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Negative   Listen
verb
Negative  v. t.  (past & past part. negatived; pres. part. negativing)  
1.
To prove unreal or untrue; to disprove. "The omission or infrequency of such recitals does not negative the existence of miracles."
2.
To reject by vote; to refuse to enact or sanction; as, the Senate negatived the bill.
3.
To neutralize the force of; to counteract.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Negative" Quotes from Famous Books



... oscillation between atheism and Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism is indeed a great and fixed and formidable system, but so is atheism. Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas, more daring than the vision of a palpable day of judgment. For it is the assertion of a universal negative; for a man to say that there is no God in the universe is like saying that there are no insects in any ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton

... possible that a king or an aristocracy may soon be saturated with the objects of their desires, and may then protect the community in the enjoyment of the rest? Mr Mill answers in the negative. He proves, with great pomp, that every man desires to have the actions of every other correspondent to his will. Others can be induced to conform to our will only by motives derived from pleasure or from pain. The infliction of pain is of course direct injury; and, even if ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... in the negative, though in her heart she wished he had dismissed him. She could not meet his eyes before a third person. It added ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... her head, and from a corner of the room where the brothers' weapons stood, selected a hunting-spear. She asked if this weapon might be recognized as belonging to them, and, on their answering in the negative, said: ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... especially good for all matters relating to gold-mining.... The Sun negative rules the emerald, the musical note D sharp, and the number four. The lunar hours are a good time to deal in public commodities, and to hire ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... produce superstition. But the spread of this class of superstition in certain districts, and not in others, is indicative of an ancient origin, and it is exactly what might be expected to have been produced from totem-peoples. Unfortunately, neither the negative evidence of superstitious beliefs nor the local distribution of superstitious beliefs has ever been considered worthy of attention. But some little evidence is incidentally forthcoming, and I would submit that this may be taken as indicative of what might be obtained more fully by further ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... intimation, that the reserve under which he had placed his disposition for gallantry, since the morning of the proposed duel, had not altogether effaced the recollection of his previous conduct. He hastened to put a strong negative upon a proposal which appeared so much to embarrass her. "It is impossible for me, indeed, Sir Henry, to use Alice's services—I must walk as if blood-hounds were at ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... them certain advantages—advantages which they had without winning a decisive victory. Germany and Austria were cut off from the Western Hemisphere, and were troubled, in consequence, by shortage in food for their civilian populations to a greater or lesser degree. This was perhaps a negative benefit derived by the Allies from their naval supremacy; the affirmative benefit was that their own communications with the Western Hemisphere were maintained, enabling them not only to get food for their civilian populations, but arms and munitions for their ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... I was awake, and yet I felt too languid to open my eyes. I was little more than barely conscious of existence, and I rather enjoyed this negative condition of complete inertia. The thought floated through my mind that I was like a new-born child, that knows nothing, fears nothing, thinks nothing, but simply breathes, and I felt so tired and "gone" that I coveted an ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... gentleman who walks in my shoes—there's what I call a friendship beyond question. Well, my good fellow, if you should ever have need of discretion, understand that there are two sorts of discretion—the active and the negative. Negative discretion is that of fools who make use of silence, negation, an air of refusal, the discretion of locked doors—mere impotence! Active discretion proceeds by affirmation. Suppose at the club ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac

... Bench which is to serve as Bench of First Instance shall investigate the matter with regard to the question whether the case is more political than legal in nature. If the Court decides the question in the negative, then the same Court shall give judgment on the dispute; but, if the Court decides the question in the affirmative, then the case shall be referred by the Court to the International Council of Conciliation. Whatever the decision of the Bench of First Instance may be, each ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim

... quiet kind hung in the corners, one a large grey photograph of a very young man in uniform, another a red chalk sketch of two long-haired boys. Asked by Flambeau whether the soldierly person was the prince, the butler answered shortly in the negative; it was the prince's younger brother, Captain Stephen Saradine, he said. And with that the old man seemed to dry up suddenly and ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... to land and explore this picturesque island; the weather is so fine, and the waving groves of green, the little rocky bays and inlets of the island, appear so tempting; but to all my entreaties the visiting surgeon who came on board returned a decided negative. ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... this part of the subject. While assuring him that he might make himself perfectly easy, and that his innocence in the matter would beyond all doubt be fully recognised, he had preferred to lead him to imagine that the result of the trial would be altogether negative; that it would be found that no case that would warrant a conviction should be made out ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... to the peril of their souls. Just how and when the saga attached itself to the historical minnesinger Tannhuser is not known. Urban IV, referred to in the last stanza, was pope from 1261 to 1265. 43: A form of the old negative particle; en nit nicht. 44: Jemands ... Ihr, 'any one but you.' 45: Bleiben. 46: Equivalent to gleichgltig. 47: The legendary old man, faithful Eckart, who warns of danger and rebukes ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... was reminding us that a year ago she was wrestling with the servant question, and Cheon coming by, we indulged in a negative anniversary. "A year ago, Cheon," we said "there was no Cheon in our lives," and Cheon pitied our former forlorn condition as only Cheon could, at the same time asking us what could be expected of one of ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... is not the negative right of being without any particular religion, just as self-government is not anarchy. It is the right of religious communities to the practice of their own duties, the enjoyment of their own constitution, and the protection of the law, which equally secures ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... portraits of his feminine ancestors that he might decide, as one without bias, whether Matocton had ever boasted a more delectable mistress. Equity—or in his fond eyes at least,—demanded a negative. Only in one of these canvases, a counterfeit of Miss Evelyn Ramsay, born a Ramsay of Blenheim, that had married the common great-great-grandfather of both the colonel and Patricia—Major Orlando Musgrave, an aide-de-camp to General Charles Lee in the Revolution,—Rudolph ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... pas desagreables." In another place, it is added, "Il paroit manquer de jugement et de resolution:" an opinion, unhappily, too correct.[58] On the question being put by Bolingbroke to the Duke of Berwick, whether the Prince was a bigot, the answer was in the negative. "Then," said Bolingbroke, "we shall have no objection to place him on the throne." This anecdote, which was told by the Chevalier himself to Brigadier Nugent, probably gave countenance to the rumour spread in England, that James was likely to renounce the Catholic ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... acquired since the age of Lucretius is enormous, and is infinitely valuable; while our power of tabulating, methodising, and extending the sphere of experimental knowledge seems to be unlimited. Only ontological deductions, whether negative or affirmative, remain pretty ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... double negative, as often used, merely intensified the negation. See "Measure for ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... Allies, those powers, and in developing those virtues, which were producing themselves by a natural process, and to which these breathings of insult must have been a deadly check and interruption. Nor would the evil be merely negative; for the interference of professed friends, acting in this manner, must have superinduced dispositions and passions, which were alien to the condition of the Portugueze;—scattered weeds which could not have been found upon the soil, if our ignorant hands ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... your respected mother is the same way of thinking. It's that that emboldens me to be so sudden. Not but what my heart has been yours and yours only all along, before the old lady so much as mentioned it." Clara would give him no assistance, not even the aid of a negative, but stood there quite passive, with her hand on the door. "Since I first had the pleasure of seeing you I have always said to myself, 'Augustus Musselboro, that is the woman for you, if you can only win her.' But there was so much against ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... requests him to take advantage of his position to open a window. The players examine the tips of their cues in sudden silence. The Colonel refuses the offer of six vacated chairs with a slightly impatient negative and inquires as to the probable length of the game. He accepts the obvious untruth that it has just ended, smiles with satisfaction, and proposes to the Adjutant a game of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various

