"Generalise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pertinence was very far from insistent; but Alicia's crude blush—everything else about her was so perfectly worked out—cried aloud that it was too sharp a pull up. "Perhaps though," Hilda hurried on with a pang, "we generalise too much ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... realm of one ends and that of the other begins, and add to it a wide knowledge of large affairs, which no special man can have, and which is only gained by diversified action. But this utility of leading minds used to generalise, and acting upon various materials, is entirely dependent upon their position. They must not be at the bottom—they must not even be half way up—they must be at the top. A merchant's clerk would be a child at a bank counter; but the merchant himself could, ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... and vicissitudes. He was no mere idealist or recluse to undervalue or despise the real grandeur of the world. He took the keenest interest in the nature and ways of mankind; he liked to observe, to generalise in shrewd and sometimes cynical epigrams. He liked to apply his powerful and fertile intellect to the practical problems of society and government, to their curious anomalies, to their paradoxical phenomena; he liked to address himself, either as an expounder or a reformer, to the principles ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... traits proper to persons, both living and dead, with whom I have had intercourse in society, should not have risen to my pen in such works as Waverley, and those which, followed it. But I have always studied to generalise the portraits, so that they should still seem, on the whole, the productions of fancy, though possessing some resemblance to real individuals. Yet I must own my attempts have not in this last particular ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... all as dispassionately as one looks at a picture—at some wonderful, perfect sort of picture that is inexhaustible; but at the time these things filled me with unspeakable resentment. Now I go round it all, look into its details, generalise about its aspects. I'm interested, for example, to square it with my Bladesover theory of the British social scheme. Under stress of tradition we were all of us trying in the fermenting chaos of London to carry out the marriage ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... of love—perhaps that is, after all, the type women really like best. It is sheer nonsense to say that women enjoy being tyrannised over. No doubt there are some who would rather be bullied than ignored. But the hectoring man is, with few exceptions, secretly detested. In so far as one can generalise (always a dangerous thing to do) it may be said that women like best a kind, clever man who can be always trusted; and occasionally ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... fur that nature can devise. Generally speaking, the alpine plants of the Himalaya are quite unprovided with any special protection of this kind; it is the prevalence and conspicuous nature of the exceptions that mislead, and induce the careless observer to generalise hastily from solitary instances; for the prevailing alpine genera of the Himalaya, Arenarias, primroses, saxifrages, fumitories, Ranunculi, gentians, grasses, sedges, etc., have ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... rule of a wealthy abbey, with which he was connected only as the chief recipient of its revenues, as when Wolsey had St. Albans bestowed on him in return for his diplomatic labours. Apart from the diatribes of zealots and the evidence of interested informers, apart also from the inclination to generalise from well authenticated but extreme examples, it is evident that, in the absence of a positive religious enthusiasm, the system was peculiarly liable to grave degeneration; and it was long since there had been ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... is not that the Italians do not study deeply the men whom they have to do with; for none discover more subtly their secret thoughts; but they employ this talent as a guide of conduct, and have no idea of converting it to any literary purpose. Perhaps even they have no wish to generalise their discoveries, and publish their perceptions. There is a prudent dissimulation in their character, which teaches them not to expose in comedies that which affords rules for private intercourse; not to reveal by the ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... was nothing more or less than the ordinary Oxford poet, of the quieter type. In Walter Savage Landor, authority recognised a noisier and rowdier specimen of the same class. People who have to do with hundreds of young men at a time are unavoidably compelled to generalise. No don, that was a don, could have seen Shelley or Landor as they are described to us without hastily classing them in the category of poets who would come to no good and do little credit to the college. Landor went up to Trinity College in 1793. ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... generalise, but the American people, while infinitely generous, are a hard and strong race and, but for the few cemeteries I have seen, I am inclined to think they never die. They thrive in rooms as hot as conservatories, can sit up all night, ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... white-washed—or rather enamelled. I think they had no qualities, as a generation (or rather as several generations, which, of course, they were); men and women then were, in the main, the same as men and women to-day, I see nothing but individuals. The rest is all the fantasy of the foolish, who love to generalise, till they cannot see the trees for the wood. Generalisations make me dizzy. I see nothing but the separate trees. There ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... was laid without scruple or hesitation on God's altar, and not one of these tricky priests durst have taken it to Court in order to secure favour there. Generalise that, and it comes to this—the gifts that we lavish on men are the condemnation of the gifts that we bring to God; and further, we should be ashamed to offer to men what we are not in the least ashamed to bring to God. Let me illustrate in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... noticed also that the invagination-opening often became the definitive anus. Further instances of this mode of development were later observed by Metschnikoff[430] and by Kowalevsky[431] himself, but it was left to Haeckel to generalise these observations and build up from them his famous Gastraea theory. This was first enunciated in his monograph of the calcareous sponges,[432] and worked out in detail in a series of ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... the occasion and taken to my heels. As it was, he gave me, as the gods gave Demodocus, "both good and evil." That is to say, he deprived me of my money, leaving me in exchange a new sensation, and something interesting to write about. If I were to generalise about brigands, I should do so thus: Brigands, I should say, are of medium height, slightly but firmly built; they wear mutton-chop whiskers, and are dressed in brown; they carry their luggage—their shaving tackle, I suppose, and their pyjamas—in ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... critic should decide first whether the author tells lies specifically about any of the people in his story, and second, provided that the playwright passes the first test successfully, whether he allures the audience to generalise falsely in regard to life at large from the specific circumstances of his play. These two questions are the only ones that need to be decided. This is the crux of the whole matter. And it has been ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... it very briefly given with two extremes of the peacock and black grouse. A more general statement is given at p. 101, or at p. 89 of the first edition, for I have long entertained this view, though I have never had space to develop it. But I had not sufficient knowledge to generalise as far as you do about colouring and nesting. In your paper, perhaps you will just allude to my scanty remark in the fourth edition, because in my essay upon Man I intend to discuss the whole subject of sexual selection, explaining, as ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... developments. The Latin mind is directer than the English, and its standards—shall I say?—more primitive; it gets more directly to the fact that here are men who will not fight. And it is less charitable. I was asked quite a number of times for the English equivalent of an embusque. "We don't generalise," I said, "we treat each ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... Hugh, "I have no idea what you are speaking of, and I confess it sounds to me very dull. I have never been able to generalise. I find it easy enough to make friends with homely and simple people, but I think I have no idea of the larger scheme. I can only see the little bit of the pattern that I can hold in my hand. Every human ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... unconscious and ill-performed process of sampling. It may therefore be made correct by being subjected to the conditions of a well-performed process of sampling. We must examine the cases on which we propose to found a generalisation and ask ourselves. What right have we to generalise? That is, what reason have we for assuming that the characteristic discovered in these cases will occur in the remaining thousands of cases? that the cases chosen resemble the average? The only valid reason would be that these cases are representative of the whole. We are thus ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... that he does not limit himself to the greater cities, but also, and perhaps by preference, deals with the smaller, and with their physical environment; and, above all, that he attempts not merely to observe closely and thoroughly, but to generalise as the result of his observation. In biology, the study of any single organism, however minute and accurate, could reveal no laws (i.e., no general facts) of structure or function. As for instance, many forms of heart must ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... endeavours to be scrupulously fair to his naval fellow-countrymen; but his conviction is apparent. It hardly admits of doubt that this view has generally been, and still is, prevalent in the French Army. Foreign soldiers of talent and experience generalise from this as follows: Let them but have the direction of the naval as well as of the military part of an expedition, and the invasion of England must be successful. The complete direction which they would like is exactly ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... generalise too widely," urged the other. "There are plays where one's sensibilities are really touched, where the situations are not forced, where the performers move and speak like living, ordinary human beings, and, ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... is simply to know whether this observation of fact should be generalised or not. We may, it seems to me, decline to generalise it without falling into a contradiction in terms. It may be conceived that the objects which we are looking at continue to exist, without change, during the moments when we have lost sight of them. This seems reasonable enough, and is the ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... automaton-like people; his inadequacy and distaste for a task that grew day by day more painful. His own knowledge was so hesitating, so uncertain, too slight for self-confidence, just too much and too fresh to allow him to generalise with the unthinking assurance that was demanded of him. Yet had anyone, he asked himself, more obstacles to overcome than he, in his efforts to set himself free? This silent, undemonstrative father, who surrounded himself with an unscalable wall of indifference; this hard-faced, careworn ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... admit, indeed, that even these fallacies may apply to particular cases in which they may represent partial truths; and I also agree that, as sometimes stated, the wage fund theory was not only a truism, but a fruitless truism. It was, however, as I believe, an attempt to generalise a very pertinent and important doctrine, as to the way in which the actual competition in which labourers and employers are involved, actually operates. If so, it requires rather modification than indiscriminate denunciation; and ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the Hebrew, will remain to the latest generation among the great teachers of men. He was born into the first rank among nations; he had an eye quick to see, a mind clear, open, and bold to grasp facts, set them in order, and generalise their law; an instinct for art that turned all his observation and thinking into literature. Whether he looked at the world about him or fixed his gaze upon his own nature, his insight was from the very beginning so direct, so commanding, so perfectly allied with beauty, that his ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... conclusion that "every heavenly body without exception, sun, planet, satellite, comet, fixed star, or nebula, is inhabited, and must be so from the inherent constitution of things." After which the passage continues, "It is true there are cases in which, with acknowledged propriety, we generalise from a single instance to a multitude of instances. But they must be instances which resemble the one known instance, and not such as have no circumstance in common with it except that of being instances.... But the supporters of the volition theory ask us to infer that volition causes ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... you can't help me," he said. "But I tell you, because unsuccessful and superfluous people like me find their salvation in talking. I have to generalise about everything I do. I'm bound to look for an explanation and justification of my absurd existence in somebody else's theories, in literary types—in the idea that we, upper-class Russians, are degenerating, for instance, and so on. Last night, for example, I ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... very easy indeed to generalise about a class or human beings, but much harder to produce a sample. Was old Lady Forthundred, for instance, fairly a sample? I remember her as a smiling, magnificent presence, a towering accumulation of figure and wonderful shimmering blue silk and black lace and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells |
