Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Diffuse   Listen
adjective
Diffuse  adj.  Poured out; widely spread; not restrained; copious; full; esp., of style, opposed to concise or terse; verbose; prolix; as, a diffuse style; a diffuse writer. "A diffuse and various knowledge of divine and human things."
Synonyms: Prolix; verbose; wide; copious; full. See Prolix.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Diffuse" Quotes from Famous Books



... made upon his contemporaries by a man of strong and noble character is something which cannot be precisely estimated, but which we often feel to be invaluable. The best justification of biography in general is that it may strengthen and diffuse that impression. That, at any rate, is the spirit in which I have written this book. I have sought to show my brother as he was. Little as he cared for popularity (and, indeed, he often rather rejected than ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... that something of this sort was observed by at least one student long ago. Schumacher, Enum. Pl. Sell. 2, p. 215, describes Arcyria atra with the characters of an enerthenema, and says "the capillitial threads are some of them diffuse and bear spermatic globules"! Did he anticipate E. berkleyanum? See the text under that species at ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... with a query. Having reason to believe that Rogers took an active part in the stirring events of his time, I shall be much obliged to any of your correspondents who will refer me to any incidental notices of him in cotemporary or other writers: to diffuse which kind of information your paper seems to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various

... entered upon a military investigation, and came to a similar conclusion respecting our prospects as to army, and who gained great credit for independent judgment by pronouncing Niagara a humbug,—Mrs. Kemble, frisky and fragmentary, excepting when her father was concerned, and then filially diffuse,—Mrs. Trollope, who refused to incumber herself with amiability or veracity,—Mr. Lieber, who was principally troubled by a camp meeting at which he assisted,—Miss Martineau, who retailed too much of the gossip that had been decanted through the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... inflammation of the cornea proper, although the sclerotic at the corneal border becomes involved to some extent. It may be divided into diffuse and suppurative. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... trying to save the world. And this knowledge, whilst it comforted her heart somewhere with a little self-satisfaction, stability, yet filled her with a certain sharp contempt and hate of him. She wanted him to herself, she hated the Salvator Mundi touch. It was something diffuse and generalised about him, which she could not stand. He would behave in the same way, say the same things, give himself as completely to anybody who came along, anybody and everybody who liked to appeal to him. It was despicable, a very insidious ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... rivals should yield to him in power than in generosity and greatness of character, attributes of which power is with him but the symbol and the fit employment. Ambition in Fiesco is indeed the common wish of every mind to diffuse its individual influence, to see its own activity reflected back from the united minds of millions: but it is the common wish acting on no common man. He does not long to rule, that he may sway other wills, as it were, by the physical exertion of his ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... where Dr. Jenkins' patients lived, on those broad tree-lined boulevards, those deserted quays, the mist soared immaculate, in innumerable waves, as light and fleecy as down. It was compact, discreet, almost luxurious, because the sun, slothful in his rising, was beginning to diffuse soft, purplish tints, which gave to the mist that enveloped everything, even the roofs of the rows of mansions, the aspect of a sheet of white muslin spread over scarlet cloth. One would have said that it was ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... circulation amongst a neutral class of readers; and amongst its own class it was popular. But its own class did not ordinarily occupy that position in regard to social influence which could enable them rapidly to diffuse the knowledge of a writer. A reader whose social standing is moderate may communicate his views upon a book or a writer to his own circle; but his own circle is a narrow one. Whereas, in aristocratic classes, having more leisure and wealth, the intercourse is inconceivably ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... I wanted any further evidence of the moral atmosphere which words diffuse, I would ask you to observe how the first thing men do, when engaged in controversy with others, is ever to assume some honourable name to themselves, such as, if possible, shall beg the whole subject in dispute, and at the same time to affix on their adversaries a name ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... the gingerbread was beginning to diffuse its savory odors through the house, Amy returned. A glance at her triumphant face furnished sufficient proof that her undertaking had been successful, even without the silent testimony of a large object concealed by a napkin, and carried with ostentatious ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... and diffuse conversation Prayers swallowed like pills by invalids at a distance Trees, dwarfed by a Japanese process Which I should find amusing in any one else,—any ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger

... childish by the side of Alfieri's terse philosophy and pregnant remarks on the development of character. What suits the page of Plautus would look poor in 'Oedipus' or 'Agamemnon.' Goldoni's memoirs are diffuse and flippant in their light French dress. They seem written to please. Alfieri's Italian style marches with dignity and Latin terseness. He rarely condescends to smile. He writes to instruct the world and to satisfy himself. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... Alcala, Salamanca, and Coimbra. Like Bellarmine Suarez was a man of great personal piety, well versed in the writings of the Fathers and in the literature of the Reformers. His works are clear and well arranged but somewhat too diffuse. The last edition (Vives) of his works was published at Paris (1856-61). /John de Lugo/ (1583-1660) was born at Madrid, went to Salamanca to study law, and there joined the Jesuits. He lectured first at Valladolid, and later on at Rome where he attracted ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... man through study, reflection, the ennobling of feeling, and so on, are subject to the manifold changes of existence; but religious feelings impress a certain stamp of uniformity upon all thinking, feeling, and willing. They diffuse an equal and single light over the whole ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... Venus mourns over his dead body, and causes a flower (the anemone or wind flower) to spring from his blood. Shakespeare's handling of the story shows both the virtues and the defects of a young writer. It is more diffuse, more wordy, than his later work, and written for the taste of another time than ours; but, on the other hand, it is full of vivid, picturesque language of melodious rhythm, and of charming little ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... a large number of different authors, representing periods of time extending over many centuries, are all comprehended between the covers of a single volume. There is no greater monument of the power of printing to diffuse thought than this fact, that the whole classic literature of one of the world's greatest peoples can be carried about in the hand ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... with pain, With anguish I can ill sustain; Till not a hope has strength to spring, Till scarce a prayer can lift its wing; Yet in my inmost heart there lies A living fount that will arise, And, of itself, diffuse a balm, A healing and refreshing calm, A pure delight, a cooling glow, Which Hate and ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham

... he was poetically eloquent and diffuse in print, he stopped and could literally say no more without an emotion he considered ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... the allusion to the city on the hill comes in the midst of what he says about light in relation to his disciples as the light of the world. Anyhow the city is the best circle in which, and the best centre from which to diffuse moral light. A man brooding in the desert may find the very light of light, but he must go to the city to ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald

... the whole subject has lately appeared in Paris, and, as it is to form a volume of the valuable International Scientific series, published in English, French, German, and Italian, it can hardly fail to diffuse a correct popular understanding of the results thus far attained. The book is called "Le Magnetism Animal" (Animal Magnetism), and its authors are Messrs. Alfred Binet and Charles Fere of the medical staff of the Salpetriere ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various

... lovers of pleasure, more than lovers of God." Well may the Apostle speak of such times as "dangerous times." When the moral atmosphere we breathe is so full of what the Scriptures call "the spirit of this world," we can only hope to escape its corrupting influences by doing all in our power to diffuse Christian principles among the rising generation, by means ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... of this chapter. The Society takes its name from Thomas Howard Earl of Arundel, in the reigns of James I. and Charles I., who has been styled the "Father of vertu in England." It was founded in 1849, and its purpose is to diffuse more widely, by means of suitable publications, a knowledge both of the history and true principles of Painting, Sculpture, and the higher forms of ornamental design, to call attention to such masterpieces of the arts as are unduly neglected, and to secure some transcript or memorial ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley

... is like ourselves, and the greater and clearer our sense of its likeness with ourselves, the greater our pity. And if we may say that this likeness provokes our pity, it may also be maintained that it is our reservoir of pity, eager to diffuse itself over everything, that makes us discover the likeness of things with ourselves, the common bond that unites us with ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... boyhood and INSOUCIANCE drifted away behind him; and while he could hardly bear to heave his darling a moment out of his sight, the less he could endure any remark or jest upon his affection for her. His home had been a refined one, where Cecile's convent purity seemed to diffuse an atmosphere of modest reserve such as did not prevail in the court of the Maiden Queen herself, and the lad of eighteen had not seem enough of the outer world to have rubbed off any of that grace. His seniority to his little wife seemed to show ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... weary of her company, if he was not greatly excited by it. She had upon his mind that peaceful influence that Mrs. Bolton had when, occasionally, she sat by his bedside with her work. Some people have this influence, which is like an emanation. They bring peace to a house, they diffuse serene content in a room full of mixed company, though they may say very little, and are apparently, ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... give to human exertion. And in what cause can the energies of Christian benevolence be more appropriately exercised? To prevent war is to avoid the effusion of human blood, and the commission of innumerable crimes and atrocities;—it is to diffuse peace, and comfort, and happiness, through the great family of man,—it is to foster the arts and sciences which minister to the wants of society,—it is to check the progress of vice,—to speed the advance of the gospel,—to ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... aside, so far as our search for Jeremiah himself and his doctrine is concerned, and we do so the more easily that they are largely devoid of the style and the spiritual value of his undoubted Oracles and Discourses. They are more or less diffuse and vagrant, while his are concise and to the point. They do not reveal, as his do, a man fresh from agonising debates with God upon the poverty of his qualifications for the mission to which God calls him, or upon the contents ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... curiosity, or as soldiers,—those new crusaders who exclaim: God wills it! and are ready to march to their death in order to proclaim the God of life to nations plunged in darkness. The advances of industry, the developments of commerce, the calculations of ambition, all conspire to diffuse spiritual light over the globe. These are noble spectacles, revealing clearly the traces of a superior design, which the mighty of this world are accomplishing, even by the craft and violence of their policy: they are the manifest instruments of a Will to ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... plants bestow No spicy fragrance while they grow; But crushed or trodden to the ground, Diffuse their balmy sweets around. The ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... o' stillborn, So't wuz my pleasant dooty t' acknowledge the corn, An' I see clearly then, ef I didn't before, Thet the augur in inauguration means bore. I needn't tell you thet my messige wuz written To diffuse correc' notions in France an' Gret Britten, An' agin to impress on the poppylar mind The comfort an' wisdom o' goin' it blind,— To say thet I didn't abate not a hooter O' my faith in a happy an' glorious futur', Ez rich in each soshle an' p'litickle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... desideratum was cheerfulness. All these purposes he served through founding the Ordre de Bon Temps, which proved to be in every sense the life of the settlement. Champlain himself briefly describes the procedure followed, but a far more graphic account is given by Lescarbot, whose diffuse and lively style is illustrated to ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby

... clock, a throng of people lunching. The crowd was in the galleries on the first floor, and the white statues alone edged the yellow-sanded pathways which with stretches of crude colour intersected the green lawns. There was a whole nation of motionless marble there steeped in the diffuse light falling from the glazed roof on high. Looking southwards, some holland screens barred half of the nave, which showed ambery in the sunlight and was speckled at both ends by the dazzling blue and crimson of stained-glass ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... promise of his early character; that his patriotic views will extend with his power to carry wishes into action; that his attachment to his warm-hearted countrymen will still increase upon further acquaintance; and that he will long diffuse happiness through the wide circle, which is peculiarly subject to the influence and example of a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... blistering rocks, with roots, down in the crevices, was a lowly vine, or rather a diffuse, creeping shrub with myrtle-like leaves and racemes of white flowers. "That fella wild dynamite," said Mickie, as he tore up several strands of the plant and bunched them, leaves and all, in his hand. He made a small bundle, and going to an isolated pool in the rocks ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... and powerful, extending its arms of paternal love or Briarean terror over half of Christendom. As a temporal government, rivalling kings in the pomps of war and the pride of armies, it may be passing away; but as an organization to diffuse and conserve religious truths,—yea, even to bring a moral pressure on the minds of princes and governors, and reinforce its ranks with the mighty and the noble,—it seems to be as potent as ever. It ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... pages is, to diffuse in the community, especially among the youth, a knowledge of Human Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene. To make the work clear and practical, the ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter

... been the more diffuse in detailing the particulars of this meeting; because, when the reader shall have perused an account of two subsequent public meetings, which I attended in this county (at both of which the propositions that I supported were carried by overwhelming ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... with them. Notwithstanding the zeal and public spirit of the staff and managers of the hospitals, this want of system has naturally resulted in a multiplication of inefficient institutions and a number of makeshift arrangements. Huxley repeatedly urged the concentration of all this diffuse effort into a few centres, but this inevitable reform has not yet ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... small blocks of wood shaped octagonally. The broad and rapid Neva runs through the centre of this Queen of cities, and on either side is a noble quay, from which you have a full view of the river and of what is passing on its bosom. But I will not be diffuse in the description of objects which have been so often described, but devote the following lines which my paper will contain to ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... national independence, we have enjoyed more than fifty-eight of general peace; our Indian border wars have been too limited and local in their character to seriously affect the other parts of the country, or to disturb the general conditions of peace. This fortunate state of things has done much to diffuse knowledge, promote commerce, agriculture, and manufactures; in fine, to increase the greatness of the nation and the happiness of the individual. Under these circumstances our people have grown up with habits ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... To that Spirit Bunyan gave zealous, earnest, and continual worship. Receiving his light and power from that good Spirit, and anxiously directing to that great Agent all the hopes and the praises of the flock whom he led, and of the readers whom he taught, his writings remain to diffuse and perpetuate the lesson of his life. Into whatever tribe of the ancient East or of the remote West his Pilgrim has been introduced, the name and story of the writer bear, as their great lesson, the testimony that God's Scriptures are the richest of pastures to the human soul; ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... being better appreciated by his contemporaries than by posterity, and Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton wrote complimentary verses, as a sort of introduction to volumes of his poems when they were published. Browne's work is very uneven, many of his poems are charming, some diffuse and rather poor; but he had a sincere feeling for Nature, and his nymphs and swains revelled in posies and garlands in the shade of ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... demonstrated the revival of a latent impression under the action of diffused stimulus. The investigation by Dr. Bose on the after-effects of stimulus has thrown some light on the obscure phenomenon, of 'memory.' It appears that, when there is a mental revival of past experience, the diffuse impulse of the 'will' acts on the sensory surface, which contains the latent impression and re-awakens the image which appears to have faded out. Memory is concerned, thus, with the after-effect of an impression induced by a stimulus. It differs from ordinary sensation in the ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... then, to agree to this appropriation to carry it into faithful execution. Thus we shall save the faith of our nation, secure its peace, and diffuse the spirit of confidence and enterprise that will augment its prosperity. The progress of wealth and improvement is wonderful, and some will think, too rapid. The field for exertion is fruitful and vast; and ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... in the forest, may well take the lead, on that account, in a description of those which bear flowers. These are of a greenish yellow, scarcely distinguishable from the leaves, among which the bunches hang down in a peculiar manner. About sunset, if the evening be calm, they diffuse a fragrance around that affects the sense at the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... moon, and stars. In Mecca, in the year 571, Mahomet was born, and here, at the age of forty, he proclaimed himself the prophet of God, in dignity as superior to Christ as Christ had been to Moses. Having obtained by slow degrees a considerable number of disciples, he resorted to arms to diffuse his religion. The energy and zeal of his followers, aided by the weakness of the neighboring nations, enabled him and his successors to spread the sway of Arabia and the religion of Mahomet over the countries to the east as far as the Indus, northward ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... making this migration to Dalton Hall, Dudleigh was regardful of many things besides the patient. He had made every arrangement for the comfort of the occupants. He had sought out all the domestics that were necessary to diffuse an air of home over such a large establishment, and had been careful to submit them to Edith for her approval. He had also procured horses and grooms and carriages, and every thing that might conduce to the comfort of life. The old solitude ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... earth still giving their strength unto the beast: we therefore, anticipating like treatment from an opposing world wherever we may sojourn, resolve in his strength to follow the Lamb, whithersoever he goeth, as our leader, endeavoring so to diffuse the sweet savor of his name, that in due time and in every land men shall be blessed in him, and all nations shall ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery

... an historian so diffuse, and so little selective, it would obviously be difficult to give any suitably brief specimen that should seem to present a considerable historic action in full. We go to Froissart's account of the celebrated battle of Poitiers (France). This was fought in ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... referred to were, for the most part, republished by the Messrs. Appleton of New York,[2] under the auspices of a man who is untiring in his efforts to diffuse sound scientific knowledge among the people of the United States; whose energy, ability, and single-mindedness, in the prosecution of an arduous task, have won for him the sympathy and support of many of us in 'the old country.' I allude to Professor Youmans. Quite as rapidly as in England, ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... time: and here the Irish clergyman threw into the same scale the entire weight of his character. For instance; if a youth had a natural aptitude for mathematics, and he asked, ought he to give himself to the study, in hope that he might diffuse a serviceable knowledge of it, or possibly even enlarge the boundaries of the science? my friend would have replied, that such a purpose was very proper, if entertained by a worldly man. Let the dead bury their dead; and let the world study the things of ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... by heaven's decree, How ill-exchang'd are things like these for thee! How do thy potions, with insidious joy, Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy! 1137 GOLDSMITH: ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... participates in the Divine goodness, so as to diffuse the good it possesses to others; for it is of the nature of good to communicate itself to others. Hence also corporeal agents give their likeness to others so far as they can. So the more an agent is established in the share of the Divine ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... the walnut is diffuse porous, brittle, straight grained, and easily split. The wood must be cut diagonally to get sufficient tension to hold the scion in grafting. The branch grows rapidly in a short season, May 15th to July 1st in central Iowa. The upper two-thirds of the one year growth is usually light weight with ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... antithesis between letter and spirit, faith and works, is in truth a false one; and wherever the significance of Judaism has been fully comprehended, the two aspects of the law have been inextricably intertwined. As Philo understood the Jewish mission, it was not merely to diffuse the Jewish God-idea, but quite as much to diffuse the Jewish attitude to God, the way of life. Abstract ideas, however lofty, can never be the bond of a religious community, nor can they be a safeguard for moral conduct. ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... extracts of letters to her friend Mrs. Walker, show how ardently the true missionary spirit burned in the heart of Mrs. Graham, and how efficiently it was exemplified, not only in her pecuniary donations, but her active and self-denying efforts to diffuse information and enlist others in so worthy a cause. The efforts alluded to in the first extract evidently gave rise to the event recorded in the second, the formation of the first Missionary Society in New York. It is delightful also to notice her attachment to Christians ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... cannot fail to show himself sensible. Advantage will be taken to forward it to a multitude of other persons, who might, perhaps, otherwise be unfortunately deprived of the amusing contents of your diary. Should copies and extracts not be sufficient, we will have it printed, as one cannot too much diffuse such things. Some will weep—others will laugh—what appears superb to one set of people, will seem ridiculous to another, such is life—but your journal will surely make a great sensation. As you are capable of wishing to avoid your triumph, and as ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... single word. But they understood each other perfectly. Women's instincts comprehend and respond to each other more quickly than the intelligences of men. An enemy had just arrived; all felt it—all rallied together. One drop of wine is sufficient to tinge a glass of water red; to diffuse a certain degree of ill temper throughout a whole assembly of pretty women, the arrival of a prettier woman suffices, especially when there is but one ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... consulted—Spedding, the All-wise—(I mean that), and Aldis Wright, experienced in the Booksellers' world, I shall very gladly abide by your counsel—and my own. You (I do believe) and a few friends who already know Crabbe, will not be the worse for this 'Handybook' of one of his most diffuse, but (to me) most agreeable, Books. That name (Handybook), indeed, I had rather thought of calling the Book, rather than 'Readings'—which suggests readings aloud, whether private or public—neither of which I intended—simply, Readings to oneself. I, who am a ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald

... dominion wherever there were countries to subdue, seems to have been his absorbing purpose. The most substantial result of his exploits, which read more like fable than authentic history, was to spread Hellenism,—to diffuse at least a tincture of Greek civilization, together with some acquaintance with the Greek language, over the lands of the East. This was a most important work in its bearing on the subsequent history of antiquity, and more remotely on the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... question whether it is my vocation." He sends his father a number of poems, that they may be criticised. He has a sense of his own deficiencies as a writer, — deficiencies which he never fully overcame, — for he writes: "I have frequently noticed in myself a tendency to a diffuse style; a disposition to push my metaphors too far, employing a multitude of words to heighten the patness of the image, and so making of it a CONCEIT rather than a metaphor, a fault copiously illustrated in the poetry of Cowley, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... submission to parental authority. Two letters announced this determination to the Baronet and his nephew. The latter barely communicated the fact, and pointed out the necessary preparations for joining his regiment. To his brother, Richard was more diffuse and circuitous. He coincided with him, in the most flattering manner, in the propriety of his son's seeing a little more of the world, and was even humble in expressions of gratitude for his proposed assistance; was, however, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... to despise these terrors, which Satan sends only to make him afraid! Let him understand that each time we despise those terrors, their force is lessened, and the soul gains power over them. There is always some great good obtained; but I will not speak of it, that I may not be too diffuse. I will speak, however, of what happened to me once on the night of All Souls. I was in an oratory, and, having said one Nocturn, was saying some very devotional prayers at the end of our Breviary, when Satan put himself on the book ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... should prefer to make themselves out the victims of compulsion? But even supposing she had genuinely regarded me as a magician, would the mere fact of Pudentilla's writing to that effect be a reason for actually regarding me as a magician? You, with all your arguments and your witnesses and your diffuse eloquence, have failed to prove me a magician. Could she prove it with one word? A formal indictment, written and signed before a judge, is a far more weighty document than what is written in a private letter! ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... India; not only of real practical value, in affording a good and cheap supply of the best culinary and other vegetables that the climate can produce, but as showing to what departments efforts are best directed. Such gardens diffuse a taste for the most healthy employments, and offer an elegant resource for the many unoccupied hours which the Englishman in India finds upon his hands. They are also schools of gardening; and a simple inspection ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... editor. "Don't be too diffuse, but see that you miss nothing. What is that paper in front of you?" He took the paper from Desmond O'Connor's hands and held it at arm's length, while a sardonic smile held possession ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

... corollary, that the power of a class is therefore proportioned to its knowledge—pray, do you suppose that while your order, the operatives, are instructing themselves, all the rest of the community are to be at a stand-still? Diffuse knowledge as you may, you will never produce equality of knowledge. Those who have most leisure, application, and aptitude for learning, will still know the most. Nay, by a very natural law, the more general the appetite ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... breath, the life, the faculties, all is to be consecrated, devoted, sanctified, crucified, for the service of our Lord Jesus Christ. This crucified life is the happy life, even amidst earth's bitterest pains; it is the life in which we can both taste for ourselves and diffuse around us the most precious blessings. Let us love life, let us feel the value of life—but to fill it with Jesus Christ. In order to such a state of feeling, the Holy Spirit alone can transform us into new men. But observe; it is not only that our ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule

... their gifts too lavishly are placed, Soon they repent, and will not make them last. For sure it was too bountiful a dole, The mother's features, and the father's soul. Then thus he cried; the morn bespoke the news: 30 The morning did her cheerful light diffuse: But see how suddenly she changed her face, And brought on clouds and rain, the day's disgrace! Just such, Amyntas, was thy promised race: What charms adorn'd thy youth, where nature smiled, And more than man was given ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... I enumerated some of the diffuse and unnecessary paragraphs which had weakened his cause, as well ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... as junior in a licensing club case, had to cross-examine the certifying Justice of the Peace who was very diffuse and rather evasive in his answers. "Speak a little more simply and to the point, please," said counsel mildly. "You are a little ambiguous, you know."—"I am not, sir," replied the witness indignantly; "I have been teetotal ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... When the child was born were we not in direst danger? Such danger that all his royal father could do in honor of the glad event was to break a musk-bag before his faithful followers as sign that the birth of an heir to empire would diffuse itself like perfume through the whole world? Even so now, and if I cannot devise some ceremony, ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel

... BREAD.—Having secured good yeast, it is necessary in some way to diffuse it through the bread material so that it will set up an active fermentation, which, by the evolution of gas, will render the whole mass light and porous. As fermentation is more sure, more rapid, and requires less ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... profusion of praise would only have revived those faults which his natural equity did not allow him to think less because they were committed by one who favoured him; but of which, though his virtue would not endeavour to palliate them, his gratitude would not suffer him to prolong the memory or diffuse the censure." ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... was Cicero's opinion of those eminent men. The former [k] appeared to him cold and languid; the latter [l], disjointed, loose, and negligent. On the other hand, we know what they thought in return: Calvus did not hesitate to say, that Cicero was diffuse luxuriant to a fault, and florid without vigour. Brutus, in express terms, says, he was weakened into length, and wanted sinew. If you ask my opinion, each of them had reason on his side. I shall hereafter examine them separately. My business at present, is not in the detail: I speak of them ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... by Heaven's decree, 385 How ill exchanged are things like these for thee! How do thy potions, with insidious joy, Diffuse their pleasure only to destroy! Kingdoms by thee, to sickly greatness grown, Boast of a florid vigor not their own. 390 At every draught more large and large they grow, A bloated mass of rank unwieldy woe; Till sapped their strength, and every part unsound, ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various

... as Dick was jerked slowly downward, slowly a pale visibility began to diffuse itself underneath. The black cloud was beginning to roll away. The luminous lines began to fade, and in place of them appeared little leaping tongues of fire. In front of him Dick saw Luke Evans's form begin to pattern itself upon the darkness. He saw the form ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... the hierarchy of love from the body to the "whole sea of beauty." Jane Addams in Chicago has tested the truth by her own wide experience, and she has written what the Commission might easily have read,—that "in failing to diffuse and utilize this fundamental instinct of sex through the imagination, we not only inadvertently foster vice and enervation, but we throw away one of the most precious implements for ministering to life's highest needs. There is no doubt that this ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... educational and social development of other countries and continents. That program must stimulate and take more effectively into account the contributions of our allies, and provide central policy direction for all our own programs that now so often overlap, conflict or diffuse our energies and resources. Such a program, compared to past ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy

... Wheat for bread and other domestic purposes, large quantities are every season consumed in making starch, which is the pure fecula of the grain obtained by steeping it in water and beating it in coarse hempen bags, by which means the fecula is thus caused to exude and diffuse through the water. This, from being mixed with the saccharine matter of the grain, soon runs into the acetous fermentation, and the weak acid thus formed by digesting on the fecula renders it white. After setting, the precipitate is washed several times, and put by in ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury

... offend, their patients. Port-wine is constantly being ordered when persons are recovering from various diseases; day by day they regain their strength, and the port-wine gets all the credit of it, especially since each glass seems to diffuse a comfortable glow over the whole body. They forget that the process of recovery would have gone on without the port, and that hundreds and thousands of people do get well without it. They often ignore the fact that they are taking ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... often far enough away from catching their spirit. To suppose that our Lord simply met the disciples' wish by giving them a form misconceives the genius of His work. He gave something much better; namely, a pattern, the spirit of which we are to diffuse through all ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... constantly accumulating one on top of the other, history, fable, truth and fancy, the present time and times past, frames his work now with a parade as absurd as that of a country fair, and now with a fairy scene more magnificent than all those of the opera. To amuse and be amused, "to diffuse his spirit in every imaginable mode, like a glowing furnace into which all substances are thrown by turns to evolve every species of flame, sparkle and odor," is his first instinct. "Life," he says again, "is an infant to be rocked until it goes to sleep." Never was a mortal more ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... same special instructions from heaven; and the tradition that, at least some of them, were of the number of the Seventy, [61:3] is exceedingly probable. And if, as has already been suggested, the mission of the Seventy indicated the design of our Saviour to diffuse the gospel all over the world, we can see a peculiar propriety in the arrangement that Paul was ushered into the Church under the auspices of these ministers. [61:4] It was most fitting that he who was to be, by way of eminence, the apostle ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... hitherto been balmy and beautiful, with a bright array of stars, and a golden harvest moon, which seemed to diffuse even warmth with its radiance; but now Turpin was approaching the region of fog and fen, and he began to feel the influence of that dank atmosphere. The intersecting dykes, yawners, gullies, or whatever they are called, began to send forth their steaming ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... for in less than twenty-four hours the patient was labouring under great excitement of the brain. The physician said that he had expected that effect, but that on the following day the remedy would act less on the brain, and diffuse its beneficial action through the whole of the system, which required to be invigorated by a proper equilibrium in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... whose interest is, to pay in money and not in merchandise, and who are so much governed by the spirit of simplifying their purchases and proceedings, that they find means to elude every endeavor on the part of government, to make them diffuse their purchases among the merchants in general. Little profit is derived from this, then, as an article of exchange for the produce and manufactures of France. Whale-oil might be next in importance; but that is now prohibited. American rice is not yet of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... outside of the body. If the saliva in which it is contained be kept moist, and not exposed to the direct sunlight and in a fairly warm place, it may survive as long as two weeks. If dried, but kept in the dark, it will survive four hours. If exposed to sunlight, or even diffuse daylight, it dies within an hour. In other words, under the conditions of dampness and darkness which often prevail in crowded tenements it may remain alive and malignant for weeks; in decently lighted and ventilated rooms, less than two hours. This explains ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... the sense usually conveyed by this word*.' (The italics are mine.) That answer is cautious. But definite, I think—utterly and unassailably definite—although quite Christian-scientifically foggy in its phrasing. Christian Science is generally foggy, generally diffuse, generally garrulous. The writer was aware that the first word in his phrase answered the question which I was asking, but he could not help adding nine dark words. Meaningless ones, unless explained by him. It is quite likely—as intimated by him—that Christian Science has invented a new class ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... claims to acquire maritime supremacy and a World-Empire were either mere bluff or a portentous challenge. Only the good-natured, easy-going British race could so long have clung to the former explanation, thereby leaving the most diffuse, vulnerable, and ill-armed Empire that has ever existed face to face with an Empire that is compact, well-fortified, and armed to the teeth. In this contrast lies one of the main ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... herself. In her youthful and ardent imagination Beaumont came to fill more and more definitely her ideal of the modern knight—a man who summed up within himself the perfect culture of his age, and who was proposing to diffuse that culture ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... a steaming jet of boiling water, of the full width of the well, springs up and ascends to a great height in the air. The top of this large column of water is enveloped in vast clouds of steam, which diffuse themselves through the air, rendering it misty. These jets succeed each other with great rapidity to the number of sixteen or eighteen, the period of action of the fountain being about five minutes. The last of the jets generally ascends to the greatest height, usually ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... though, to be sure, the girls are very good-hearted, and Donna Julia, our prima amorosa, makes a most discreet duenna, off the boards. There is Badcock too—il signore Badcocchio: give Badcock a hint, and he will diffuse a most permeating respectability. For the young ladies who dwell at the entrance of the court, over the archway, I won't answer. My acquaintance with them has not passed beyond an interchange of winks: but we might send Badcock to ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... ice must melt at last in the fires of that sun. Now can you comprehend my passion, my delirium, my mad desires? Is it not true, Gyges, that the heart of a man is not great enough to contain such a love? It must overflow and diffuse itself.' ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier

... the body, absorbed by the blood and lymph to be used by the other cells, as the glands of INTERNAL SECRETION. How different these two classes of glands are may be realized by imagining the existence of great factories manufacturing food products, which would diffuse through their walls into the atmosphere, to be absorbed by ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... quarto, with the following title: An Account of an Attempt to ascertain the Longitude at Sea, by an exact Theory of the Variation of the Magnetical Needle; with a Table of the Variations at the most remarkable Cities in Europe, from the year 1660 to 1680.[Dagger] To diffuse it more extensively, it was accompanied with an Italian translation on the opposite page, which it is supposed was the work of Signor Baretti[885], an Italian of considerable literature, who having come to England a few years before, had been employed in the capacity both of a language-master and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... up his viceroyalty in disgust, that is to say, he sold out to the Duke de Ventadour. Ventadour was in a world of difficulties. France was then half Protestant and half Catholic. Ventadour's chief object in purchasing Canada was to diffuse the Catholic Religion throughout the new world. With much energy of character, he was singularly pious. He attended mass regularly at an early hour every morning. His bedroom was religiously fitted up; the symbol of redemption ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... that 'science was his forte and omniscience his foible,' has left no enduring monument behind him; and so it must always be with mortals who have only fifty years of thought allotted to them at the very most, and who diffuse it. Everyone admits the value of application, but very few are aware how its force is wasted by diffusion: it is like a volatile essence in a bottle without a cork. When, on the other hand, it is concentrated—you may ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... the grave to be arraigned for the crime of deceit. His heart need not, according to the reviewer, be "stripped bare" by the scalpel of any literary anatomist; but he may be left to that quiet and oblivion which a sepulchre in general bestows. Before I conclude these remarks (which I fear are too diffuse), I will venture to add a few words in regard to the signature of Thomas Lord Lyttelton. In the Chatham Correspondence, a letter from him to Earl Temple is printed, vol. iv. p. 348., the signature to which is printed LYTTLETON, and the editors point out in a note the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various

... establishment, gave him the idea of writing The Lives of Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. He was a voluminous author; his poetry is of a high lyrical order, and true to nature; but his prose will not retain its place in public favor: it is at once diffuse and obscure. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... political subjects of the day, that of slavery was freely discussed in all its bearings. It is difficult, in a single extract, to convey an adequate idea of the character of the editorial columns of a paper, where terse and concentrated irony and sarcasm alternate with eloquent appeal and diffuse commentary and labored argument. We can only offer at random the following passages from a long review of a speech of John C. Calhoun, in which that extraordinary man, whose giant intellect has been shut out of its appropriate field of exercise by the very slavery of which ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... superficial are generally voluble and often pass for eloquent. More words, less thought,—is the general rule. The man who endeavors to say something worth remembering in every sentence, becomes fastidious, and condenses like Tacitus. The vulgar love a more diffuse stream. The ornamentation that does not cover strength is the gewgaws ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... object of the Woman's Bureau, as stated at the time of its organization, is to diffuse information among the ladies of our churches, as to our work in its ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various

... enabled to present the readers of The International with the fourth canto of it, before its publication in England. The poem is a sort of autobiography in blank verse, marked by all the characteristics of the poet—his original vein of thought; his majestic, but sometimes diffuse, style of speculation; his large sympathies with humanity, from its proudest to its humblest forms. It will be read with great avidity by his admirers—and there are few at this day who do not belong to that class—as affording them a deeper insight into the mind of Wordsworth than any of his other ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... this admirable work. It will accomplish its object, if it send the reader to the book itself. The appearance of the volume is timely. Events and circumstances have prepared the minds of our countrymen to understand and to appreciate the argument. The book cannot fail to diffuse sounder views of the great topics which it discusses, and will exert, we trust, a beneficial influence on the legislation of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... this period, The Inn Album (1875), is in truth a short series of dramatic scenes, placed in a narrative frame-work. It is as concentrated as Red Cotton Night-Cap Country is diffuse; and the unities of time and place assist the tragic concentration. A recast of The Inn Album might indeed have appeared as a drama on the Elizabethan stage side by side with such a brief masterpiece, piteous and terrible, as "A Yorkshire ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... each other, they are mutually attracted, like two bodies charged with different kinds of electricity—an interchange of commodities takes place, repulsion follows, and thus reenforced, they separate to diffuse the supply ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... of France in comparison with the literature of Germany, and even with that of England. The French follow a precept thus embodied by Beranger: "Perfection of style should be sought by all those who believe themselves called to diffuse useful thoughts. Style, which is only the form appropriated to a subject by art and reflection, is the passport of which every thought has need in order to circulate, expand, and lodge itself in people's brains. To neglect style is not to show sufficient love for the ideas ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... least informed with true knowledge—the least efficient in virtuous action—the least conscious of that Christian and republican freedom which, as the native atmosphere of piety and holiness, it is their prime duty to cherish and diffuse,"—Miss Martineau. I quote this paragraph to contradict it. The American clergy are, in the mass, equal, if not superior, to any in the world: they have to struggle with difficulties almost insurmountable, (as I shall substantiate) and worthily ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... leaning aside to examine severely a globe of the world. That is the nearest he ever gets to physical activity. In him we see the static embodiment of perfect wisdom and perfect righteousness. We take him at his own valuation, humbly. Yet we have a queer instinct that there was a time when he did not diffuse all this cold radiance of good example. Something tells us that he has been a sinner in his day—a rattler of the ivories at Almack's, and an ogler of wenches in the gardens of Vauxhall, a sanguine backer of the Negro against the Suffolk Bantam, and a devil of a fellow at boxing ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... sentiment dwelt long with her that was not purely affectionate and disinterestedly anxious. Her aunt did not neglect her: she wrote again and again; they were receiving frequent accounts from Edmund, and these accounts were as regularly transmitted to Fanny, in the same diffuse style, and the same medley of trusts, hopes, and fears, all following and producing each other at haphazard. It was a sort of playing at being frightened. The sufferings which Lady Bertram did not see had little power over her fancy; and she wrote very comfortably about agitation, and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... shawl around her until the cheerful warmth began to diffuse itself and the blaze lightened up the room. Polly out in the kitchen was rehearsing her woes ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... appreciably retarding their drift to leeward; but it was none the worse for this, since, with their drift scarcely retarded, they rode all the more easily; and presently, when the oil began to exude from the can and diffuse itself over the surface of the water, there was a narrow space just ahead of us where the seas ceased to break, with the result that in the course of ten minutes we were riding quite dry and comfortable, except for the scud-water that came driving along. This, however, ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... been well informed, that Dr. Rush has lately cured five out of six patients by copious bleedings. I relate here the reasons for an opinion without pretending to a discovery. Something like this doctrine may be found in certain modern publications, but it is delivered in that vague and diffuse style, which I trust your example will banish ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... Mardana, a lute-player, who accompanied the hymns which he never failed to compose when a thought or adventure occurred to him. These compositions are similar to those of Kabir, but seem to me of inferior merit. They are diffuse and inordinately long; the Japji for instance, which every Sikh ought to recite as his daily prayer, fills not less than twenty octavo pages. Yet beautiful and incisive passages are not wanting. When at ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... plants which the seasons leave unchanged and which, therefore, is such a beautiful emblem of constancy. This beautiful plant has a peculiar property. If one of its compact shining leaves be planted in the earth it takes root and grows into a shrub whose fragrant wax-like flowers diffuse an enchanting perfume. Three years before at a jurists' ball, when Henrietta and Szilard met for the first time, he had given her a bouquet, among the flowers of which was one of these green-gold leaves, and ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... return to Gibbon. What a mind it must have been which first planned, and then, with the incessant labour of twenty years, carried out that enormous work! There was no classical author so little known, no Byzantine historian so diffuse, no monkish chronicle so crabbed, that they were not assimilated and worked into their appropriate place in the huge framework. Great application, great perseverance, great attention to detail was needed in all this, but the coral polyp has all those qualities, and somehow ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... must elapse before an appeal to physical force would bear even the semblance of reason. We have, then a mighty Empire to contend against—one which can laugh our threatening to scorn. And what are the weapons we must employ? What, but the weapons of truth? We must diffuse right information; we must expose our wrongs—and we must appeal to the justice of the British Nation. Let the evils and injuries under which this fair domain of the Crown now suffers, be laid before the English people, and ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... days; he has beheld it, in his old age, a splendid monument of enlightened exertion, and he resolves that, when he can no longer call it his own, it shall preserve the relics of past literature for ages yet to come, and form a centre whence scholarship and intellectual refinement shall diffuse themselves around. We can see this influence in its most specific and material shape, perhaps, by looking round the reading-room of the British Museum—that great manufactory of intellectual produce, where so many heads ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... diffuse a light of celestial joy over his countenance. On the contrary, the Poor Relation's remark turned him pale, as I have said; and when the terrible wrinkled and jaundiced looking-glass turned him green in addition, and he saw himself ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... amazement that this building had been built deliberately in a dead zone. The dead area stood up in the clarity like a little blob of black ink at the bottom of a crystal clear swimming pool, seen just before the ink began to diffuse. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... into rainbow hues, In sweet harmonious strife We see celestial love diffuse Its light ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble

... publican shuts up shop and ceases to diffuse liquid poison, he does not invite the world to put up the shutters; neither will I. Actors overrate themselves ridiculously," added she; "I am not of that importance to the world, nor the world to me. I fling away a dirty old glove instead of soiling my fingers filling it with more guineas, and ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade

... chance I fell sick; my illness was inflammatory, short and violent, but my convalescence was tedious, for I was unable to go abroad for a whole month. During this time I eagerly ran over my Treatise on Harmony, but it was so long, so diffuse, and so badly disposed, that I found it would require a considerable time to unravel it: accordingly I suspended my inclination, and recreated my ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... their type in the albumen of an egg; and muscle substance and the less modified living "protoplasm" of plants, a considerable proportion of the substance of seeds, bulbs, and so on, are albuminous bodies, or proteids. These also are insoluble bodies, or when soluble, will not diffuse ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... will fill a German with a reverence and enthusiasm such as the names of the most gifted masters will hardly awaken. And why? Because they humanized knowledge; because they broadened the basis of life and intelligence; because they worked powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, to make reason and the will of God prevail. With Saint Augustine they said: "Let us not leave thee alone to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as thou didst before the creation of the firmament, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... late, and the party very modest in their fear of being too diffuse, there were some tokens of separation; when Sergeant Dornton, the soldierly-looking man, said, looking round him ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... completed the following year, along the coasts from the cape of Burruncan to that of Calavite, by Miguel Lopez de Legaspi. The rest, with the exception of the mountains in its center, has been gradually subdued by the zeal of the regular missionaries. The calced Augustinian fathers began to diffuse the teaching of the gospel in this island, and founded the village of Baco, from whose convent the religious went forth to the spiritual ministry of the converted Indians, who were then ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... outer area. The company that sells cotton goods to the Chinese or the Hindoos will find that there is more to be made by utilizing the cheap labor of those peoples for making the goods by efficient machinery. Commerce tends to diffuse a knowledge of the most economical processes of manufacturing, and this interposes a certain stay on migrations of labor toward the center. It will in time help to retain Chinamen in China and Hindoos ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... was stifling; the sun was swimming in clouds, shedding a veiled diffuse light that was almost blinding to the eyes and that seemed to portend a storm. The air was heavy and dead; nothing stirred; the leaves and their tiny, meagre shadows did not move; the forest seemed weary and crushed, as it were, beneath ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... strong yeast and beat the whole another quarter of an hour, for much of the goodness of this cake depends on its being long and well beaten. Then have ready a tin mold or earthen pan with a pipe in the centre (to diffuse the heat through the middle of the cake). The pan must be very well-buttered as Indian meal is apt to stick. Put in the mixture, cover it and set it in a warm place to rise. It should be light in about four hours. Then bake it two hours in a moderate oven. When done, turn it out ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... kept, and have only preserved such as would, in my opinion, please the lovers of history. Amidst such a mass of material I am obliged necessarily to omit something in order that my narrative may not be too diffuse. ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... French Revolution, as say that Charles Darwin, and Charles Darwin alone, made the evolutionary movement, even in the restricted field of life only. A thousand predecessors worked up towards him; a thousand contemporaries helped to diffuse and to ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... he begins with a pleasant sketch of the history of chariot racing. One marvels at the man who, in such a period, preserved this mood of liberal leisure. His style is perfectly suited to the matter; diffuse, ornate, amusingly affected; altogether a precious mode of writing, characteristic of literary decadence. When the moment demands it, he is pompously grandiloquent; in dealing with a delicate situation, he becomes involved and obscure. We perceive in him a born courtier, a proud ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing

... allowed to get the start of him. Important letters were answered as they came, and minutes or copies of the answers kept for reference. He seemed to love his pen, and to write without effort,—never aiming, it is true, at the higher graces of style, somewhat diffuse, too, both in French and in English, but easy, natural, idiomatic, and lucid, with the distinctness of clear conceptions rather than the precision of vigorous conceptions, and a warmth which in his public letters sometimes rose to eloquence, and in his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... in resonance is ineffective,—devoid of carrying power,—is diffuse and unfocused; while a resonant tone, no matter how soft dynamically, has carrying power and is ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown

... has not renounced his pursuit; but he is your lover. I ought to have seen long ago, that from the moment his eyes rested on you all else was nothing to him. With all that habit of the world which enables men to conceal their feelings in society, with all his exertion to diffuse his attentions as much as possible among all the young ladies in his company, it must have been manifest to a careful observer, that when it came, as it seemed in ordinary course, to be your turn to be attended to, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... love with Miss Mills, and obtained her affection in return. He had to encounter the opposition of her relations, who were set upon her making another and a better match, and of Mrs. Patty More, (so well known to all who have studied the somewhat diffuse annals of the More family,) who, in the true spirit of romantic friendship, wished her to promise never to marry at all, but to domesticate herself as a youngest sister in the household at Cowslip Green. Miss Hannah, however, took a more unselfish view of the situation, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... the discourse began. The inspirational claims seemed to lie in the manifest improbability of a man of Clifton's cultivation being so dull and diffuse in a natural condition. Yet, as the message wore on, it cannot be denied that a strange influence was at work. The words followed each other with greater fluency and in richer abundance. The meaning, to be sure, was still vague enough; and whenever some commonplace truth or plausibility ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... the Report for 1853: "One most atrocious case of an opposite kind of treatment has fallen within our notice during the year. It is most deplorable to contemplate, after the repeated generous efforts made by the press, both Welsh and English, to diffuse useful knowledge upon the subject of insanity, that in a Christian country, and in a populous district, and with the knowledge of most of the neighbouring inhabitants, a fellow-creature should have been permitted to be chained by both his legs in a miserable shed for seven long years. The case ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... throughout the colonies. It was sincerely believed to wound vitally the constitution of the country, and to destroy the most sacred principles of liberty. Combinations against its execution were formed; and the utmost exertions were used to diffuse among the people a knowledge of the pernicious consequences which must flow from admitting that the colonists could be taxed by a legislature in which ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... little piece which Comte rated so preposterously as to talk about George Sand in the same sentence; it is in truth a flimsy performance, though it contains one or two gracious thoughts. There is true beauty in the saying—'It is unworthy of a noble nature to diffuse its pain.' Madame de Vaux's letters speak well for her good sense and good feeling, and it would have been better for Comte's later work if she had survived to exert a wholesome restraint on his exaltation. Their friendship had only ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley

... vous vient de tous les cotes a la fois, des lieux decrits, des sujets, de la maniere de raconter, de l'esprit qui anime, de l'intelligence qui ordonne, mais, d'une facon encore plus immediate et plus diffuse, de la difference des deux langues. On reconnait sans doute generalement a nos vieux ecrivains ce merite d'etre clairs, mais on est trop habitue a ne voir dans ce don que ce qui decoule des tendances analytiques et des aptitudes logiques de leurs esprit. Aussi ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... required, the same depth of feeling, wherever feeling is called for, the same refusal to make a parade of feeling even where it is shown. Never trivial, never vulgar, never feeble, never stilted, never diffuse, Lockhart is one of the very best recent specimens of that class of writers of all work, which since Dryden's time has continually increased, is increasing, and does not seem likely to diminish. The growth may or may not ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... same time assailed from another quarter and by an ascendency resting on another basis—by Hellenism. This was the period when Hellenism began to become conscious of its intellectual superiority to the other nations, and to diffuse itself on every side. Italy did not remain unaffected by it. The most remarkable phenomenon of this sort is presented by Apulia, which after the fifth century of Rome gradually laid aside its barbarian ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... they bent, Snuff the rank steam, and chuckle at the scent?— My soul is sick!—I turn with sated ear, And find a cordial in my brethren here. Peers who their conscience to no market bring; Respect themselves, their country, and their king: Nor would round England's smiling hearths diffuse The breath—the very atmosphere of stews. O horrid! yes, I feel the blast impure, Air no blessed spirit may unpained endure: Yet leave I not without a warning voice: Hear, and obey, and Britons ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous

... by the narrative of his life that he was a great orator, a concise orator, serious and yet full of piercing eloquence; he resembled Berryer in his fervor and in the impetus which commands the sympathy of the masses, and was like Thiers in refinement and skill; but he would have been less diffuse, less in difficulties for a conclusion. He had intended to rise rapidly to power without burdening himself first with the doctrines necessary to begin with, for a man in opposition, but an ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac

... be owned that such a little book as this has long been wanted; for of all writing, that relating to the stage is the most diffuse. It is scattered about in biography, criticism and anecdote, not unfrequently of great interest, but occupying so much "valuable" time, that to condense it, or to pick the wheat from the chaff, is no trifling task. So ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various

... and the first attempt of a Saxon poet, of whom my brother had been taught to entertain the highest expectations. The exploits of Zisca, the Bohemian hero, were woven into a dramatic series and connection. According to German custom, it was minute and diffuse, and dictated by an adventurous and lawless fancy. It was a chain of audacious acts, and unheard-of disasters. The moated fortress, and the thicket; the ambush and the battle; and the conflict of headlong passions, were pourtrayed in wild ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... critics, and (very mischievously) Brunetiere in particular, have shown with regard to the character of La Rochefoucauld, is due, in my opinion, to the influence of Victor Cousin, who published, in 1854, a disjointed and diffuse, but in many ways brilliantly executed volume on Mme de Sable. Cousin, who examined, for the first time, a vast array of MS. sources, deliberately lowered the value of La Rochefoucauld in order to enhance the merit of the lady, of whom the learned academician wrote like a lover. Even Esprit ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... extracts from this collection of "Various Epistles" and the reader, from the specimens thus submitted to him, will have formed some conception of the character of the author's style. That style is diffuse and turgid, marked in an eminent degree with the prevailing faults of the sixth century, an age of literary decay, when the language of Cicero and Virgil was falling into its dotage. There is much ill-timed display ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... up against an emergency it could not handle without other, more standard sources of auxiliary water. Besides the matter of consolidating and improving treatment of collectible wastes, there are certain other diffuse and stubborn sources of pollution, as will be seen, for which good counter measures simply do not yet exist—among them are surface runoff during local storms and overflow from combined ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... stupidly handled by the prelates, recruited new strength and in a manner recovered its masculine vigor. Under his guise of moderation, this academician exuded gall. The discourse which he delivered to Parliament in 1848 was diffuse and abject, but his articles, first printed in the Correspondant and since collected into books, were mordant and discerning under the exaggerated politeness of their form. Conceived as harangues, they contained a certain strong muscular ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans



Words linked to "Diffuse" :   propagate, pass around, air, popularise, podcast, spiritise, sow, circulate, generalise, publicise, percolate, diffuse nebula, bare, riddle, imbue, publicize, mantle, prolix, spiritize, penetrate, go around, carry, hard, fan out, diffused, disperse, vulgarize, distributed, spread, perforate, diffusor, creep, disseminate, generalize, interpenetrate, pervade, spread out, vulgarise, distribute, diffuseness, circularize, permeate, soft, diffusion, popularize, bleed



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com