhythm of the Intermezzo from 'Cavalleria Rusticana,' which he had played for Hugo ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... by reacting upon the liver, create a disorder there. In cases, however, which are symptomatic of this cause, the chylopoietic disturbance will be found to have existed several days or even weeks; and the origin of the disorder, in like manner, may be commonly traced to some irregularity of diet, or other obvious causes, and frequently in infants to those which are connected with premature weaning; and sometimes even the cerebral disorder itself will have been only the last of a series of effects in the system, to which such ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... are; their plans by day and their dreams by night having no deeper significance than our own. Some writers say that the constant interposition of God in their behalf was because they needed his special care and attention. But the irregularity and ignorance of their lives show clearly that their guiding hand was of human origin. If the Jewish account is true, then the God of the Hebrews falls far short of the Christian ideal of a good, true manhood, and the Christian ideal as set forth in the New Testament falls short of our ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... in the corn country," as Herodotus terms it, were particular for their attention to health. "During three successive days, every month, they submitted to a regular course of treatment; from the conviction that illness was wont to proceed from some irregularity in diet;" and if preventives were ineffectual they had recourse to suitable remedies, adopting a mode of treatment very similar to that ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... poetical to look back upon; but when such life actually touches on our own days, and we can hear particulars from the lips of those now living, there come out details of coarseness—of the uncouthness of the rustic mingled with the sharpness of the tradesman—of irregularity and fierce lawlessness—that rather mar the vision of pastoral innocence and simplicity. Still, as it is the exceptional and exaggerated characteristics of any period that leave the most vivid memory behind them, it would be wrong, and ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell |
