"Disquisition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... life. If you grow too eager for your twopence, the acquisition or the loss of it may affect your peace of mind, and peace of mind is better than any amount of twopences. My friend, the old-clothes'-man, whose agonies over the hat have led to this rambling disquisition, has, I very much fear, by a too eager pursuit of small profits, disturbed the equanimity of a mind that ought to be easy and happy. "Had I stood out," he thinks, "I might have had the hat for threepence," and he doubts whether, having given ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... before, and in many instances the entire absence of a written language, by which, either to perpetuate events, or enable the philosopher by analogy of language to ascertain their affinity with other nations. Conjectural then as must be every disquisition as to the manner in which this continent was first peopled, still however, as many men eminent for learning and piety have devoted much labor and time to the investigation of the subject, it may afford satisfaction ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... case may be presented in yet another light. The only use of terms, whether in daily talk or in philosophical disquisition, is that of designating certain things or attributes to which by general custom we agree to affix them; so that if anyone applies a term to some thing or attribute which general custom does not warrant him in so applying, he is merely laying himself open ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... the legend in my mind, taking the brilliance out of the indirect but extraordinarily personal impact of the man himself. They embalmed the Cid and set him up in the church with his sword in his hand, for all men to see. What sort of legend would a technical disquisition by the archbishop on his theory of the angle of machicolations have generated in men's minds? And what can a saint or a soldier or a founder of institutions leave behind him but a legend? Certainly it is not for the Franciscans that one remembers ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... was plain that he was prepossessed in her favour, and there was a touch of the affectionate in his courtesy. After congratulating himself on recovering a kinswoman of a long-separated branch of his family, and after a good deal of genealogical disquisition, he explained the nature of the lady's historical tasks, and engaged her to visit him in the country at an early date. Miss Willoughby then said farewell, having an engagement at the Record Office, where, as the Earl gallantly observed, she would ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... conclusions respecting the date of its erection, and "putting the colophon" to this disquisition respecting the principal public buildings at Caen, it is high time to assure you how ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... this disquisition on my own designs. When every means is employed to misrepresent, it becomes, perhaps, allowable to explain. And if I do not think that my faults as a dramatic author are to be found in the study and delineation of character, it is precisely because ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... concludes Najef-Kooli with heartfelt gratitude, "we never did dance. God protect the faithful from it!" Independent of the above recorded opinions on the singularity of quadrilles and waltzes, the khan takes this occasion to enter into a disquisition on the inconsistency (doubly incongruous to an Oriental eye) of the ladies having their necks, arms, and shoulders uncovered, while the men are clothed up to the chin, "and not even their hands are allowed to be seen bare," and returned from the ball, no doubt, more lost than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... few moments they mixed it up good and hot. Say! it was a circus with all the monkeys loose and the band playing seventeen tunes all at once! But finally Grant had his say and treated the Presbytery to a pretty full disquisition of his own theology, and when he was done my pity was transferred from Boyle to him, for it seemed that on every doctrine where Boyle was a heretic Grant had gone him one better. And I believe the whole Presbytery were vastly relieved to discover how slight, ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... it was not many days before they got together for that meal at a business woman's club down on Fortieth Street, and from then on their acquaintance progressed rapidly. She helped Rose find the little apartment on Thirteenth Street, entertaining her during the search with a highly instructive disquisition on the social topography of New York, and on the following Sunday she ran in, she said, to see if she could help her get settled. There was no settling to do, but she sat down and talked—most of the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to this disquisition into the fundamental nature of this private record by the question put to us, whether it is a good plan for a woman to keep a diary. Speaking generally, the diary has become a sort of fetich, the authority of which ought to be overthrown. It is fearful to think how our characters are probably ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... probably have gone back for his idols to an earlier one; and yet his remarks on taste and criticism are of a catholic nature, although his just application of their canons have this chronological boundary. We have no room, however, for his disquisition on these elegant subjects; neither can we follow our accomplished clergyman into his disquisitions on fiction, history, biography, philosophy, and its pleasures, nor the 'domestic interiors' of taste and learning. We had intended to quote some fine sentences on the consolations of poetry, but find ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... in the briefest terms, is the content and the course of argument of the disquisition ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... not go back to classic antiquity, nor shall I undertake to enter upon any disquisition on Art itself, but simply present the historical developments of the Church architecture of the Middle Ages. It is a technical and complicated subject, but I shall try to make myself understood. It suggests, however, great ideas and national developments, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... being steadfast to the old faith, avoiding investigation in anything new, while from the gentle, spiritually minded Prof. Mill was heard an eloquent disquisition on the promises and ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... thus far have seemed a long and discursive disquisition on the significance of the new opera; but the questions to which the production of "Boris Godounoff" give rise are many and grave, especially in the present state of our operatic activities. They have a strong bearing on the problem ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... though not held by Plato nor any of the ancients, is yet a very natural consequence of his principles. But the disquisition is too complex and extensive to be ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... to "The North American Review" is to be found in the number for October, 1849. It is nominally a review of Talvi's (Mrs. Robinson's) "Geschichte der Colonisation von New England," but in reality an essay on the Polity of the Puritans,—an historical disquisition on the principles of self-government evolved in New England, broad in its views, eloquent in its language. Its spirit is thoroughly American, and its estimate of the Puritan character is not narrowed by the nearsighted liberalism which sees the past in the pitiless light of the present,—which ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... term "Biology" which denotes the whole of the sciences which deal with living things, whether they be animals or whether they be plants. Some little time ago—in the course of this year, I think—I was favoured by a learned classic, Dr. Field of Norwich, with a disquisition, in which he endeavourved to prove that, from a philological point of view, neither Treviranus nor Lamarck had any right to coin this new word "Biology" for their purpose; that, in fact, the Greek word "Bios" had relation only to human life and human affairs, and that a different word ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... identity in the nature of its members, would lose much of the uses of human intercourse and its worth in the discipline of life, and, moreover, render the separation of death intolerable. But I am writing you a disquisition, and no one ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... wanted; and felt as happy in the exchange as a boy when he gets his first new watch, which actually goes when wound up, and has real hands and a true dial-plate. But besides this subject for legal disquisition, Bartoline's brains were also overloaded with the affair of Porteous, his violent death, and all its probable consequences to the city and community. It was what the French call l'embarras des richesses, the confusion arising from too much mental wealth. He walked in with a consciousness of double ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... all the trumpery shows and petty intrigues of society. He felt himself now in a manner debased by having had to listen with enforced patience to Bainton's rambling account of the gossip going on in the neighbourhood, and despite that worthy servitor's disquisition on the subject, he could not imagine how it had arisen, unless his quarrel with Putwood Leveson were the cause. It was all so sudden and unlooked for! Maryllia had gone away,—and that fact of itself was sufficient to make darkness out ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Natura" is a delineation of the Epicurean philosophy, and treats of all the great subjects of thought with which his age was conversant. Somewhat resembling Pope's "Essay on Man" in style and subject, it is immeasurably superior in poetical genius. It is a lengthened disquisition, in seven thousand four hundred lines, upon the great phenomena of the outward world. As a painter and worshipper of Nature, Lucretius was superior to all the poets of antiquity. His skill in presenting abstruse speculations is marvellous, and his outbursts of poetic ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... possibly then have much harder conditions given them; and I do not see how they could prevent it. Whether the resuming of royal grants be consistent with good policy or justice, would be too long a disquisition: besides, the profusion of kings is not like to be a grievance for the future, because there have been laws since made to provide against that evil, or, indeed, rather because the crown has nothing left to give away. But the objection made against the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... Brooke and his fellows, which was 'of the Bye.' He described this latter, and tried to point out that the former was closely cognate to it. In order to mask the difficulty, nay, the impossibility, of doing this successfully on the evidence which he possessed, he wandered off into a long and wordy disquisition on treasonable plots in general, ending abruptly with that of Edmund de la Pole. Then, for the first time, Coke faced the chief difficulty of the Government, namely, that there was but one witness against Raleigh. He did not ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... and he himself believed, according to the Pythagorean opinion, that the soul of Homer was transfused into him, which Persius observes in his sixth satire—postquam destertuit esse Maeonides. But this being only the private opinion of so inconsiderable a man as I am, I leave it to the further disquisition of the critics, if they think it worth their notice. Most evident it is that, whether he imitated the Roman farce or the Greek comedies, he is to be acknowledged for the first author of Roman satire, as it is properly so called, ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... he sailed through the air. In order not to lure people to certain death by appearing in an inhabited country, he chose the trackless wastes of Africa over which to wing his flight. The mythological disquisition ended, one on natural history follows. The peculiar properties of the venom of each species are minutely catalogued, first in abstract terms, then in the concrete by a description of their effects on ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... been saying was necessary to my subject as far as it went, but for all that it was chiefly introductory to what I am now going to bring to your notice. But this is a matter rather for illustration and discussion than for mere disquisition. Therefore, to save your time as much as possible, I will proceed at once to the illustration, and then we will ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... critical perception that the true business of literature is with narrative; in reasoned narrative, and there alone, that art enjoys all its advantages, and suffers least from its defects. Dry precept and disembodied disquisition, as they can only be read with an effort of abstraction, can never convey a perfectly complete or a perfectly natural impression. Truth, even in literature, must be clothed with flesh and blood, or it cannot tell its whole story to the reader. Hence the effect of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... circle of the cabinet. Mr. Burke raised himself from an obscure situation, by the greatness of his abilities, and his unrivalled genius. Never was distinction more nobly earned. Of every species of literary composition he is equally a master. He excels alike in the most abstruse metaphysical disquisition, and in the warmest and most spirited painting. His rhetoric is at once ornamented and sublime. His satire is polished and severe. His wit is truly Attic. Luxuriant in the extreme, his allusions are always striking, ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... is based upon the previous books, and is a very extensive one, although in arrangement it is defective. This collection, which is more ample than the former ones, has the advantage of an elaborate historical and literary disquisition on the general subject, in the form of an introduction by the poet Motherwell, which is allowed to be one of the most interesting and comprehensive papers on proverbs which ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... listened to the little troubles of each sister in the back garden, never failing to evince the profoundest sympathy. He was surprised to find that he enjoyed these conversations just as much as a metaphysical disquisition with John Norton. "I am not pretending," he often said to himself; "it is quite true;" and then he added philosophically, "Were I not interested in them I should not succeed ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... looked upon as different Deities. Most of these secondary Divinities had the title of Hippius, and Hippia: and as they had female attendants in their temples, these too had the name of Hippai. What may have been the original of the term Hippa, and Hippus, will be matter of future disquisition. Thus much is certain, that the Greeks, who were but little acquainted with the purport of their antient theology, uniformly referred it to [693]horses. Hence it was often prefixed to the names of Gods, and of Goddesses, when it had no relation to their department; and seemed ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... is a historical disquisition on the comparison between European and Japanese feudalism and chivalry, it is not the purpose of this paper to enter into it at length. My attempt is rather to relate, firstly, the origin and sources of our chivalry; secondly, ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... a private interview with his father and mother. He informed them that a great joy had come into his life in being able to give a bankers' order for the payment of four pounds per month to them as long as they lived. The saintly couple's mental process became confused. They entered upon a long disquisition of how much affluence might affect their humility and endanger their religious life. The noble son urged that their faith in God was too strong to allow the possession of money to betray them into indifference. The father being spokesman replied on behalf of his wife that they accepted this ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... omitted a long, uninteresting, and inconclusive disquisition on the supposed Terra Australis, as altogether founded ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... at rest; after a long laborious life, and the compilation of a dull, though admirable History of England, the design of which, in making a chapter on arts, manners, and literature separate from the narrative, appears to have suggested to Macaulay his inimitable disquisition on the same topics. Dr. Henry showed to a friend a pile of books which he had gone through, merely to satisfy himself and the world as to what description of trousers was worn by the Saxons. His death was calm as his life. 'Come out to me directly,' he wrote to his friend, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... God's blessed Spirit did then awaken him to the search, and in that industry did never forsake him—they be his own words (in his preface to "Pseudo-Martyr")—so he calls the same Holy Spirit to witness this protestation; that in that disquisition and search he proceeded with humility and diffidence in himself; and by that which he took to be the safest way; namely, frequent prayers, and an indifferent affection to both parties; and, indeed, Truth had too much light about ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... removed from a sinful world and to be carried to the East to be given to Feirefiz, half brother to Parzifal.[34] The meeting of Feirefiz with the knights furnishes the poet an opportunity of bringing in a learned disquisition on Prester John and his dri India die witen, and finally this mythical monarch offers his crown to Parzifal, who henceforth is called Priester Johanni. In the poem of "Lohengrin", of unknown authorship, the knight when about to depart declares he has come from India where there is a house ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... A disquisition or a discussion between two or more persons, on the manner in which the Wandering Jew has spent his life. One period, perhaps, trying over and over again to grasp domestic happiness; then a soldier, then a statesman, &c., at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... allegory; the same confusion of spirit and matter among the supernatural persons; the same lengthy astronomical treatise; the same personification of Sin and Death; the same medley of Christian and pagan mythology; the same tedious historico-theological disquisition at the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... dramatic order of development. There is, for instance, an episodical chapter of upwards of thirty pages, describing commercial England in a state of panic, which is very nearly as appropriate as a disquisition on the Primary Rocks, or an inquiry into the origin of the Cabala would be, but which is so palpably introduced for the purpose of displaying the author's financial erudition, that he feels himself called upon to apologize in a brief preface for its intrusion. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... much store by Doubleday's moral disquisition on the duty of the parents of Twins, I felt mollified by the half apology implied in his reference to yesterday's entertainment, and to the manner of his behaviour towards me now. It was clear he ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... witchcraft had ceased; and therefore an Act of Parliament was passed to prevent persecution for what was not witchcraft. Why it ceased, we cannot tell, as we cannot tell the reason of many other things.' Dr Cullen, to keep up the gratification of mysterious disquisition, with the grave address for which he is remarkable in his companionable as in his professional hours, talked, in a very entertaining manner, of people walking and conversing in their sleep. I am very sorry I have no note of this. We talked of the Ouran-Outang, and ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... show his entire indifference to the whole affair,—"and some time when you are in town drop in again. And now tell me about Ruth, as we must call her, I suppose. Your aunt just missed her at the Cosgroves' the other day." Then came a short disquisition on Garry and Corinne and their life at Elm Crest, followed by an embarrassing pause, during which the head of the house of Breen lowered the flow line on a black bottle which he took from a closet behind ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of obtaining a future livelihood, a sudden idea struck him. Rigdon well knew his countrymen, and their avidity for the marvellous; he resolved to give to the world the "Manuscript found," not as a mere work of imagination or disquisition, as its writer had intended it to be, but as a new code of religion, sent down to man, as of yore, on awful Sinai, the tables were given ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... this he has more than a tincture of literature,—a deep and true taste for poetry, especially for the elder poets, and he is a good writer,—at least he has written a good article, a rambling disquisition on Natural History, in the last Dial, which, he says, was chiefly made up from journals of his own observations. Methinks this article gives a very fair image of his mind and character,—so true, innate, and literal in observation, yet giving the spirit as well as letter of what ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wherein the Professor, or, as he here, speaking in the third person, calls himself, "the Wanderer," is not once named. Then again, amidst what seems to be a Metaphysico-theological Disquisition, "Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine," or, "The continued Possibility of Prophecy," we shall meet with some quite private, not unimportant Biographical fact. On certain sheets stand Dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent waking ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Nature, so often “sealed,” has here been opened and its contents indexed. We have in the strata of the Woodhall well sundry chapters in the earth’s past history unfolded, at least to the initiated. The writer is not going to attempt here a systematic disquisition on a subject so abstruse (for which, indeed, he is not qualified), beyond touching upon some of its more salient, or more interesting features. The geological records of the Woodhall well have already been given {84b} in the very concise form in which they have been ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... the Argonautic expedition, (he observes in the Preliminary Disquisition to the latter work), has been questioned; but if the primordial history of every nation but one is tinctured with the fabulous, and if from among the rest a choice is necessary to be made, it must be allowed that the traditions of Greece are less inconsistent than those of the more distant ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... scheme in all human affairs, and consequently in all church movements," the Major replied, and the impulse of a disquisition straightened him into a posture more dignified, for he was fond of talking and at times he strove to be logical and impressive; but at this moment Bill arrived with mint from the spring; and with lighter talk two ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... riot without a requisition from the Executive, he frankly advised the Governor to this effect. But the Governor did not want troops to quell a riot, and said so; and in answer to the tender, returned a long and heavy disquisition, showing why, though he considered troops essential to the promotion of the good of his country, he did not and would not make a formal requisition for any, and thus, all unconsciously, betrayed and condemned himself at every word,—for while he was talking of country, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... you suppose, reader, that I am going to carry my forbearance so far as to let you, too, off the remainder of that geological disquisition, you are certainly very much mistaken. A discourse which would be quite unpardonable in social intercourse may be freely admitted in the privacy of print; because, you see, while you can't easily tell a man that his conversation bores you (though some people just avoid doing so by ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... I should write that lovely name over and over again for a page or so. If the New Zealander should exercise his editorial discretion, and delete my raptures, it wouldn't matter; but I might furnish him with the text for an elaborate disquisition on the manners and customs of English lovers. Let me be reasonable about my dear love, if I can. My dear love—do I dare to call her that already, when, for anything I know to the contrary, there may be another evangelical curate ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... promising topic that they got out the encyclopaedia and found to their joy that there was quite a lengthy and learned disquisition on the subject. So they read it again and again, even learning the more abstruse sentences by heart. Next day they were observed to chuckle whenever they caught each other's eye, and at lunch they were unusually cheerful and more than ordinarily ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... more learned disquisition on the origin of these evidently congenerous words under the term ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... have as often wondered to find my self disappointed; the rather, because I think it a Subject every way agreeable to your Design, and by being left unattempted by others, seems reserved as a proper Employment for you; I mean a Disquisition, from whence it proceeds, that Men of the brightest Parts, and most comprehensive Genius, compleatly furnished with Talents for any Province in humane Affairs; such as by their wise Lessons of Oeconomy to others have made it evident, that they have the justest ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... down in search of vacant tables or of tables occupied by friends. One of these rovers interested me because I was sure he wanted to catch Rothenstein's eye. He had twice passed our table, with a hesitating look; but Rothenstein, in the thick of a disquisition on Puvis de Chavannes, had not seen him. He was a stooping, shambling person, rather tall, very pale, with longish and brownish hair. He had a thin, vague beard, or, rather, he had a chin on which a large number of hairs weakly ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... at 17 Heriot Row, the window of which looked over the Forth to Fife, and the walls of which were so temptingly covered with books, his real life work had begun. No treat was greater, no honour more esteemed, than a visit to that study and a learned disquisition there on its owner's favourite books or ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... Life is, indeed, too brief, and success too precarious, to trust, in any case where happiness is concerned, the extirpation of deep-rooted and darling opinions, to the slow-working influence of argument and disquisition. ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... deal with a burning controversy in the abstract and logical manner suitable to the discussion of the problems of jurisprudence savours, it may be objected, of theoretic, academic, or pedantic disquisition more fit for a University class-room than for the living ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... upon the strong-linked chain of argument which he slowly and painfully elaborated in the seclusion of his parish. The press groaned under large volumes of theological, metaphysical, and psychological disquisition, the very thought of which is now "a weariness to the flesh;" in rapid succession pamphlet encountered pamphlet, horned, beaked, and sharp of talon, grappling with each other in mid-air, like Milton's angels. That loud controversy, the sound whereof went over Christendom, awakening responses ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... notion has prevailed that a comedy might subsist without humor. It is an idle disquisition, whether a story in private life, represented in dialogues, may not be carried on with some degree of merit without humor. It may unquestionably; but what shines chiefly in comedy, the painting the manners of life, must be in a great measure wanting. A ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... resemblances, so will any two wars in history, whether war itself be regarded as abstract or concrete,—a question that seems to have exercised some grammatical minds, and ought therefore to be settled before any further step is taken in this disquisition, which is the disquisition of a grammarian. Now most persons would pronounce war an abstract, but one excellent manual with which I am acquainted sets it down as a concrete, and I have often thought that the author must have ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... many points in fact, without seeming to have done it, and this to avoid bringing on a too frequent discussion of matters which in a political view ought to be kept a little behind the curtain, and not to be made too much the subjects of disquisition. Time only can eradicate and overcome customs and prejudices of long standing—they must be got the better of ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... "On the Determination of the Relative Weight of Single Molecules," by E. Vogel, of San Francisco. This paper, which was taken as read, consists of a lengthy theoretical disquisition, in which the author maintains the following propositions: That the combining weights of all elements are one third of their present values; the assumption that equal volumes of gases contain equal numbers ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... Rome has left us, as an episode of his great work, a disquisition on the probable effects that would have followed, if Alexander the Great had invaded Italy. Posterity has generally regarded that disquisition as proving Livy's patriotism more strongly than his impartiality or acuteness. Yet, right or wrong, the speculations ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... the clay." It may be possible that our Saviour thought fit to adopt these forms, in imitation of some of the methods of treating diseases in those times; though, of course, his transcendent power did not require their agency. Rost, in his Commentaries on Plautus, has very learned disquisition on the meaning of the ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... the writer, as well as of his hero. We are made present at their first introduction to each other; we get a lively idea of their colloquies and walks together, and in this easy way, without any heavy disquisition or narrative, we obtain a clear insight into Sterling's character and mental progress. Above all, we are gladdened with a perception of the affinity that exists between noble souls, in spite of diversity in ideas—in what Carlyle calls "the logical outcome" of the faculties. This "Life of ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... uninteresting, and confused disquisition, on the superstitious beliefs and ceremonies of the original natives of Haiti or Hispaniola, is so inexplicably and inexpressibly unintelligible and absurd, partly because the original translator was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... Historical Disquisition concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India, Dublin, 1791, p. 55. I never have occasion to consult Dr. Robertson without being impressed anew with his scientific habit of thought and the solidity of his scholarship; and in none of his ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... commotion never was produced but by real grievances. My answer was, that the people of Ireland did suffer real misery, which, as was frequently the case, they would impute to Government, however little founded such an idea would be. This, he said, would lead us at length into a disquisition on the state of Ireland, on which subject he intended, before I went, to have a long conversation with me, but that he was ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... proceed with equal regularity in the vegetable as in the animal system. These motions have been shewn in a former part of this work to depend on the irritations of peculiar fluids, and as they have never been classed amongst the instinctive actions of animals, are precluded from our present disquisition. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... weeks flew by Dalaber grew more and more eager in his task—the more so as he became better acquainted with other red-hot spirits amongst the graduates and undergraduates, and heard more and more heated disquisition and controversy. Sometimes a dozen or more such spirits would assemble in his rooms to hear Garret hold forth upon the themes so near to their hearts; and they would sit far into the night listening to his ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... observed every flower, and listened to a disquisition on every plant, I was permitted to depart; but first, with great pomp, he plucked a polyanthus and presented it to me, as one conferring a prodigious favour. I observed, on the grass about his garden, certain apparatus of sticks and corn, ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... in a secluded Buddhist monastery perched on the edge of a precipice, like an eagle's nest, where his only associates were bonzes in yellow robes, and the stillness was only broken by the deep-toned temple bell, booming for vespers. Then, somehow, his thoughts turned back to Europe, and he began a disquisition upon the great old masters—Tintoretto, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Tiziano, and Peter Paul—with whose immortal works he seemed as familiar as he subsequently showed himself with the pictures in his own house. He described the Memlings at Bruges, the Botticellis at ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... after I had left it. I am happy in believing that the remark was due to the depression from which he was suffering, for he had written to me two years ago,] "The office would be quite perfect, if they did not want an annual report. I can't go in for a disquisition on river basins after the manner of Buckland, and you have exhausted the other topics. I polished off the Salmon Disease pretty fully last year, so what the deuce am I ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... mysterious records of a past age, page after page has been written to prove, and even disprove, the supposed intent of their constructors; and it cannot but be admitted that after perusing many an erudite disquisition, we are sometimes as well-informed, and as near arriving at a conclusion as to the original purpose for which the object under discussion was intended, as when our attention was first engaged in it. In some instances, ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... intently. From what she had heard of him as a highly intellectual man, from the faint indications of character which she had herself noticed in their conversation, Miss Rothesay expected that he would have dived deeply into theological disquisition. She had too much penetration to look to him for the Christianity of a St. John—it was evident that such was not his nature; but she thought he would surely employ his powerful mind in wrestling with those knotty points of theology ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... back to gravity through the alarm expressed by the minister, at the idea of his having taken cold through officiating that morning without his wig. This introduced, I cannot tell how, some remarks on the head, which led to a disquisition on craniology. On this subject the witty sheriff was very amusing. I said some tolerably lively things; but the ordinary beat us all hollow, when it was contended that the disposition and the mind might be known from the exterior of the skull, by remarking that he had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... any kind of prison-discipline disquisition in "H. W." that does not start with the first great principle I have laid down, and that does not protest against Prisons being considered per se. Whatever chance is given to a man in a prison must be given to a man in a refuge ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... attained perception, but when he was unawares and all of a sudden subjected to this question by Tai-yue, he soon found it beyond his power to give any ready answer. And when Pao-ch'ai furthermore came out with a religious disquisition, by way of illustration, and this on subjects, in all of which he had hitherto not seen them display any ability, he communed within himself: "If with their knowledge, which is indeed in advance of that of mine, they haven't, as yet, attained perception, what ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... mind at the bottom of business, his feet at the top of a chair, His chair-arm an elbow supporting, his right hand upholding his head, His eyes on his dusty old table, with different documents spread: There were thirty long pages from Howler, with underlined capitals topped, And a short disquisition from Growler, requesting his newspaper stopped; There were lyrics from Gusher, the poet, concerning sweet flow'rets and zephyrs, And a stray gem from Plodder, the farmer, describing a couple of heifers; There were billets from beautiful maidens, and bills from a grocer or two, And his best ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... and McLean, that General Hamilton first gave to the public his numbers of The Federalist. There is often to be found in one daily issue of the Post, the Courier and Enquirer, the Journal of Commerce, the Herald, the Tribune, or the Times of these days, more thought, nice disquisition, and real knowledge which awakens the contemplation of the statesman and politician, than the New-York Gazette contained during a twelvemonth; and yet it flourished. The traits of Lang's character were unwavering devotion ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... colleague a "bold, reckless man" who realized that heresy, and was resolved to work it for his own ends. From the day when Mr. Chamberlain launched his scheme, or dream, of Tariff Reform, Mr. Balfour's authority steadily declined. Endless ingenuity in dialectic, nimble exchanges of posture, candid disquisition for the benefit of the well-informed, impressive phrase-making for the bewilderment of the ignorant—these and a dozen other arts were tried in vain. People began to laugh at the Tory leader, and likened him to Issachar crouching down between two burdens, ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... mass of serious speculation in which they are embedded. What he, as a purely literary critic, passed over as comparatively uninteresting, gives the exposition of Cowper's intellectual position. The poem is in fact a political, moral, and religious disquisition interspersed with charming vignettes, which, though not obtrusively moralised, illustrate the general thesis. The poetical connoisseur may separate them from their environment, as a collector of ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... launched into a disquisition on germs and their natures, using words and phrases of such extraordinary length and meaninglessness, that the boys grinned at one another and looked out over the deserted ocean till they forgot the ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... were born and came to anything. The advertised story is a kind of mother-hen who gathers under her wings a numerous brood of biographical chicks. Quantities of recondite erudition are poured out on the slightest provocation. Nat's unquestioned superiority to his schoolmates evokes a disquisition for the encouragement of dull boys, in which we are told that "the great philosopher, Newton, was one of the dullest scholars in school when he was twelve years old. Doctor Isaac Barrow was such a dull, pugnacious, stupid fellow, etc., etc. The father ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... too much from the luminous field of philosophic disquisition to the sterile regions of polemic divinity, and the still more ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... denied to be mere pleasure, and the denial is enforced by Sokrates challenging his opponent to choose the lot of an ecstatic oyster. As usual, good must be related to Intelligence; and the Dialogue gives a long disquisition upon the One and the Many, the Theory of Ideas, the Determinate and the Indeterminate. Good is a compound of Pleasure and Intelligence, the last predominating. Pleasure is the Indeterminate, requiring the Determinate (Knowledge) to regulate ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... the direction of the galley sergeants, in working, in the port of Toulon, the dormant navigation on board a vessel in dock. If notes were pleasing to me, I could here seize the opportunity of making some very learned remarks. I should, perhaps, go into a profound disquisition, but I am about to paint the paradise of these bacchanalians; the colours are prepared—let ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... to this genealogical disquisition our eyes turned to a most attractive looking tea table which was set forth with superb silver, and thin slices of bread and butter and cake. With appetites sharpened by our long ride through the fresh air, I fear that we all gazed longingly at that tempting regale, and for Miss Cassandra, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... the following morning, continued a disquisition which had ceased, the previous night, only because of a provoking human incapacity to exist without sleep. Her theme was one which had exclusively occupied her since the passing of Eskew, and, her rheumatism having improved so that she could ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... there is something peculiarly invigorating in mountain air. What that something is we are not prepared to say. Oxygen and ozone have undoubtedly something to do with it, but in what proportions we know not. Scientific men could give us a learned disquisition on the subject, no doubt; we therefore refer our readers to scientific men, and confine our observations to the simple statement of the fact, that there is something extremely invigorating in mountain air. ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... pastimes, in which the joys of the shell, as Ossian has it, were not forgotten. 'Others apart sat on a hill retired;' probably as deeply engaged in the discussion of politics and news, as Milton's spirits in metaphysical disquisition. At length signals of the approach of the game were descried and heard. Distant shouts resounded from valley to valley, as the various parties of Highlanders, climbing rocks, struggling through copses, wading brooks, and traversing ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... zones," and so on for a considerable length until by an accident which Clarissa could attribute to nothing but inconceivable awkwardness, Judge Bording dropped a glass of water, crash! Having ceased his disquisition at this accident, so disconcerting to the judge, Miss Bording very prettily and promptly thanked him for his information and saying that she now had a clear understanding of the principal facts pertaining to Algeria, abruptly changed ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... and polished style. Popanilla, therefore, spoke of man in a savage state, the origin of society, and the elements of the social compact, in sentences which would not have disgraced the mellifluous pen of Bentham. From these he naturally digressed into an agreeable disquisition on the Anglo-Saxons; and, after a little badinage on the Bill of Rights, flew off to an airy aper u of the French Revolution. When he had arrived at the Isle of Fantaisie he begged to inform his Majesty that man was born for something else besides enjoying himself. ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... Evils of using Tobacco.—'A disquisition on the evils of using tobacco, and the necessity of an immediate and entire reform,' by Rev. Orin Fowler, of Fall River, Mass. This is a very valuable and instructive discourse. We have for two years or more been fully convinced that the use of tobacco, in its three common forms, ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... hands. They talked in a friendly, bantering tone of the concerts they gave together, Christophe with his piano, the Commandant with his flute. Christophe tried to go, but the old man would not let him: and he plunged blindly into a disquisition on music. Suddenly ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... its manifold immeasurable imaginations, Cain is only a polemical controversy, the doctrines of which might have been better discussed in the pulpit of a college chapel. As a poem it is greatly unequal; many passages consist of mere metaphysical disquisition, but there are others of wonderful scope and energy. It is a thing of doubts and dreams and reveries—dim and beautiful, yet withal full of terrors. The understanding finds nothing tangible; but amid dread and solemnity, sees only a shapen darkness with eloquent gestures. It is an argument ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... whiskerless attache, who had entered upon a disquisition on the genius of Rossini as compared with this new man Meyerbeer, her ladyship made believe to hear, while she listened intently to the confidential murmurs of the group on the hearthrug, the little knot of personages clustered round Lord Denyer. Hi 'Indian mail in this morning,' said one—'nothing ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... indignation were expressed that the son of his father should presume to be a novelist. This sentiment, whatever its bearing upon me, has undoubtedly been of service to my critics: it gives them something to write about. A disquisition upon the mantle of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and an analysis of the differences and similarities between him and his successor, generally fill so much of a notice as to enable the reviewer to dismiss the book itself very briefly. I often used to wish, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... suggestions, he goes on to descant upon slavery in the [210] fashion which we have elsewhere noticed, but it may still be proper to add a word or two here regarding this particular disquisition of his. This we are happy in being able to do under the guidance of an anterior and more reliable exponent of ecclesiastical as well as secular obedience on the part of all free and enlightened men in the present epoch of ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... the Spanish scholar to the discussion between Don Quixote and his squire on the dismissal of 'regoldar', from the language of good society, and the substitution of 'erutar' in its room (Don Quixote, 4. 7. 43). In a letter of Cicero to Paetus (Fam. ix. 22) there is a subtle and interesting disquisition on forbidden words, and ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... on this part of the Epistle, treating on the use of pure poetry in the Drama, abounds with curious disquisition and refined criticism. ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... "Marmion": "I think your end has been attained. That it is not the end which I should wish you to propose to yourself, you will be aware." He had visited Scott at Lasswade as early as 1803, and in recording his impressions notes that "his conversation was full of anecdote and averse from disquisition." The minstrel was a raconteur and lived in the past, the bard was a moralist and lived ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... I remember one disquisition very distinctly. It was just after Ewart had been to Paris on a mysterious expedition to "rough in" some work for a rising American sculptor. This young man had a commission for an allegorical figure of Truth (draped, of course) for his State ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... that point my opinion is decided. But the causes of our rapid decline from ancient excellence remain to be unfolded. We know that you have turned your thoughts to this subject, and we expected from you a calm disquisition, had not the violent attack which Aper made upon your favourite orators, roused your spirit, and, perhaps, given you some offence. Far from it, replied Messala; he has given me no offence; nor must you, my friends, take umbrage, if at any time ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... in mind of a certain professor of chemistry, whose lectures on light and heat I once was rash enough to attend, who, after a long dry disquisition which had nearly put us all to sleep, used to arouse our attention to the "beautiful effects" produced by certain combinations, which he would proceed to illustrate, as he said, by a "little experiment." But, somehow or other, these ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... had had about enough of this disquisition. They listened very decorously, and the Professor, who agrees very well with me, as I happen to know, in my views on this business of realism, thanked me for giving them the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... rarefaction of the hydrogen in the air, so that, though no spirit could be photographed as such, a code and language might be established by means of the effect produced on the air by the spirit's mind. I am so interested in the subject of my disquisition that I had almost forgotten that your spirits are still subject to the requirements of the body. Last time I dined with you; let ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... not start out to write a disquisition on women as golfers, but only to offer some hints on ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... contemporaries. Having announced my intention to give a course of Lectures on the characteristic merits and defects of English poetry in its different aeras; first, from Chaucer to Milton; second, from Dryden inclusively to Thomson; and third, from Cowper to the present day; I changed my plan, and confined my disquisition to the former two periods, that I might furnish no possible pretext for the unthinking to misconstrue, or the malignant to misapply my words, and having stamped their own meaning on them, to pass them as current coin in the marts of garrulity ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the plan of the people who make the six days of creation six geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it, he was a rather severe satire on modern scientific religionists. Such a man as I have been describing is rabidly fond of disquisition and argument; one knows ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... disquisition on dreams, and attempted to cite instances where the future had been indicated in these hazy visions of our sleep. This had served to turn the Old Cattleman's train ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... disquisition upon labor and capital; hesitancy about slavery. The President wishes to be pushed on by public opinion. But public opinion is safe, and expects from the official leader a decided step onwards. The message gives no solution, suggests ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... Koenigthums bei den Gothen' (Berlin, 1859), has condensed into a small compass a large amount of useful disquisition on Cassiodorus and his copyist Jordanes. The relation between these two writers was also elaborately discussed by von Sybel in his thesis 'De Fontibus Libri Jordanis' (Berlin, 1838), and by Schirren, in his monograph 'De Ratione quae inter Jordanem et Cassiodorum intercedat' (Dorpat, 1885). The ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... his life were spent. In the course of them he published the Querist (1735-1737), an Essay on the Social State of Ireland (1744), and, in the same year, Siris, which contains the bishop's famous recipe for the use of tar water followed by much philosophical disquisition. The remedy, which was afterwards praised by the poet Dyer in The Fleece, became instantly popular. 'We are now mad about the water,' Horace Walpole wrote; 'the book contains every subject from tar water to the Trinity; however, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... sent the Scot into a rather learned disquisition as to the merits and probable prospects of a hill as compared with a low-lying region, during which Hans Marais turned to Gertie. Being so very tall, he had to stoop as well as to look down at her pretty face, though Gertie was by no means short for her age. Indeed, she was as tall as average women, ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the Laws" he takes the verse of the Bible not so much as a text to be amplified and interpreted, but as a pretext for a philosophical disquisition. The allegories indeed are only in form a commentary on the Bible; in one aspect they are a history of the human soul, which, if they had been completed, would have traced the upward progress from Adam ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... average mediocrity. At Plassans his voice was considered thick, his movements heavy. He generally wandered from the question at issue, rambled, as the wiseacres expressed it. On one occasion particularly, when he was pleading in a case for damages, he so forgot himself as to stray into a political disquisition, to such a point that the presiding judge interfered, whereupon he immediately sat down with a strange smile. His client was condemned to pay a considerable sum of money, a circumstance which did not, however, seem to cause Eugene ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... her critical disquisition on the shortcomings of Parisian costume cleared away from ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... designing. Smile, smirk, grin. Solitary, lonely, lone, lonesome, desolate, deserted, uninhabited. Sour, acid, tart, acrid, acidulous, acetose, acerbitous, astringent. Speech, discourse, oration, address, sermon, declamation, dissertation, exhortation, disquisition, harangue, diatribe, tirade, screed, philippic, invective, rhapsody, plea. Spruce, natty, dapper, smart, chic. Stale, musty, frowzy, mildewed, fetid, rancid, rank. Steep, precipitous, abrupt. Stingy, close, miserly, niggardly, parsimonious, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... She must feed him with the milk of rectitude, for its strong meat his stomach was hopelessly unready. But he was suspicious, and insisted on hearing what Dick Benyon had said; so she told him pretty accurately. His answer was a long disquisition on the political situation, to which she listened with the same faint smile with which she had heard Dick himself; at last he roundly stigmatised the Crusade as a ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... his first Douglas debate, not like his cultivated opponent with the conventional "Ladies and Gentlemen," but with the ominously intimate, "My Fellow Citizens,"—Lincoln is saying, "I am not master of language; I have not a fine education; I am not capable of entering into a disquisition upon dialectics, as I believe you call it; but I do not believe the language I employed bears any such construction as Judge Douglas puts upon it. But I don't care about a quibble in regard to words. I know what I meant, and I will not leave this crowd in doubt, if I can explain it to them, ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... resident in Australia, of the not too highly educated order, as well as a difference in his tone of voice and enunciation, from that of a person belonging to a corresponding class in England, is one of those facts, however, which 'nobody can deny.' I am not going to enter in this connection upon a disquisition respecting the relative merits of what Mrs. James would have called 'hoefisch' English, and the English that has been coined out of entirely new conditions by pioneers and backwoodsmen. Suffice it ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... disquisition, the spokesman of Na-im-be and Te-tzo-ge invited the followers of the True God to a feast where only strong men could come. The women of the dance in that feast were strong and were young. Four ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... but "journalistic correspondence"; and now when once I lay aside the hurry and constraint of the editorial desk to respond to what seemed a personal demand in a new acquaintance, I quite lose myself and launch out into a lyrical disquisition which really applies more to my own experience than to yours. Will you not overlook this fault of egotism? Indeed I cannot quite promise that, if you receive many letters from me in the course of your reviewing, you may not have to make allowances more than once ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... metrical disquisition it is not easy to separate the poetry, which in places is very good, from the intellectual content, which is not so good from a modern point of view. By the joint aid of several sciences laboriously piecing together bits of knowledge that have nothing to do with the goddess Urania, we have learned ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... subject merit record, because happiness is the end of life, the proper business of study, and the true object of all disquisition; and there is no point in which families are rendered more uncomfortable, and in which the spirit of caprice and tyranny is more successfully exerted, than in the institution and conduct of country assemblies; while, at the same time, nothing would ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... Esq.; a learned and ingenious tract, written originally for insertion in "N. & Q.," but which fact ought not to prevent our speaking of it in the terms which it deserves.—A Few Words in Reply to the Animadversions of the Rev. Mr. Dyce on Mr. Hunter's "Disquisition on the Tempest," 1839, and his "New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakspeare," 1845, &c. A short but interesting contribution to Shakspearian criticism, by one who has already done good service in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... Lincoln; which I here mention, because about that time did arise many disputes about Predestination, and the many critical points that depend upon, or are interwoven in it; occasioned, as was said, by a disquisition of new principles of Mr. Calvin's, though others say they were before his time. But of these Dr. Sanderson then drew up, for his own satisfaction, such a scheme—he called it Pax Ecclesiae—as then gave himself, and hath since given others, ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... could not understand this grave, philosophical disquisition very well, and he began to get pretty sleepy. He had, however, been somewhat amused, during the greater part of the time, in seeing the corks float about upon the water, with the needles upon them. So his father took the needles off, and let him have the two floats in one of the saucers ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... the Moon a long disquisition is carried on by Beatrice in explanation of Dante's question as to why there are spots on the moon. It is very likely that this matter of apparent irrelevance in the heavenly realms is introduced here at the very first stage of the ascent to give the poet the opportunity ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... for encouragement, Dumas launched out into a disquisition on the history of the duello through the ages that was nearly as long as one of his own serials. In the middle of it, a member of the jury, anxious to be in the limelight, asked ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... of Bruce' illustrates her narrative style; that from 'Woman's Friendship' her habit of disquisition; and the passage from 'Home Influence' her ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... du Christianisme;" the History of England by Sir James Mackintosh, volume first; and to Mills's History of the Crusades, volume first, chapter sixth. We may add Dr. Robertson's "Historical Disquisition concerning the Knowledge which the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... into a most curious and pleasing disquisition on a subject, which the late ingenious Mr. Baxter has treated in a very philosophical manner, in his "Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul;"[131] a book which may be read with as much delight, and surely with more advantage ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... them. We could easily name men who, not possessing a tenth part of his intellectual powers, hardly ever address the House of Commons without producing a greater impression than was produced by his most splendid and elaborate orations. His luminous and philosophical disquisition on the Reform Bill was spoken to empty benches. Those, indeed, who had the wit to keep their seats, picked up hints which, skilfully used, made the fortune of more than one speech. But "it was caviare to the general." And even those who listened to Sir ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the subtlety of disquisition, the force of imagination, the perfect energy and elegance of expression, which characterize the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce them intrinsically most valuable; but what shall we say when we reflect that from hence have sprung, directly ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... day, as a rule, may be spoken of in two classes. Either the preacher would read a passage of Scripture in Latin, and throw in here and there a few remarks by way of commentary, or else the sermon was a long and dry disquisition upon some of the (frequently very absurd) dogmas of the schoolmen; such as, whether angels were synonymous with spirits, which of the seven principal angels was the chief, how long it took Gabriel to fly from heaven ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... branched off into a disquisition on whiskers, and Diana escaped from the task of describing her lover. She could not ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... so high that no mouth can tell them, heart only can speak to heart, but I can tell you this, that Master Richard did not mean that our Lord was in the hall that day as He is in heaven and in the sacrament of the altar; it was something else that he meant.... [There follows a doctrinal disquisition.] ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... as standing for religion, the second for beauty and the third for strength. On this triad be formulates not only an intellectual cult but a practical rule of life. Another notable sermon is on "The Sovereignty of Law," an admirable disquisition on the supremacy of law in the intellectual life, the physical existence, the domain of morals and in every department of human activity. Dr. Peabody's style is forcible and virile, and his compactness of statement, enables ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... to it, Arthur," said Sir Paul indulgently but not unironically, at the end of Mr. Prohack's disquisition. "You're in a nervous state and your judgment's warped. Now, I never even heard ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... Right of Petition (Speech in the Senate, 1840) State Rights (Speech on the Admission of Michigan, 1837) On the Government of Poland ('A Disquisition on Government') Urging Repeal of the Missouri Compromise (Speech in the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... opening my eyes, nor did my eyes have anything to do with it. You see such things as these, as it were, with another sense, which is more inside your head than in your eyes. This was a very poor and paltry experience, but it enabled me to understand better than any amount of disquisition how it is that clairvoyants see. The pictures were apropos of nothing; they had been suggested by nothing I had been reading or talking of, they simply came as if I had been able to look through a glass at what was occurring somewhere else in the world. I had my peep and then it passed, ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... the collection of his works. There is an older King John, in two parts, of which the former is a re-cast:—perhaps a juvenile work of Shakspeare, though not hitherto acknowledged as such by the English critics. See the disquisition appended to this Lecture.] and Henry the Eighth at a later period, as ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... his evil destiny, and thought he would make yet another application. So he took a short cut down one of the garden lanes, and as the Prince and the Reverend Mr. MacWhirter, his tutor, came along once more engaged in pleasant disquisition, behold the fellah was once more in their way, kneeling at the august Bluebeard's feet, yelling out for justice as before, and thrusting his petition into the ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... disquisition upon names, there came in sight a small house, dark and discolored with age and neglect. He pointed this out to Paul ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... historian:—he must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth among a weak and degenerate race of beings." Divest this passage of the latent sarcasm betrayed by the subsequent tone of the whole disquisition, and it might commence a Christian history written in the most Christian spirit of candor. But as the historian, by seeming to respect, yet by dexterously confounding the limits of the sacred land, contrived to insinuate that it was an Utopia which had ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... side with the national religion and tradition emphasize their opinion in every possible way—so do their opponents. You pick up two newspapers from Toulouse, for instance, and it is quite on the cards that the leading article of each will be a disquisition upon the philosophy of religion, the one, the "Depeche" of Toulouse, militantly, and often solently atheist; the other as ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc |
