"Selective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... another, and this atomic attraction is known as affinity. There is not the least possible doubt that affinity is a form of universal attraction, except that the affinity of atoms is selective. This affinity of atoms for each other gives rise to the combination of atoms known as molecules and ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... blind, living facts for which your conventional world provides no place. They prove by their works that Blake was right when he said that "a fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees"; and that psychologists, insisting on the selective action of the mind, the fact that our preconceptions govern the character of our universe, do but teach the most demonstrable of truths. Did you take them seriously, as you should, their ardent reports might well disgust you with ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... the age of thirteen was obliged to have an occupation. To a certain extent, this occupation was selective, but in the main it was to be determined by a board whose business it was to see that the man-power was directed to the best advantage for all concerned. A camp tax was ordered. At the end of the week, every citizen was required to pay into the common treasury two "hours." He could ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... under 15 years, 15-64 years, 65 years and over, and for the total population. Sex ratio at birth has recently emerged as an indicator of certain kinds of sex discrimination in some countries. For instance, high sex ratios at birth in some Asian countries are now attributed to sex-selective abortion and infanticide due to a strong preference for sons. This will affect future marriage patterns and fertility patterns. Eventually, it could cause unrest among young adult males who are ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... his follow-up letter he stated his proposition, offering state rights to his machine for $5,000, he shot over the heads of 99 per cent of the men who had answered his first letter. His inquiry letter had completely failed of its purpose. It was not selective, ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... like it? It's a new thing from Amalgamated NovelDiv. You can program it for up to a hundred selective sell phrases, audio or visio key. Every salesman should have one. Makes a marvelous ...
— The Real Hard Sell • William W Stuart
... chickens huddle beneath the mother hen for protection and warmth. Where tender nurslings of this sort are scattered wide in other portions of the pastures to find them grouped here by the score means that some selective thought has brought it all about. I cannot, of course, say that the seedlings consciously choose. Nevertheless, somehow, that spirit of protecting love of which I am, myself, definitely conscious when I come near an apple ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... present time, with the exception of the Oriental races, there has been no real restriction to immigration. Our policy has been selective rather than restrictive. Of those arriving certain individuals are rejected by the immigration authorities because of some defect of mind, of body, or of morals, or because of age infirmity, or some other cause by reason of which the aliens are likely to become public charges. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... of Isadore the Spaniard, and Bede and Scotus the Britons; of Strabo the German, Gerson the Frenchman, and Nicolaus de Lira the Italian. These names cover a wide range, but they do not imply university education. Some of them merely suggest acquaintance with the 'Imago Mundi'; others imply that selective faculty, the power of choosing what can help a man's purpose and of rejecting what is useless to it, that is one of the marks of genius, and an outward sign of ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... shows not only the artist's selective power and a sense of proportion and comparative values, but the Christian's instinct for those things that it is well to think upon.... Blessed is the book that exalts, and 'Via Crucis' merits that ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... the ex-magistrate, celebrated for his shrewd judicial humour, which, however, he had the good sense not to attempt to carry into private life. Although well on the wrong side of seventy, his eyes were still disconcertingly bright. With the selective skill of an old man, he immediately settled himself in the most comfortable of ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... is that without a preliminary hypothesis he would see nothing at all except dire confusion. But an assumption such as that of "animism," has the selective power of a magnet, drawing to itself all congruous facts and little filings of probability, until it so bristles over with evidence that a ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... ten days of unflagging zeal the Liberty Girls were annoyed to discover that another traitorous circular had been issued. A large contingent of the selective draft boys had just been ordered away to the cantonment and the day before they left all their parents received a circular saying that the draft was unconstitutional and that their sons were being sacrificed by autocratic methods to further the political schemes of the administration. ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... on, Jimmy became more selective. He saw no point in reporting a car that wasn't going to be used. An easy mark wedged between two other cars couldn't be removed with ease. A car parked in front of a parking meter with a red flag was dangerous, it meant that the time was up and the driver should be getting nervous about it. ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... [male] gives the same result as dioica [female] x dioica [male], and we must therefore suppose that alba produces male and female ovules in equal numbers. Alba [male] x dioica [female], however, gives nothing but females. Unless, therefore, we assume that there is selective fertilisation we must suppose that all the pollen grains of alba carry the female factor—in other words, that so far as the sex factors are concerned there is a difference between the ovules and pollen grains borne by the same plant. Unfortunately further investigation of this case is rendered ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... a genuine republic, the most democratic thing in the world is a hereditary despotism. I mean a despotism in which there is absolutely no trace whatever of any nonsense about intellect or special fitness for the post. Rational despotism—that is, selective despotism—is always a curse to mankind, because with that you have the ordinary man misunderstood and misgoverned by some prig who has no brotherly respect for him at all. But irrational despotism is always democratic, because it is the ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... laxity, it is extravagant for him to be housed in the finest mansion in the city with a retinue of servants and attendants only excelled by Sir William Howe; to be surrounded by a military guard of selective choice; to maintain a coach and four with footmen and servants, all equipped with livery of the most exclusive design; to live in the greatest splendor, notwithstanding the avowed republican simplicity of the country as well as the distressed condition of our affairs and finances. ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... than that, I believe, for my own part (and I feel sure most evolutionists would cordially agree with me), that this beneficent inherited instinct of Falling in Love effects the object it has in view far more admirably, subtly, and satisfactorily, on the average of instances, than any clumsy human selective ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... earnestly to secure an equal opportunity of leading a useful and happy life for all men and women. He championed the cause of women—of their freer life and their more active and public part in national service. He found the selective agency, which was to work for the amelioration he desired, in a higher form of sexual selection, which will be the prerogative of women; and therefore woman's position in the not distant future "will be far higher and more important than any which has been claimed for or by her in the past." When ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... scientific use of the imagination we may hope to penetrate this mystery. The cloud takes no note of size on the part of the waves of aether, but reflects them all alike. It exercises no selective action. Now the cause of this may be that the cloud particles are so large, in comparison with the waves of aether, as to reflect them all indifferently. A broad cliff reflects an Atlantic roller as easily as a ripple produced ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... Arthur T. Hadley, recently President of Yale University, has said, "Men in every department of practical life, men in commerce, in transportation or in manufactures, have told me that what they really wanted from our college was men who have this selective power of using books efficiently. The beginnings of knowledge are best learned in any home fairly well furnished with books." Professor William Mathews has added, "It is not the number of books which ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... had explained it, they were prepared to be tolerant about my—ah—relations with women as long as I was "reasonable" in my selection. Come to find out, they were prepared to be not just tolerant but insistent—and very selective. ...
— Inside John Barth • William W. Stuart
... beneath a bewilderment of facts. Most of us seek it vainly, as we might seek a needle in a haystack. In this proverbial search we should derive no assistance from looking at a reflection of the haystack in an ordinary mirror. But imagine a glass so endowed with a selective magic that it would not reflect hay but would reflect steel. Then, assuredly, there would be a valid and practical reason for holding ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... happened that when Miss Harden appeared again she found him holding a tea-cup to his lips with one hand, while the other groped in a dish of cream cakes, abstractedly, and without the guidance of a selective eye. Both eyes indeed were gazing dreamily over the rim of the tea-cup at her empty chair. He was all right; so why, oh why did he turn brick-red and dash his cup down and draw back his innocent hand? That was what he had seen the errand boy at Rickman's do, when he caught him ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... very simplified language they unlocked the key to producing specialized living tissue through a bombardment of an extremely complex carbon compound with amino acids and electricity, then making it selective in function by a fantastically ...
— Am I Still There? • James R. Hall
... that existing races and existing organs are only kept at their present high pitch of organic excellence by the stringent and incessant action of natural or artificial selection; and the simple relaxation or withdrawal of such selective influences will almost necessarily result in a certain amount of deterioration, independently even of the principle of economy.[21] I think that this cessation of a previous selective process will account for the drooping—but not diminished—ears of various domesticated ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... breeder; she is a reckless coupler and—she slays. It was a popular misconception of the theory of the Survival of the Fittest, a misconception Lord Salisbury was at great pains to display to the British Association in 1894, that the average of a species in any respect is raised by the selective inter-breeding of the individuals above the average. Lord Salisbury was no doubt misled, as most people who share his mistake have been misled, by the grammatical error of employing the Survival of the ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... July 1896 to the 19th April 1897. He read a paper 'On a complete Apparatus for studying the Properties of Electric Waves' at the meeting of British Association, held at Liverpool, in 1896. He then communicated a paper 'On the Selective Conductivity exhibited by Polarising Substances,' which was published by the Royal Society, in January 1897. He next delivered his 'Friday Evening Discourse,' at the Royal Institution, 'On Electric Waves,' on the 29th January ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... blood the scent of the animal, we shall then bear in mind that this odorous emanation contains particles of all the scents peculiar to each tissue and organ of the animal. When we further say that each organ in a living animal draws by selective affinity from the blood those materials which are necessary for its sustenance, we must not forget that each organ draws at the same time by a similar selective affinity the specific odorous substances requisite ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... simply big; it is definite, coordinated, representing team work on the part of the muscles as distinguished from indiscriminate mass action. That means selective distribution of the nerve current. The axons of the sensory and central neurones do not connect with any and every motor neurone indiscriminately, but link up with selected groups of motor neurones, and thus harness together teams that will ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... things that were contrary to nature had what we must call 'disvalue'. In the highest sense indeed of the term 'value'—namely that of absolute value or worth—things indifferent did not possess any value at all. But still there might be assigned to them what Antipater expressed by the term 'a selective value' or what he expressed by its barbarous privative, 'a disselective disvalue'. If a thing possessed a selective value you took that thing rather than its contrary, supposing that circumstances allowed, for instance, health rather than sickness, ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... cells in the true skin beneath. Through these prolongations they receive nutrient liquids for their growth and increase, and pass on liquids absorbed by the skin into the vessels of the true skin beneath. The living matter in the cells exercises an equally selective power on what they shall take up for their own nourishment and on what they shall admit into the circulation from without. Thus, certain agents, like iodin and belladonna, are readily admitted, whereas others, like arsenic, are excluded by ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... to Lamarck, it is very interesting to observe that the possibility of a fifth alternative, in addition to the four he has stated, has not dawned upon Dr. Whewell's mind. The suggestion that new species may result from the selective action of external conditions upon the variations from their specific type which individuals present—and which we call "spontaneous," because we are ignorant of their causation—is as wholly unknown to the ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Deutschland generally, as Official Prince of the Empire, and man of weight and judgment, Conrad's services might be still more useful, and the Kaiser's interests might require him rather to stay at home in that juncture. Burggraf of Nurnberg he continued to be; he and his descendants, first in a selective, then at length in a directly hereditary way, century after century; and so long as that office lasted in Nurnberg (which it did there much longer than in other Imperial Free-Cities), a COMES DE ZOLRE of Conrad's producing ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... up a bit and Vernabelle set down her glass and chattered some more. She said after all life was anything but selective, but didn't we think that all the arts rounded out one's appreciation of the beautiful. Several said "How true—how true indeed!" and sighed importantly. Then Metta said Vernabelle must show us some of her work and Vernabelle said she could hardly bring herself ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... survived. But the white technicians they had kidnaped to run the ships didn't. For they set up a color bar in reverse. The lighter your skin, the lower you were in the social scale. By that kind of selective breeding the present ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... will breed for race horses or dray horses as the case may be, and the system works with almost mechanical certainty. He gets what he wants and would never think of raising scrubs and taking a chance on results. The effect of selective breeding and culture is beyond dispute, and to many it seems obvious that all that is needed to perfect the human race and wipe out misery and crime is to supervise human breeding in the same way, so that the species may ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... magic. That two substances should cleave to each other and absorb each other and produce a third totally unlike either is one of the profound mysteries of science. Of the nature of the change that takes place, I say, we can form no image. Chemical force is selective; it is not promiscuous and indiscriminate like gravity, but specific and individual. Nearly all the elements have their preferences and they will choose no other. Oxygen comes the nearest to being a free lover among the elements, but its power of ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... to that in which abstract concepts and their relations are alone at the focus of attention and which is ordinarily termed reasoning. Thus the outward form only of language is constant; its inner meaning, its psychic value or intensity, varies freely with attention or the selective interest of the mind, also, needless to say, with the mind's general development. From the point of view of language, thought may be defined as the highest latent or potential content of speech, the content that is obtained by interpreting each of the elements in the flow of language as ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... There are women of a type approaching the masculine, who are evidently so by nature. Is it these women, already predestined for something other than distinctive womanhood, that offer themselves for "higher education"? In other words, is there a selective process at work, the results of which in choosing a certain type of woman we attribute to the education undergone? If we answer this question wrongly, and act upon our erroneous interpretation, we shall certainly do grave injury ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... Wordsworth consciously sought these alliterations, arranged these accents, resolved to introduce an unusual word in the last line, or hunted for a classical allusion. But what the poet's brain does not do consciously it does unconsciously; a selective action is going on in its recesses simultaneously with the overt train of thought, and on the degree of this unconscious suggestiveness the richness and melody of the ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... conducted in highly selective surroundings possessing the volume and range of natural resources and the isolation and remoteness necessary to build and maintain a high level of culture over substantial periods of time. In these special areas it was possible to provide for subsistence, produce ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... impulsive, or emotional actions. Later he sought causes of these results. Here we have involved increased knowledge as a basis of human action and the use of that knowledge through discriminating intelligence. The intellect thus represents the selective and directive process in the use of knowledge. Hence, intelligent behavior of the individual or of the group comes only after accumulated knowledge based on experience. The process of trial and error thus gives rise to reflective thinking. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... along river systems, where soils, cover, and other conditions approximate those of corresponding habitats farther to the east to a much greater degree than do conditions in upland habitats. Differential selective pressure, therefore, theoretically would be less between eastern and western populations of R. megalotis than in an upland-inhabiting species. In any event, specimens from western Nebraska, Wyoming, northern ...
— Geographic Variation in the Harvest Mouse, Reithrodontomys megalotis, On the Central Great Plains And in Adjacent Regions • J. Knox Jones
... the United States has done to assist in bringing the war to its successful close, from the adoption of the selective draft down thru the management of the training camps, the operation of the railroads, conservation of food and fuel, to the knitting of a pair of socks and the sale of a thrift stamp, what shall be said of the success or failure of our schools? Every man, woman, and ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... this,—that in unavoidable changes men like the new doctrine which is most of a 'preservative addition' to their old doctrines. The imitative and the persecuting tendencies make all change in early nations a kind of selective conservatism, for the most part keeping what is old, but annexing some new but like practice—an additional ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... important manurial materials, are arsenical, and the poison is thus spread far and wide over meadows and fields, and can be traced in the soil wherever artificial manures have been applied. The crops sometimes take up arsenic to a slight extent, but happily the plant is more selective than man, and no serious amount of poison absorption appears to be possible. The risk of contamination is, of course, much greater with substances which, like glucose, are not further purified by crystallization, but retain whatever impurity is introduced into ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... had that instinct of selective art, in felicity of words and salience of ideas, which elevates writing into literature; which long after a thought has merged its being and use in those of wider scope, keeps it in separate remembrance and retains for its creator ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... men will be secured for the regular army and the National Guard by volunteering, as at present, until, in the judgment of the President, a resort to a selective draft is desirable. The additional forces, however, are to be raised by selective draft from men ranging in age from 19 to 25 years. The quotas of the several states in all of these forces will be ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... world with. In proportion as they have moved the world, they are found to have kept the lead in their education from their earliest years, to have had a habit of initiative as well as hospitality, to have maintained a creative, selective, active attitude toward all persons and toward all books that have been brought within range ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... time, the student's attention was withdrawn from his specimens by a peculiar smell, which, being followed up by a system of selective sniffing, proved to be an emanation leaking into the stable from the alley. He opened ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... a snake, and a repugnance to its ways, but a snake is just as perfect an animal as a monkey. The living world does not consist of a repetition of similar elements, but of an endless variety of them, that have grown, body and soul, through selective influences into close adaptation to their contemporaries, and to the physical circumstances of the localities they inhabit. The moral and intellectual wealth of a nation largely consists in the multifarious variety of the gifts of the men who compose ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... those written in his last days, of Jefferies who had in his earlier writing been so objective. In Thoreau there is a happy combination of freshly observed fact with personal comment, and in Mr. Burroughs a personal element greatly subdued, and presented in most of the essays only through the selective art that has preserved the incidents he relates out of many of a ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... and a similar discussion on the power of the Creator (p. 6), correspond to the comparison between the selective capacities of man and nature, in the Origin, Ed. i. ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin |
