"Attribute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if any painters left a stronger mark on the art of the second half of the nineteenth century than he did, even though the school, which he suggested rather than established, lapsed largely into mere impressionism—a term, by the way, which he himself coined already in 1858; for it is an error to attribute it—as is often done—to his friend ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... and stop me, and exclaim that it's my way perhaps to attribute a leaning of the judgment through personal sympathy to people in general—that I do it perhaps to you. No, indeed. I can quite easily believe that you don't either think or say 'the pleasantest things to your friends;' in fact, I am sure you don't. You would say them as soon to your enemies—perhaps ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... opening the case, drew a horrible picture of former persecutions by the Papists, and their cruelties to the Protestants, until it was apparent that all that the jury needed to indorse a verdict of guilty was evidence that he was a Catholic priest. Still it would be unfair to attribute this feeling wholly to religious intolerance or the spirit of persecution. England was at this time at war with Spain, and a report was circulated that the Spanish priests in Florida had formed a conspiracy ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... Yet he did not attribute his success, foolishly, to "his star," or to any magic. He said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him was, as one of his prisoners confessed, because they lacked a cause,—a kind of armor which he and ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... well," returned the banker, with his guileless smile. His face was bovine, and in the heat of summer apt to be shiny. No one would attribute an inner meaning to a stout person thus outwardly brilliant. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence appeared to be mollified, and turned toward the house with a gesture inviting ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... single pair, but found at Saint Albans that the journey would be insupportably tedious, and altered his Plan. [146] A coach and six is in our time never seen, except as part of some pageant. The frequent mention therefore of such equipages in old books is likely to mislead us. We attribute to magnificence what was really the effect of a very disagreeable necessity. People, in the time of Charles the Second, travelled with six horses, because with a smaller number there was great danger of sticking fast in the mire. Nor were even six horses always sufficient. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... America and western Europe. But even in those parts of the world we are accustomed to colour in the uniforms of army and navy, the crimson "hood" of the university doctor, and red sash of the French Legion of Honour. We accept colour as a dignified attribute of man's attire in the cases cited, and we do not forget that our early nineteenth century American masculine forebears wore bright blue or vivid green coats, silver and brass buttons and red or yellow waistcoats. The gentleman sportsman of the early nineteenth century ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... his political friends, and which he believed your Majesty had authorised him to do. Lord Granville in that account laid much stress on the reasons which your Majesty gave for sending for Lord Granville, as he found that attempts had been made to attribute every sort of motive which ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... attribute? And now, on the march from Schouwen through Brabant, power beckoned to him. He had already tasted it, when the mutinous army to which he belonged attempted to pillage a smithy. He had stepped ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... torment is devoid of the attribute of love. Every good father loves his children and children love their father. The mother loves the children and the children love the mother. When the children are disobedient, it becomes necessary for the father or the mother ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... from their primitive and divine object and have wandered after a mystic, imperfectly perceived and intangible beauty. There are some women like that, who blossom only for our dreams, adorned with every poetical attribute of civilization, with that ideal luxury, coquetry and esthetic charm which surround woman, a living statue ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... of all men then living one of the best able to cope with such an untimely situation as this. A contriving, sagacious, gentle-mannered man, a philosopher who saw that the only constant attribute of life is change, he held that, as long as she lives, there is nothing finite in the most impassioned attitude a woman may take up. In twelve months his girl-wife's recent infatuation might be as distasteful to ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... deeply dishonor us as a nation. Posterity will judge very leniently of all that has been done in heat of blood, in the struggle for life and for the possession of the soil by the early Colonists; it will not greatly attribute blame that, in our industrial and territorial expansion, and a conquest of savage nature more rapid than is recorded of any other people, savage man has suffered somewhat at our hands; it will not attempt nicely to apportion the mutual injuries of the frontier, to decide which was first ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... words with a sort of triumph. Like the fakir, he possessed the art of spiritual detachment, which is an attribute of genius. From an intellectual eminence he was surveying his own peril. Colin Camber in the flesh had ceased to exist; he was merely a pawn in ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... we meet the majesty of Cold, seated eternally at the pole in that regal silence which is the attribute of all absolute monarchy. Every extreme principle carries with it an appearance of negation and the symptoms of death; for is not life the struggle of two forces? Here in this Northern nature nothing lived. One sole power—the ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... thou wilt find here is a concise, unadorned account of the wourali poison. It may be of service to thee some time or other shouldst thou ever travel through the wilds where it is used. Neither attribute to cruelty, nor to a want of feeling for the sufferings of the inferior animals, the ensuing experiments. The larger animals were destroyed in order to have proof positive of the strength of a poison which hath hitherto been doubted, ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... sons and daughters, and you will be a comfort to your parents, in sickness or in health. "Forgiveness is an attribute of Heaven." ...
— No and Other Stories Compiled by Uncle Humphrey • Various
... follows that Sun Tzu means by "Moral Law" a principle of harmony, not unlike the Tao of Lao Tzu in its moral aspect. One might be tempted to render it by "morale," were it not considered as an attribute of the ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... admirers were unwilling to admit the part played in his success by the jealousy of his foes of each other's share in the booty, and they delighted to invest him with every great quality which man could possess. His enemies were ready enough to allow his military talents, but they wished to attribute the first success of his not very deep policy to a marvellous duplicity, apparently considered by them the more wicked as possessed by a parvenu emperor, and far removed, in a moral point of view, from the statecraft so allowable in an ancient monarchy. But for Napoleon ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Duchess with indignation, "do not attribute to chance what you owe to ignoble curiosity. To watch a woman—to surprise the secrets of her heart, is infamous, and betrays the hospitality extended to you. It shows a want of respect for me, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... extinguished, those words of religious adoration are the sacred relics of tradition, handed down to them from generation to generation? "In the same manner," says Adair, "they sing on certain other religious celebrations, ailyo ailyo, which is the Hebrew el for God, by his attribute of omnipotence." They likewise sing hewah, hewah, He chyra, the "immortal soul." Those words sung at their religious rejoicings are never uttered at any other time, which must have occasioned the loss of their divine ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Mathematics, Periodical Papers, Letters, Essays, Arts, Sciences, Novels and Adventures, with Poetic and Dramatic Entertainment, by the most celebrated ancient and modern Authors, who have explored, investigated, and attempted to illuminate the human Understanding with the god-like Attribute of knowledge, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... in 1998-2001 and contracted by 2.3 percent in 2002, in response to regional contagion and an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease. On a per capita basis, real income has stagnated at 1980 levels. Most observers attribute Paraguay's poor economic performance to political uncertainty, corruption, lack of progress on structural reform, substantial internal and external debt, and deficient infrastructure. Aided by a firmer exchange ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... that he would attribute the heightened color of her cheeks to the exertion of the ride. "We thought we'd ride out to see how you ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... question. For some of them God is a number; some swear by dogs and geese and plane-trees. [Footnote: Socrates made a practice of substituting these for the names of Gods in his oaths.] Some again banish all other Gods, and attribute the control of the universe to a single one; I got rather depressed on learning how small the supply of divinity was. But I was comforted by the lavish souls who not only make many, but classify; there was ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... degree difficult for us to appreciate, a State product. It is a national possession deliberately handed on by the State from generation to generation, hall-marked and guaranteed, as it were, for the use of its citizens. When we use the word "culture" we speak of it as an attribute of individual men and women. Germans, on the other hand, think of it as belonging to nations as a whole, in virtue of their system of national education. That is why they are so sure that all Germans possess culture. ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... one other member of the party of whom we will make mention just now, because she appears again somewhat prominently in our tale. This was a little elderly female who seemed utterly destitute of the very common human attribute of self-assertion, and in whose amiable, almost comical, countenance, one expression seemed to overbear and obliterate all others, namely that of gushing good-will to man and beast! Those who did not ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... are who deny the very existence of the Godhead; others say that it exists, but neither bestirs nor concerns itself nor has forethought for anything. A third party attribute to it existence and forethought, but only for great and heavenly matters, not for anything that is on earth. A fourth party admit things on earth as well as in heaven, but only in general, and not with respect to each individual. A fifth, ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... of Mr. Allison and a much admired member of the city's middle class. And while it is true that a certain equality in class and social refinement was an attribute of the American people which found great favor in the eyes of the older world inhabitants, it is equally true that this equality was more seeming than real. This was due to a great extent to the distinction established by the wealth and the liberties enjoyed by the various ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... energy speak well for the physical excellence of her mother. The miscarriage that Anne experienced in February, 1536, was probably the occasion of her repudiation and murder in the following May, as Henry was always inclined to attribute disappointments of this kind to his wives, who ever dwelt in the valley of the shadow of death.[Footnote: Henry thought of divorcing Catharine of Aragon some years before she had become too old to bear children. She was born in the last ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hope you will permit me to take this opportunity to say that I deplore, as must all right-minded and clear-thinking men, the occasional petty criticisms which attribute to you some selfish motive for the honest and noble stand you have taken concerning the importance of immediate action and of a widespread, far-reaching, and generally effective movement looking toward, not the conservation, ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... characteristics of your brother which more than any others have impressed themselves upon my mind. I do not think that they were three separate sides of his personality: I should say, rather, that they were three different expressions of one fundamental attribute. It was because he walked so closely with God that he so loved the individual sons of God. It was because he so loved the Great Father and each child of His that he had so strong a faith in the power of prayer and such unwearying ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... longs to pass the hills or the seas which inclose his narrow home; yet, when his eager steps have borne him beyond those limits, he pines, like the plant, for his native soil; and it is by this touching and beautiful attribute of man — this longing for that which is unknown, and this fond remembrance of that which is lost — that he is spared from an exclusive attachment to the present. p 359 Thus deeply rooted in the innermost nature ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... 3, 5, Adoyot v. 3, Sabbat 1. To what did such diversity of opinion relate, if not to the canonical character of the books? A specific answer to the question is not given by the learned writer,(69) who is too eager in his endeavor to attribute the settlement of the third canon to the great synagogue, and to smooth away all diversities of opinion about several books, after that time, as if none could afterwards question the authoritative settlement by that body. He will not even allow a wider canon to the ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... nonsense, her countenance rapidly assumed an almost death-like expression. She would sit and gaze and breathe, but it was plain that there was not a single idea stirring in her mind. She could not even be called good; goodness is not an attribute of birds. In consequence either of her frivolous youth or of the air of Paris, which she had breathed from her childhood's days, there was rooted in her a kind of universal scepticism, which usually found expression in the words, ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... of wit! I couldn't take it as he does. Expectations and all that sort of thing, you know, going up like a hot air balloon and bursting in plain view. But he never squeaked. Laughed it off. A British attribute, I dare say. I suppose you know that he is obliged to sell his estate ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... Ezekiel xlvi. 1 seq.), on which the shewbread was laid out; but here, doubtless on account of the regularity with which it every eighth day interrupted the round of everyday work, this gradually became the essential attribute. In the end even its name came to be interpreted as if derived from the verb "to rest." But as a day of rest it cannot be so very primitive in its origin; in this attribute it presupposes agriculture and a tolerably hard-pressed working-day ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... who are cruel," cried Pen, more exasperated and more savage, because his own heart, naturally soft and weak, revolted indignantly at the injustice of the very suffering which was laid at his door. "It is you that are cruel, who attribute all this pain to me: it is you who are cruel with your wicked reproaches, your wicked doubts of me, your wicked persecutions of those who love me—yes, those who love me, and who brave every thing for me, and whom you ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... disastrous period the town has sent no members to Parliament at all; and very little, indeed, do the townspeople appear to care about so serious a deprivation. In case the reader should be disposed to attribute this indifference to municipal privileges to the supineness rather than the philosophy of the inhabitants, I think it necessary to establish their just claims to be considered as possessing public ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... appoints that only living souls shall provide what keeps souls alive. Now this soul-life, which manifests itself in thought, in conduct, in hope, faith, and love, makes us human and lifts us above every other kind of earthly existence. It is our distinctive attribute, the godlike side of our being, which, under penalty of sinking to lower worlds, we must bring out and cultivate. The plant is alive. By its own energy it springs from darkness, it grows, it waves its green leaves beneath the blue heavens; but it is blind, deaf and dumb, senseless, dead to ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... cowardice; no, never let him that was born to execute judgment secure his honours by cruelty and oppression. Hath not thy Koran told thee that fear and submission is a subject's tribute, yet mercy is the attribute of Allah, and the most pleasing endowment of the vicegerents ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... the remark of the Blackwood writer in regard-to the claims of America in literature. "These claims," he says, "we have hitherto been very charitable to." How our life depends upon a continual exhibition by the critics of this divine attribute of charity it would perhaps be unwise in us to confess. We can at least take courage that it exists—who does not need it in this world of misunderstandings?—since we know that charity is not puffed up, vaunteth not itself, hopeth all things, endureth ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... prejudice. Nevertheless it remains true that the enemies of the red cap long attempted to represent it as a sham decoration in the style of Sim Tappertit. Long after the revolutionists had shown more than the qualities of men, it was common among lords and lacqueys to attribute to them the stagey and piratical pretentiousness of urchins. The kings called Napoleon's pistol a toy pistol even while it was holding up their coach and mastering their money or their lives; they called his sword a stage sword even while they ran away from it. Something ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... whom they feel little personal interest. They seldom speak of him, and hardly ever worship him. So it seems to be with Dyaush-pita. The priests speak of him and to him, but only in connexion with other gods; he has not a single whole hymn in his honour, and the only definite attribute that attaches to him is that of fatherhood. Yet he has become a great god among other races akin in speech to the Aryans of India: Dyaush-pita is phonetically the same as the Greek [Greek: Zeus pater] and the Latin Iuppiter. How comes it then that he is not, and apparently ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... less refined and less dangerous love of comfort. It is generally believed in America that the existence and the permanence of the republican form of government in the New World depend upon the existence and the permanence of the federal system; and it is not unusual to attribute a large share of the misfortunes which have befallen the new states of South America to the injudicious erection of great republics, instead of a ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... cattle. The investiture of some of the bulls with a mane is equally gratuitous; Cole, who was park-keeper for more than forty years, and of course had ample means of observation, distinctly informed me that they had no mane, but only some curly hair, about the neck, which is likewise an attribute of ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... these qualities describe Huxley; but the one attribute which distinguishes him above all others is love of truth. A love of truth, as the phrase characterizes Huxley, would necessarily produce a scholarly habit of mind. It was the zealous search for truth which determined his method of work. In science, Huxley would "take ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... that I attribute, what I am going to speak of as a form of infidelity of the day, to any given individual or individuals; nor is it necessary to my purpose to suppose that any one man as yet consciously holds, or sees the drift, of that portion ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... make one frantic." Thayer quotes Jahn's testimony that these afterthoughts are invariably superior to the first conception, and adds that "some of his first ideas for pieces which are now among the jewels of the opera are so extremely trivial and commonplace, that one would hardly dare to attribute them to Beethoven, were they not in his ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... so often! But ere they grow matronly in the house of Menelaus, they weep, and implore, and do not, in truth, know how terribly two-edged is their gift of loveliness. They resign themselves to an incomprehensible frenzy; pleasant to them, because they attribute it to excessive love. And so the very sensible things which they can and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... colors by stressing a mere analogy too far. Notwithstanding the vibratory nature of the propagation of sound and light, this is no reason for stressing a helpful analogy. After all it is the psychological effect that is of importance and it is absurd to attribute any connection between light-waves and sound-waves based upon a relation of physical quantities. No space will be given to such a relation because it is so absurdly superficial; however, the language of music will be borrowed with the understanding ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... they could not say that friendship was only a quality, or a relation, or a virtue, or a kind of virtue; and they had not in the age of Plato reached the point of regarding it, like justice, as a form or attribute of virtue. They had another perplexity: 8) How could one of the noblest feelings of human nature be so near to one of the most detestable corruptions of ...
— Lysis • Plato
... developed one attribute of royalty—a feeling that I need not reveal all my mind or my secret designs even to my intimate friends. I had fully resolved on my course of action. I meant to make myself as popular as I could, and at the same time to show no disfavour to Michael. By these means I hoped to allay the ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... duty to pay you for these services; hitherto you have postponed receiving your reward, and the debt has become a heavy one—I wish not to undervalue your dangers; here are a hundred doubloons; remember the poverty of our country, and attribute to it the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... still the son of a jeddak and might sit upon the throne of Manator with as perfect congruity as O-Tar himself. Combined with this is the fact that of recent years the people, and especially many of the younger warriors, have evinced a growing affection for me, which I attribute to certain virtues of character and training derived from my mother, but which O-Tar assumes to be the result of an ambition upon my part to occupy the throne ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... while Pragmatism and Bergson represent the more modern and revolutionary variety. But both these sorts of evolutionism have in common the emphasis on progress, that is, upon a continual change from the worse to the better, or from the simpler to the more complex. It would be unfair to attribute to Hegel any scientific motive or foundation, but all the other evolutionists, including Hegel's modern disciples, have derived their impetus very largely from the history of biological development. To a philosophy which derives a law of universal ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... thy dower. O Satyavati, I repeat the pledge I once gave, viz., I would renounce three worlds, the empire of heaven, anything that may be greater than that, but truth I would never renounce. The earth may renounce its scent, water may renounce its moisture, light may renounce its attribute of exhibiting forms, air may renounce its attribute of touch, the sun may renounce his glory, fire, its heat, the moon, his cooling rays, space, its capacity of generating sound, the slayer of Vritra, his prowess, the god of justice, his impartiality; but I cannot renounce truth.' Thus ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was dreadfully embarrassed." (Ned never was disturbed at anything.—if an elephant had walked into the cabin, he would have offered him a seat and cigar.) "by the sentries all presenting arms to my coat, which sat upon me as a shirt is supposed to on a bean-pole. I overheard one man attribute my attenuated frame to the effects of sea-sickness. We went into various shops, and finally into one where all sorts of sea-notions were kept, and Marston said, 'Here's what I've been in search of this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... opinion it is a delusion to attribute the growth of armaments to the "exactions of militarism." The "exactions of industrialism," generated by international commercial competition, may, I believe, claim a much larger share in prompting that growth. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... which she could blame herself; nothing for which she did blame her daughter. It was sorrowful, pitiful, to be lamented, wept for, aye, and groaned for; many inward groans it cost her; but it was at any rate well that she could attribute her sorrow to the spite of circumstances rather than to the ill-conduct of those ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... with only a little kindness she could have been adored. I could not ascribe her manner to a spirit of coquetry, for I had never given her the slightest proof of the opinion I entertained of her beauty, and I could not therefore attribute her behaviour to a passion which might have rendered me disagreeable in her eyes; M. D—— R—— seemed to interest her only in a very slight manner, and as to her husband, she cared nothing for him. In short, that charming woman made me very unhappy, and I was angry ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... a Junker, a Prussian rustic, monarchist, particularist, agrarian and militarist. Each of his qualities is an attribute of a mentality of caste, a very curious one, not lacking in grandeur, but very narrow and not always adequate to the conduct ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... their hearts and spare them!" Looking outward with the rapt look of a prophetess in whom, though torn with tempests of fanaticism and of passion, human and superhuman, no thought was mean, no sentiment ignoble, she poured out this her prayer; not for mercy!—her Gods knew not this attribute; nor could she understand it; if the craven continued to be a craven she felt he were better dead;—not for peace and contentment!—to these blessings neither she nor they attached value;—but for ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... summoned away from us, I will ask you all before dispersing to-day to join with me in a few moments' silent meditation on the lesson to be derived from a kindness that has proved undying—a pity that has the attribute of things eternal, and, speaking to us from the other side of the grave, may in all reverence ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... the favorite expression of British writers on naval matters, "in keeping with the best traditions of the service." And while it was bold and dashing, it was entirely free from the rashness which the British public has been a little inclined to attribute to him ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... doubt that the value of paper in this country has already risen, norwithstanding the increased issues of the Bank. These increased issues I attribute chiefly to the great failures which have taken place among country banks, and the very great purchases which have been made for the continental markets, and, under these circumstances, increased issues might take ...
— The Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of Restricting the Importation of Foreign Corn: intended as an appendix to "Observations on the corn laws" • Thomas Malthus
... it speak The Maker's high magnificence, who built So spacious, and his line stretched out so far; That Man may know he dwells not in his own; An edifice too large for him to fill, Lodged in a small partition; and the rest Ordained for uses to his Lord best known. The swiftness of those circles attribute, Though numberless, to his Omnipotence, That to corporeal substances could add Speed almost spiritual: Me thou thinkest not slow, Who since the morning-hour set out from Heaven Where God resides, and ere mid-day arrived In Eden; distance inexpressible By numbers ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... latrans), and from two or three other doubtful species of wolves (namely, the European, Indian, and North African forms); from at least one or two South American canine species; from several races or species of the jackal; and perhaps from one or more extinct species. Those authors who attribute great influence to the action of climate by itself may thus account for the resemblance of the domesticated dogs and native animals in the same countries; but I know of no facts supporting the belief in so powerful ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... I said to her the evening before the contract was signed, "you attribute to cunning and smartness on my part what is really the outcome of the truest, simplest, most unselfish, most devoted love that ever was! I assure you that I am not at all the 'woman of the world' you do me the honor of believing ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... helps on the work of dilapidation. These excesses will always exist; they are inherent in the human constitution, resulting from the very nature of man; they are an inevitable sequence of his physical structure, and his intellectual life. To avoid them implies absolute perfectability in every attribute, and that makes him a god. Until man shall have become infinite in wisdom, as well as immaculate in purity, he will continue to indulge, to a greater or less extent, in excesses of some sort, and those excesses will always be an overmatch, when superadded to the natural law of decay, for the recuperative ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... conditions works indirectly only, through favoring, in the struggle for life, those representatives of a species which the chance of birth has best adapted to the environment. In other words, some attribute a positive influence to outer conditions, and say that they actually give rise to variations, while the others say these conditions have only a negative influence and merely eliminate variations. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... passionate:—What! has not Being mind? and is not Being capable of being known? and, if this is admitted, then capable of being affected or acted upon?—in motion, then, and yet not wholly incapable of rest. Already we have been compelled to attribute opposite determinations to Being. And the answer to the difficulty about Being may be equally the answer to ...
— Sophist • Plato
... (supposedly) scientific idea of instruction. Unconsciously he led the pupil to listen and imitate. When the student found it difficult to apply the mechanical instruction the master would say, "Listen to me and do as I do." Naturally this would bring the desired result. Yet both master and pupil would attribute the result to the application of the mechanical rule. The student's voice would be successfully trained, but he would carry away an erroneous idea of the means by which this was accomplished. Becoming a teacher in his turn, the vocalist taught in this fashion would entirely overlook the unobtrusive ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... frightful pestilence had swept over New England and slain, it is thought, more than half the Indian population between the Penobscot river and Narragansett bay. Many of the Indians were inclined to attribute this calamity to the murder of two or three white fishermen the year before. They had not got over the superstitious dread with which the first sight of white men had inspired them, and now they believed that the strangers held the demon of the plague at their disposal and had let him loose ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... be born of a woman to sanctify the virtue of endurance; loving submission is an attribute of woman; men are logical, but women lacking this quality, have an intricacy of thought. There are those who think women can be taught logic; this is a mistake. They can never by any power of education arrive ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... scientific philologist. For he, like the metaphysician, believes in the reality of that which absorbs his own mind. Nor do we deny the enormous influence which language has exercised over thought. Fixed words, like fixed ideas, have often governed the world. But in such representations we attribute to language too much the nature of a cause, and too little of an effect,—too much of an absolute, too little of a relative character,—too much of an ideal, too little of ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... we were about to start up country, I received an answer from him, sent by some boat that followed us very closely. In it he said that he quite understood the position, and whatever happened would attribute no blame to me, whom he should always regard with friendly feelings. He told me that, in the event of any difficulty or want of money, I was to draw on him for whatever might be required, and that he had advised the African Bank to that effect. Further, he added, that at least ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... which has enabled me to meet you again be lucky or unlucky, I cannot decide the question until I am sure that my presence be not disagreeable to you. You appeared to become weary of my company very suddenly at Naples the other day. I can only attribute that misfortune to my naturally unpleasant manner—since, on that occasion, I had had the honour of meeting you for the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... Nevertheless, as the people that live about the cataracts of Nilus are said not to hear the noise, so neither the Roman writers, nor Machiavel the most conversant with them, seem among so many of the tribunitian storms to hear their natural voice; for though they could not miss of it so far as to attribute them to the strife of the people for participation in magistracy, or, in which Machiavel more particularly joins, to that about the agrarian, this was to take the business short, and the remedy ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... in common between the sun's corona and cometary matter was shown by the last solar eclipse observed in South Pacific Ocean, where the spectrum of sun's corona was found to be the same as that of a comet's tail. Are we to attribute in any degree the different appearances of the sun's corona to the presence or absence of a comet at its perihelion? At the eclipse of the sun seen in Upper Egypt two or three years ago, a comet was seen close to the sun, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... long sick, is now a- dying,' wrote Garrick in his prologue to She Stoops to Conquer, and she had not to apologise, like Charles the Second, for the unconscionable time she was about it. It is a little crude to attribute her demise to Jeremy Collier and his Short View—a block painted to look like a thunderbolt. It is not a matter of decency, of alteration or improvement in manners. A comedy might be wholly Congrevean without a coarse ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... the arrival of your cheque, and, like Pepys, 'my hand still shakes to write of it.' To this grateful emotion, and not to D.T., please attribute the raggedness of ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grasp it, that makes us old. Only the soldiers who enter Capua with wounded feet leave it demoralised. And yet George, who never had to wait or fight for a pleasure, fell enervate long before his death. I can but attribute this to the constant persecution to which he was subjected by duns and ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... the Earl of Hereford, high constable, the Earl Marshal, and the Earl of Gloucester. The circumstances of the times were favorable to their views. An unproductive harvest had been followed by a general scarcity, and the people were willing to attribute their misery, not to the inclemency of the seasons, but to the incapacity of their governors. Henry called a great council at Westminster, and on the third day the barons assembled in the hall in complete armor. When the King entered, they put aside their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... of those strange rencontres which we attribute to chance, but which the pious with more propriety think originate in Providence, made me acquainted with a land-holder in Angermania, named Guldberg, as good a man as ever lived. I am indebted to him for all my prosperity, and I bless his memory. M. Guldberg had discovered a rich mineral deposit ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... tender a subject.—She could not enter on it.—Harriet was very seldom mentioned between them. This, on his side, might merely proceed from her not being thought of; but Emma was rather inclined to attribute it to delicacy, and a suspicion, from some appearances, that their friendship were declining. She was aware herself, that, parting under any other circumstances, they certainly should have corresponded more, and that her intelligence ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... and melancholy recollections of his early days awakened by the death of this loved companion of his childhood, we may attribute some of the most heartfelt passages in his Deserted Village. Much of that poem, we are told, was composed this summer, in the course of solitary strolls about the green lanes and beautifully rural scenes of the neighborhood; and thus much of the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... breathe in. It need scarcely be added, how conducive to wholesome ventilation, and to the prevention of moisture below, such an arrangement proved; suffice it to say, that we have never before been so free from moisture, and that I cannot but chiefly attribute to this apparatus the unprecedented good state of health we enjoyed ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... continued subdivisions of polytheism, this great sacred Word,—for so the consecrated animals were called, [Greek (transliterated): ieroi logoi,]—became multiplied, till almost every power and supposed attribute of nature had its symbol in some consecrated animal from the beetle to the hawk. Wherever the powers of nature had found a cycle for themselves, in which the powers still produced the same phenomenon during a given period, whether in the motions of the heavenly orbs, or in the smallest living organic ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... blushed at this question, but replied, "Because I saw the minstrel was a gentleman. He possessed a noble figure, and a handsome face in spite of his Egyptian skin. Like most young gentlemen, he might be conscious of these advantages, and attribute the artless approbation, the innocent smiles of my gracious queen, to a source more flattering to his vanity. I have known many lords, not far from your majesty, make similar mistakes on as little grounds," added she, looking disdainfully toward some of the younger ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... You must not attribute my intimacy with Paris to curiosity alone. An accident unlocked the doors for me. That passe-par-tout called the fashion has made them fly open—and what do you think was that fashion?—I myself. Yes, like Queen Eleanor in the ballad, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... much too modest a young fellow to suppose that this happy change in all his circumstances arose from his own generous and manly disposition: he chose, from some perverseness, to attribute his good fortune to the sole agency and benevolence of little George Osborne, to whom henceforth he vowed such a love and affection as is only felt by children—such an affection, as we read in the charming fairy-book, uncouth Orson ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... successful methods of the cure of diseases. They might have expressed themselves on these points in a way that we consider now puerile and superstitious. They might have attributed to the efficacy of prayer, many cures which we now attribute—shall I say? to no cause whatsoever. They may have quoted as an instance of St. Cuthbert's sanctity, rather than of his shrewd observations, his discovery of a spring of water in the rocky floor of his cell, and his success in growing barley upon the barren island where wheat refused ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... in a different station to that he how occupied. He was by birth and education a gentleman; but partly owing to his own mismanagement and extravagance, and partly from misfortunes altogether unavoidable (though he chose to attribute his reverses wholly to the latter cause), he found himself suddenly plunged from competence into utter destitution. He had hitherto practised painting as an amateur, but now he was forced to embrace it as the ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... Pontificibus Romanis, et de Imperatoribus Romanis," as found together with the chronicle of the archibishops of Canterbury; both in the Lambeth MS. and in another formerly in the possession of William Reede, Bishop of Chichester: and he was inclined to attribute the whole to the pen ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... is wrong; where I must be permitted to differ from him. As you would find, my dear sir, by following carefully the history of mankind, that the religious sentiment is implanted, a true and legitimate attribute of the human soul—with peremptory right to its existence. Whatever may be faulty in the creeds—that makes no difference, the foundation is there and not to be dislodged. Homeyer, as I understand him from your ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... the face of the recumbent doctor—probably a faithful portrait—not unlike the expression given to the quack doctor in one of Hogarth's famous pictures. The face of the cherub above wears a look of intense agony, which frivolous people are wont to attribute to the panacea. Higher up on the same wall there is a Hatchment, with the armorial bearings of the person to whom it refers, and the motto Resurgam. The conspicuous place and large characters look as if specially chosen with reference to the fabric, to which the word may ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... are written, under what are called the fourteen stazioni or stations of the cross, (places where our Saviour is supposed to have halted, or fainted under his load, on his way to Calvary.) Stanzas we were at first profane enough to attribute to Metastasio, but afterwards found that it was only the metastasis of his metre adapted to the use of the church. They are much better than most of our sacred poetry, as it is strangely miscalled, which is frequently ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... mind (that dog-in-the-manger) refused to let me satisfy my hunger. Coaxing by the attendants was of little avail; force was usually of less. But the threat that liquid nourishment would be administered through my nostrils sometimes prevailed for the attribute of shrewdness was not so utterly lost that I could not choose the ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... should have become a second nature to one with so heavenly a form and face. Perhaps it was owing to the want of the judicious management of a mother, of timely and kindly advice, that Isabella had grown up thus; certainly it seemed hard, very hard, to attribute it to her heart, her natural promptings, for at times she evinced such traits of womanly delicacy and tenderness, that those who knew her ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... gentle, and quiet, and peaceful looking that no one thought she had a care in the world until Willy Croup began to suspect in New York that something was the matter with her, but did not in the least attribute her friend's low spirits ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... of this disease is not positively known. The German veterinarians attribute it to irritation of the muscles by cold, and classify azoturia as a rheumatic disorder. The conditions preceding the attack are not in favor of this theory, and cold can not be considered an important causative factor. The most acceptable is the auto-poisoning ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... Chicot; and I now attribute to you ambitious projects and intrigues of which I formerly ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... to the poor, punctual in his services, forbearing with the farmers around him, mild with his brother clergymen, and indifferent to aught that bishop or archdeacon might think or say of him. I do not name this latter attribute as a virtue, but as a fact. But all these points were as nothing in the known character of Mr. Woolsworthy, of Oxney Colne. He was the antiquarian of Dartmoor. That was his line of life. It was in that capacity that he ...
— The Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne • Anthony Trollope
... knowledge that brought about the Renascence. And it is to the same spirit of fearless enquiry as well as to the strong popular sympathies which their very constitution necessitated that we must attribute the influence which the Friars undoubtedly exerted in the coming struggle between the people and the Crown. Their position is clearly and strongly marked throughout the whole contest. The University of Oxford, which soon fell under the direction of their teaching, stood first in its resistance ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... Thackeray wrote about villains because he wished to also write about heroes; Swift was satirical because he had the intelligence to see that his contemporaries were fools when they might have been wise. The cynics are the people of to-day who write books which attribute low motives to every one, which turn love into lust, which care not what is written so long as it can be made certain that there is nothing in the world which has not ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... misery of the poor and the fallen. This yearning to help she knew to be the cry within her own soul for peace. How to express this fullness of life Gordon was teaching her. Slowly and unconsciously she was clothing this powerful, athletic man with every attribute of her ideal. His steel-gray eyes seemed to pierce her very soul and say, "I understand you; come with me." His eloquence and emotional thinking were more and more to her the voice of a prophet seer. His face, that flashed and trembled, smiled and clouded with fires ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... farther explains, is in the imagination of him who feels it, be he lover or artist; be the beauty he descries the attribute of a living face, of a portrait, or of some special arrangement of sound. The feeling is inspired by its outward objects, but it cannot be retraced to them. It is a fancy created by fact, as flame by fuel; no more identical ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... greater or smaller dimensions of a man's body? This is no small matter! To so wise a young person as you are, I need not enlarge on all the difficulties of the enterprise. I am sure that you would never attribute good sense to a stranger because he had a handsome face, or all the virtues because he had a fine figure. And I am quite of your mind in thinking that the sons of peers ought to have an air peculiar to themselves, and perfectly distinctive manners. Though nowadays no external ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... bills of credit, or making anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, supposed they had protected the people against the evils of an excessive and irredeemable paper currency. They are not responsible for the existing anomaly that a Government endowed with the sovereign attribute of coining money and regulating the value thereof should have no power to prevent others from driving this coin out of the country and filling up the channels of circulation with paper which does not represent ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... former of these noblemen, although I had not the honour of being known to him, explaining, in a few words, who I was, and entreating him to intercede with the Duc de Choiseul for the transmission of my passports. To the kindness of this nobleman alone can I attribute the success that followed this step; for, the tenth month from the date of my letter to M. le Comte de Herouville, I saw a decked galliot arrive at Cayenne, equipped at Para by order of the King of Portugal, manned with thirty oars, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... had a vocation for the religious life, he could go to Glastonbury and rejoin the Order when he was a priest. It was true that Father Rowley disapproved of Father Burrowes; but he had never expressed more than a general disapproval, and Mark was inclined to attribute his attitude to the prejudice of a man of strong personality and definite methods against another man of strong personality and definite methods working on similar lines among similar people. Mark remembered now that there had been a question at one time of Father Burrowes' opening ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... herself about the room for a few moments, straightening things, adjusting the window shades. Allie had the knack of silence, blessed attribute in man or woman, and to Gray's surprise he found that her mere presence was comforting. She startled ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... attribute this statement seriously to one who knew as well as did Green how fickle are the winds, and how utterly different are the conditions between the still air of a room and those of the open sky. His insight into the difficulties of the problem cannot have been less than that of his successor, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... that the appearances presented in the daily rising and setting of the sun and the stars could be accounted for by the supposition that the earth rotated, just as satisfactorily as by the more cumbrous supposition of Ptolemy. He showed, moreover, that the latter supposition must attribute an almost infinite velocity to the stars, so that the rotation of the entire universe around the earth was clearly a preposterous supposition. The second great principle, which has conferred immortal glory on Copernicus, assigned to the earth its ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... reason of the excellence of His personal character, the simplicity, beauty, and genuine worth of His precepts, and the influence of His example and doctrines in the advancement of the race. To these distinguishing characteristics of surpassing greatness the devout Christian soul adds an attribute that far exceeds the sum of all the others—the divinity of Christ's origin and the eternal reality of His ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... public authority proceeding so very deliberately, and exerted, apparently at least, in favor of their own. The answer, and the only answer which can be given, is, that they were afraid that their true relation should be mistaken. They were afraid that their patrons and masters in India should attribute their support of them to an opinion of their cause, and not to an attachment to their power. They were afraid it should be suspected that they did not mean blindly to support them in the use they made of that power. They determined to show ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... surface, we might look for enlarged notions of the power, the majesty, and wisdom of that God who created it all. But images, like dolls, tricked out in the tawdry finery, are the objects which this people adore, and to whom they attribute more miraculous powers than were ever ascribed to the gods of their heathen ancestors. Humboldt says, "This people have changed their ceremonies, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... obsolete old pair of lovers in "Old-fashioned Farmers" is one of the most charming and winsome things that Gogol wrote at this period: it came straight from the depths of his immeasurable tenderness. It appealed to that Pity which, as every one has noticed, is a fundamental attribute of the national Russian character. In "The Portrait," which is partly written in the minute manner of Balzac, and partly with the imaginative fantastic horror of Poe and Hoffmann, we have the two sides of Gogol's nature clearly reflected. Into this strange story he has also indicated ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... Trevirana. When the Hindoos entered into possession of Gaya—one of the four most sacred places of Buddhism—they found the popular feeling in favour of the sacred footprint there so strong that they were obliged to incorporate the relic into their own religious system, and to attribute it to Vishnu. Thousands of Hindoo pilgrims from all parts of India now visit the shrine every year. Indeed to the worshippers of Vishnu the Temple of Vishnupad at Gaya is one of the most holy in all India; and as we are informed in the great work of Dr. Mitra, the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... an ascending direction to the next nearest hole. I have no doubt that all their little habitations communicate with each other. The greater part of the people were sick to-day, and I was inclined to attribute their indisposition to the meat of the bull which had ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... men no longer attribute life indiscriminately to inanimate things; but the same powers and attributes recognized by subjective vision in man are attributed to the animals by which he is surrounded. No line of demarkation is drawn between man and beast; all are great beings endowed with wonderful ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... thief?—And now you had better get your coffee. Because we have lost a treasure, there is no reason for starving. For my part, I shall break my fast with white wine. I feel unaccountably heated and thirsty to-day. I can only attribute it to the shock of the discovery. And yet, you will bear me out, I supported the ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... course, takes a hand at helping a yarn get from house to house but nobody makes such a specialty of this sort of social work as Fanny Foster. There are some Green Valley folks who attribute Fanny's up and down thinness to this wearing industry yet both men and women are always glad to see her and her reports always drive blue cares away and provoke ripples of ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... do you attribute this state of things, Monsieur l'abbe, you who are able, through your disinterestedness, to look ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... undertaking, and which is worthy of being remembered, is that, contrary to the proverb of the old Portuguese women, in the course of this war there was not one harsh word between the Spaniards and Portuguese, though they ate together at one mess. But your Lordship may attribute this to your good fortune, and to the intelligence and experience of Joan ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... more," said Mrs. Glenarm, interposing for the second time. "I am at a loss to know to what I am to attribute this kind interest in my affairs on the part of ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... Helen Rushton, the color mounting higher in her cheeks, "you misinterpret my thoughts. If I have not sufficient command of the powers of speech to express myself without blunder, you should not attribute it to want of charity. Indeed," added the girl, with more than due emphasis, "if, for no other reason, I should speak respectfully of the place, from the fact that I have very dear ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... easily, at first, before you could see how she worked round, look almost meretricious; she was conscious of a scope that exceeded the first flight of your imagination. She urged upon her companion the idea of labouring in the world of fashion, appeared to attribute to her familiar relations with that mysterious realm, and wanted to know why she shouldn't stir up some of her friends ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... she had done enough, but she plunged on desperately: "In spite of his really deep philosophy we notice a certain—one might almost say dash about his poetry, and a lack of—er—meditation which I should attribute to his immaturity and his a—rather wild life. If he had lived longer I think he might have overcome ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... would rather have been Voltaire or Goethe than Frederick or Napoleon; and I suspect that when the poor historian of the nineteenth century begins his superhuman work, he will, as a thorough philosopher, attribute more importance to two or three recent English writers than to all the English statesmen who have been strutting and fretting their little hour at Westminster. And therefore, too, I wish that Disraeli could have stuck to his novels instead of rising to be Prime Minister of England. This opinion ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the war, by a prosperous voyage and successful journey, arrived with speed and safety at his camp, I attribute to good fortune; but, when I see how the war under his command was brought to a happy issue, partly by his own daring boldness, partly by his good counsel, partly by the ready administration of his friends, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... complex idea into its elements, which traces causes to their first principle, and, by the power of generalization and combination, unites the whole in one harmonious system—then, so far from deserving contempt, it is the highest attribute of the human mind. It is the power which raises man above the brute—which distinguishes his faculties from mere sagacity, which he holds in common with inferior animals. It is this power which has raised the astronomer ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... nor will he thereby sacrifice aught of essential truth: but his comrade must see to it that he is content with the wide liberal air of the common day. The poetic alchemist may turn a sword into pure gold: the playwright will concern himself with the due usage of the weapon as we know it, and attribute to it no transcendent value, no miraculous properties. What is permissible to Blake, painting Adam and Eve among embowering roses and lilies, while the sun, moon, and stars simultaneously shine, is impermissible ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... who were on their voyage for the recovery of the Holy Land, have been massacred in Cyprus by the natives, who were provoked at a rape and murder committed in a church by some young noblemen belonging to the Nuncio"—; or— "Private letters from Rome attribute the death of his Holiness to poison, which they pretend was given to him in the sacrament, by the Cardinal of St. Cecilia, whose mistress he had debauched. The same letters add, that this Cardinal stands the fairest for succeeding to the Papal tiara; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... That influence has issued in one long misconception of the metaphysical status of natural entities. The entity has been separated from the factor which is the terminus of sense-awareness. It has become the substratum for that factor, and the factor has been degraded into an attribute of the entity. In this way a distinction has been imported into nature which is in truth no distinction at all. A natural entity is merely a factor of fact, considered in itself. Its disconnexion from the complex of fact is a mere abstraction. It is not the substratum of the factor, but ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... the conduct of the greatest powers and the most able politicians. It is after the fair, when the course of facts and their consequences has received full development, that, amidst their tranquil meditations, annalists and historians, in their learned way, attribute everything to systematic plans and personal calculations on the part of the chief actors. There is much less of combination than of momentary inspiration, derived from circumstances, in the resolutions and conduct of political chiefs, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... together on the ground, and he, with contained ferocity, was striking for my head with the butt of his revolver. He had already twice wounded me on the scalp; and it is to the consequent loss of blood that I am tempted to attribute the sudden ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... Small pieces of granite were in several places thrown into heaps, as if by human means; and their whole surfaces were covered with similar pieces, detached from the solid mass to which they had once belonged. If I might hazard a conjecture, I should attribute to them a volcanic origin: I think, on examination, their constituent parts will be found to have undergone the action of fire, by which they have been fused together. To those conversant in the structure of the earth, and with ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... upon Wallenstein's enterprise. It was also hazardous to attempt to lay hands on the person of a man who, till now, had been considered inviolable; who from long exercise of supreme power, and from habitual obedience, had become the object of deepest respect; who was invested with every attribute of outward majesty and inward greatness; whose very aspect inspired terror, and who by a nod disposed of life and death! To seize such a man, like a common criminal, in the midst of the guards by whom he was surrounded, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... horse-play as this, with a gravity startling in its unexpected daring, Field proceeded to attribute to the venerable jurist one of the simplest and purest lullabies that ever came from his own ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... situation has been made known to me. But I am more resigned than I was, and I am doing my best to set my worldly affairs in order. My one great anxiety is that Rachel should be kept in ignorance of the truth. If she knew it, she would at once attribute my broken health to anxiety about the Diamond, and would reproach herself bitterly, poor child, for what is in no sense her fault. Both the doctors agree that the mischief began two, if not three years since. I am sure you will keep my secret, Drusilla—for I am sure I see sincere sorrow ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... part of this he purchased an estate here, and, by chance probably, fixed on this spot for building a large house. Perhaps the convenience of carrying on his business, to which it is so well adapted, might dictate the situation to him. We can hardly, at least, attribute it to the same taste with which he furnished his house, or at least his library, by sending an order to a bookseller in London to pack him up five hundred pounds' worth of his handsomest books. They tell here several almost incredible stories of the ignorance, the ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... would be a natural one and probably agreeable to both sides. The scutage of the present year does not seem to have gone beyond this practice. It was confined to Church lands, and the wider application of the principle, which is what we may attribute to Henry II or to some minister of ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... tailors, or printers; whereas, wages rise when there is a demand for a few more than are at hand. The reason for this is to be found in the difficulty of transferring labour from the place at which it exists to that at which it is needed; and it is to that we have to attribute the fact that the tendency to depression in the wages of all labour is so very great when there is even a very small excess of supply, and the tendency to elevation so great when there is even a very small excess of demand. Men starve in Ireland ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... maintain that a man can do everything better than a woman can do it. This is certainly true of nagging. When a man nags, he shows his thoroughness, his continuity, and that love of sport which is the special pride and attribute of his sex. When a man nags, he puts his whole heart into the effort; a woman only nags, as a rule, because the heart has been taken out of her. The nagging woman is an over-tasked creature with jarred nerves, whose plaint is an expression of pain, a cry for help; in any interval of ease which ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... chivalry, being a natural attribute of men, becomes beautiful beyond words to express when found ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... opponents who have become Communists, and to the still greater number of non-Communists who are loyally working with them for the economic reconstruction of the country. I do not agree with the Communists in this, nor yet with their opponents, who attribute the death of political discussion to fear of the Extraordinary Commission. I think that both the Communists and their opponents underestimate the influence of the economic ruin that affects everybody. The latter particularly, feeling that in some way they must justify themselves to politically ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... purple sandstone. (Mr. Bollaert has described "Geological Proceedings" volume 2 page 598, a singular mass of stratified detritus, gravel, and sand, eighty-one yards in thickness, overlying the limestone, and abounding with loose masses of silver ore. The miners believe that they can attribute these masses to their proper veins.) In the limestone shells are found: the three following species ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... impulse of honour as to be ready to welcome back in triumph the prime cause of their degradation, the man of December and of Sedan. Titania, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, idealizes the weaver, and invests him with every noble attribute, and then as soon as she regains her senses, turns from him with disgust and exclaims, "Oh, how mine eyes do loathe thee now." So it was and so it is with Paris and Napoleon, "None so poor to do him ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. He was not a bad genealogist who said that Iris (the messenger of heaven) is the child of Thaumas (wonder). But do you begin to see what is the explanation of this perplexity on the hypothesis which we attribute to Protagoras? ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... last to come, the first to go. I have seen it go from a man in an hour, nay, on the instant. Our culture is nothing more than the accumulated wisdom of the race. It is not part of us, not a thing or attribute handed down from father to son. It is a something acquired in varying degree by each individual for himself. Yes, I do well to hark back to the primitive. It tells me where I am to-day and describes to me the world I am living in. You, Dane, ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... may remain as secure and inviolable in your breast as his own, before communicated to you. I further present you with check-words two; their names are TRUTH and UNION, and are thus explained: Truth is a divine attribute, and the foundation of every virtue; to be good and true is the first lesson we are taught in Masonry; on this theme we contemplate, and by its dictates endeavor to regulate our conduct; hence, while influenced by this principle, hypocrisy and ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... flat included the second floor of a small wooden house whose owner had once been evilly inspired to paint it a livid clay-yellow—as though insisting that ugliness were an essential attribute of domesticity. A bay ran up the two stories, and at the left were two narrow doorways, one for each flat. On the right the house was separated from its neighbour by a narrow interval, giving but a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