... fully, whereas only a few can be devoted to the purpose here. "The Hina-yana Sutra is intended for beginners; the Maha-yana for those more advanced in the path of the law." The teaching in the former is negative; in the latter, positive. In the Hina-yana the perfect path is to abstain from four things—women, palaces, beautiful objects, and riches. In the Maha-yana perfect virtue is the presence of four things—the spirit of wisdom, the love of virtue, patience and firmness, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... FOEDUS: this seems opposed to pacem as a formal engagement is to a mere abstention from hostilities. — NON DUBITAVIT DICERE: when dubitare means 'to hesitate' (about a course of action), and the sentence is negative, or an interrogative sentence assuming a negative answer, the infinitive construction generally follows, as here; but the infinitive is rare in a positive sentence. When dubitare means to 'be in doubt' (as to whether certain statements are true or not), the regular construction is either quin with subj. or some ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... wished to see the present which had been put in twelve boxes. Greatly excited and enraged by a picture of myself, which represented me armed and with a cane in my hand, he asked in a loud voice whether this were intended as a threat. He was answered in the negative, but that it was a custom of persons who held high offices to send their portraits as tokens of regard and friendship when embassies were despatched. Thereupon he was appeased, and ordered the picture to be placed in a large hall, and directed his wives ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair

... the negative catalogue was very copious. Here was no meat, no milk, no bread, no eggs, no wine. We did not express much satisfaction. Here however we were to stay. Whisky we might have, and I believe at last they caught a fowl and killed it. We had ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... singularly negative so far as its results were expressed in the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement. These celebrated constitutional documents made little provision for national self-government. One king, it ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... statesman-philosopher of the seventh century, who had also taught the Tao. The immemorial Chinese idea had been that the Universe is made of the interplay of two forces, Yang and Yin, positive and negative;—or simply the Higher and the Lower natures. To the Yang, the Higher, belong the Shen or gods,—all conscious beneficent forces within and without man. To the Yin or lower belong the kwei, the opposite of gods: fan means foreign; and Fan Kwei is the familiar Chinese term for white men. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... insisted on this measure. I shall return by Bordeaux, Nantes and L'Orient, to get the necessary information for finishing our commercial regulations here. Permit me, however, to ask as immediately as possible, an answer, either affirmative or negative, as Congress shall think best, and to ascribe the delay on which I venture, to my desire to do what is ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... when she had courted privation, when she had thought all longing, all impatience was subdued; but that condition seemed irrecoverably gone, and she recoiled from the remembrance of it. No prayer, no striving now, would bring back that negative peace; the battle of her life, it seemed, was not to be decided in that short and easy way,—by perfect renunciation at the very threshold of ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... neighbouring village he consorted much for a time with some followers of William Law, who had not long before passed away in a village in the neighbourhood, and select passages from whose writings the Moravian minister, Francis Okely, of Northampton, had versified. These completed the negative process. "I felt ruined and helpless." Then to his spiritual eyes, purged of self, there appeared the Crucified One; and to his spiritual intelligence there was given the Word of God. The change was that wrought on Paul by a Living Person. It converted the hypocritical ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... account also she must go. And then she must go also because of Major Grantly. Whether he was minded to come and speak to her that one other needed word, or whether he was not so minded, it would be better that she should be away from Silverbridge. If he spoke it she could only answer him by a negative; and if he were minded not to speak it, would it not be better that she should leave herself the power of thinking that his silence had been caused by her absence, and not by his ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... to which I can give no distinct information, or, at least, only information of a negative kind. I once sent out a small quantity of the muriate of potash, but my manager could perceive no effects from it whatever, and I have been informed of an instance of its having been applied to an estate in Coorg at the rate of one quarter of a pound a tree, or at the rate of between ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... is there?" said Mrs. Upjohn, looking up sharply from her embroidery. She always contradicted, if only for argument's sake, so that even her assents usually took a negative form. "It's enough if he's able to put out a fire in that Church. It doesn't take much of a man, I understand, to fill an Episcopalian pulpit." (Nobody had ever yet been able to teach the good dame the difference between Episcopal ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... percentage of sugar? Will future varieties of wheat and other grain produce heavier crops than our present varieties? These questions cannot be positively answered; but it is certain that we ought to be cautious in answering by a negative. In some lines of variation the limit has probably been reached. Youatt believes that the reduction of bone in some of our sheep has already been carried so far that it entails great delicacy of constitution.[595] But seeing the great improvement within recent times ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... his shoulders, "the wind is blowing in that direction, then? Prussia asked me if she would cause us any trouble by tolerating the French princes within her boundaries. I replied in the negative; and when Prussia went further and asked whether we should feel offended or not, if she paid an annual pension to the Bourbons, I permitted even that on condition that the princes remained quiet and did not carry on any intrigues. They believed, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... Hazel. 'Nobody can teach me anything about complications!Push him off, sir. Just give him a negative and do not ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... to whom she applied was German and shook his head with a forcible negative. So he, too, moved on and she stopped to think and recover some portion of that courage which ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond

... saw Lady Constantine walk this way,' he rejoined to Tabitha's negative. 'I am very anxious ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... warning given him by Miss Horn, and the strange influence her presence had had on his grandfather, Malcolm preferred keeping up a negative ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... begged them to go at once to the place de l'Eveche, escorted by the first company, which was on guard at the town hall. They agreed, and set off. On the way several shots were fired at them, but no one was hit. When they arrived at the square, the cebets fired a volley at them with the same negative result. Up the three principal streets which led to the palace numerous red-tufts were hurrying; the first company took possession of the ends of the streets, and being fired at returned the fire, repulsing the assailants and clearing the square, with the loss of one ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Azol's fate might be one of the things that had given her a negative attitude towards plasmoids. With Mantelish and Doctor Gess Fayle, Azol had been the third of the three big U-League boys in charge of the initial investigation on Harvest Moon. As she remembered it, it was Azol who discovered that Plasmoids ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... law, and deals with sins of commission. The other, which we are now discussing, is the negative, and deals with sins of omission. It does not say anything about sowing but about not sowing. It takes up the case of souls which are lying fallow. It does not say, if we sow corruption we shall reap corruption. Perhaps we would not be so unwise, so regardless of ourselves, of public opinion, ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... told them what had happened. Pencroft, seizing the telescope, rapidly swept the horizon, and stopping on the indicated point, that is to say, on that which had made the almost imperceptible spot on the photographic negative...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... Johnson observes, "I put down at his [the Nabob Fyzoola Khan's] particular desire, but otherwise useless; as my orders" (which orders do not appear) "were, not to receive any palliation, but a negative or affirmative": though such palliation, as it is called by the said Johnson, might be, as it was, in the strictest conformity ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... German, as he turned a wheel which directed the negative gravity force against the surface of the ground and tilted up the nose of the Annihilator, as a skyrocket is slanted in a trough before the fuse ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood

... always, overhead, there is the eternal, negative radiance of the snows. Beneath is life, the hot jet of the blood playing elaborately. But above is the radiance of changeless not-being. And life passes away into this changeless radiance. Summer and the prolific blue-and-white flowering of the earth ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... certainly inferred from what Clarendon said this afternoon at your house, that he had pretty well made up his mind to a negative answer, and I could only say to you that which I said to Derby when he asked me to join him, that I should be very unwilling, in the present state of our Foreign relations, to belong to any Government in which the management of our ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... Lamb:* 'If Christ entered the room I should fall on my knees;' and again, in those of Napoleon: 'I am an understander of men, and he was no man.' He has even added: 'If he had been, he would have been an impostor.' But the arguments, in great part negative, set forth in 'La Saisiaz' for the immortality of the soul, leave no place for the idea, however indefinite, of a Christian revelation on the subject. Christ remained for Mr. Browning a mystery and a message of Divine Love, but no messenger ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... and sympathetic in town, had grown steadier and clearer in the open air. His short curly beard and yellow hair had reddened in the sun and wind. The pleasant vigor of his person was always delightful to her, something to signal to and laugh with in a world of negative people. With Fred she was never becalmed. There was always life in the air, always something coming and going, a rhythm of feeling and action,—stronger than the natural accord of youth. As she looked at him, leaning against the sunny wall, she felt a desire to be frank with ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... for the negative pole of Being—the very negation of Pure Spirit, and opposing it in every way. We shall see the part played by it in the astral colors as ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi

... of these mountains are very high. During my stay in Canada, I asked many people who have traveled much in North America whether they ever met with mountains so high that the snow never melts on them in summer, to which they always answered in the negative. They say that the snow sometimes stays on the highest, viz., on some of those between Canada and the English colonies during a part of the summer, but that it melts as soon as the great ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... "That is a very negative sort of goodness," returned May, smiling. "However, if you must go to see some one, Jamieson is better than Smithers; but why not come home and consult ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... do more than answer your question in the direct negative," was the firm reply. "I will assure you that no such ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... of religion from the bishops, and had communicated with great self-possession; he scarcely spoke now, and breathed with difficulty. "Can this last long?" he asked the physician, who made a sign in the negative. He had sent for the Earl of Portland, Bentinek, his oldest and most faithful friend; when he arrived, the king took his hand and held it between both his own, upon his heart. Thus he remained for a few moments; then he yielded up his great spirit to God, on the 19th (8th) of March, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... the old, solemn thought that character makes capacity for heaven. 'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place?' asked the Psalmist; and a prophet put the question in a still sharper form, and by the very form of the question suggested a negative answer—'Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire; who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?' Who can pass into that Presence, and stand near God, without being, like the maiden in the old legend, shrivelled into ashes by the contact of the celestial fire? 'Holiness' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... sketch, etching, chromolithograph, pasticcio, tableau, portrait, illustration, cyclorama, silhouette, carte-de-visite, minette, caricature, vignette, draught, aquarelle, thermotype, tintype, ambrotype, cabinet, heliograph, chrysotype, photogravure, oleograph, cut, negative, study, likeness, scene, landscape, view, stereogram, stereograph, panorama, aristotype, heliotype, diorama, diaphanotype, decalcomania, mosaic, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... finance, originate ordinarily with the Chancellor and the Bundesrath; the procedure followed in the shaping of revenue and military measures puts the Reichstag distinctly at a disadvantage; and, at the best, the part which the chamber can play in the public policy of the Empire is negative and subsidiary. It can block legislation and discuss at length the policy of the Government, but it is not vested by the constitution with power sufficient to make it an effective instrument of control. It is within the competence of the Bundesrath, with the assent of the Emperor, to dissolve ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... reticence. Even during our walk to the police office he debated several times with Johnson, the third officer, whether he ought not to give up himself, as well as to denounce the captain. He had decided in the negative, arguing that "it would probably come to nothing; and even if there was a stink, he had plenty good friends in San Francisco." And to nothing it came; though it must have very nearly come to something, for Mr. Nares disappeared immediately from view, and was scarce less closely hidden ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 'A complete negative,' added Havill, brightening into a civil sneer. 'That is, he would be, if he were not a maker of ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... the Americans. In 1776 it was openly debated in parliament whether British officers ought to serve their sovereign against the Americans, and no less a person then General Conway leaned decidedly to the negative, and compared the case to that of French officers who were employed in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Just after the battle of Bunker Hill, the duke of Richmond declared in parliament that he "did not think that the Americans were in rebellion, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... microscopic examinations showed the absence of fungi or bacteria in the vascular system or other plant tissues. The browning in the vascular bundles appeared to be confined to the phloem tissue. All attempts to culture a pathogenic fungus or bacterium from affected tissue was negative. Portions of diseased plants with discolored vascular bundles were placed in a damp chamber and no fungus or bacterial growth developed from the vascular system. From these field and laboratory studies, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various

... can't be decided in the affirmative, it will never be decided in the negative. You know that that is the peculiarity of your heart, and all its suffering is due to it. But thank the Creator who has given you a lofty heart capable of such suffering; of thinking and seeking higher things, for our dwelling is in the heavens. God ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the last straw. The question could not be answered except in the negative, for if the ordination of the Apostles be not recorded after the Resurrection [John twenty 21-23], then there is no record of their having been ordained at all. To be put in a corner in this manner was more than a ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... that lady, but the sight of a negress I had seen before, I should have hailed with rapture in so desolate and inhospitable a place. If my pleasure at seeing Lady Harriett was great, her's seemed equally so at receiving my salutation. She asked me if I knew Lady Chester—and on my negative reply, immediately introduced me to that personage. I now found myself quite at home; my spirits rose, and I exerted every nerve to be as charming as possible. In youth, to endeavour ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... elderly, with white hair and side whiskers. The other two were young and well dressed. The girl was of our best patrician type—the type that may know little, think little, say little, and generally amount to little, and yet carry its negative qualities with so used an air of polite society as to raise them by sheer force to the dignity of positive virtues. From head to foot she was faultlessly groomed. From eye to attitude she was languidly superior—the impolitic would ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... dozen little girls in one. A romp, a chatterbox, a living question mark, a philosopher, a dreamer, a veritable angel, all these and many more change places rapidly in the child's mood. She is taken to the photographer's for her portrait, and the negative shows only a sober little face intently anxious to look pleasant. A more fortunate photographer may perhaps catch her expression of eager interest as some curious new toy is shown her. But that innocent smile of happiness that comes into her face when singing, or that far-away ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... conflict of September—only, here and there, in an unploughed field, or among the fresh brown furrows, a little mound with a wooden cross and a wreath on it. Nevertheless, one begins to perceive, by certain negative signs, that one is already in another world. On the cold February day when we turned out of Meaux and took the road to the Argonne, the change was chiefly shown by the curious absence of life in the villages through which we passed. Now and then a lonely ploughman and his team stood ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... position of the American short story as compared with the English short story, I am more impressed than ever with the leadership maintained by American artists in this literary form. Mr. James Stephens has been criticising us for our curiously negative achievement in novel writing. He has compared the American novelist with the English novelist and found him wanting. He is compelled to deny literary distinction to the American novel, and he makes a sweeping indictment of American fiction in consequence. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... replied in the negative, qualifying it a moment afterward by a perplexed "Well, I ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... as well as theoretical, including the historical and physiological aspects of gastronomy be acquired in one year. Richard Gollmer, another Apicius editor, declares that the results of this course in gastronomy were negative. We might add here that Schuch's edition of Apicius, apart from the unwarranted inclusion of the excerpta of Vinidarius is the ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... of those whose mental powers are strong, and whose bodily frame is yet stronger—a conjunction of forces often detrimental to a literary career in an age of intellectual predominance. His temper was good and bad; his pride was humility; his humility was pride; his vanity, in being negative, was of the most positive kind. He was reticent and candid, measured in speech, with an emphasis that makes trifles significant. Borrow was essentially hypochondriacal. Society he loved and hated alike; he loved ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt

... decisions, except in the Comitia Tributa, where the plebeian interest predominated—an assembly representing the thirty Roman tribes, according to the Servian constitution, but which, at first, had insignificant powers. The persons of the tribunes were inviolable, but their power was negative. They could not originate laws; they could insure the equitable administration of the laws, and prevent wrongs. They had a constitutional veto, of great use at the time, but which ended in a series ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... embryologists of different persuasions. It is perhaps easy to underestimate the impact and general importance of Harvey's work in view of these qualifications, and so it should be remarked that both positive and negative features of De Generatione ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer

... to negative the positive is the height of folly, but fools will deny anything and everything save their own wit. It does not follow that because one palmist has been at fault, all palmists are at fault. I believe ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry and reading of the newspapers—for what are the libraries of science but files of newspapers?—a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his memory, and then when in some spring of his life he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... enjoying the negative luxury of being liberated from a ship, at the Fountain Inn, I strolled about the place. You know that I had twice visited England professionally before I was eighteen; and, on one occasion, the ship I was in anchored off this very island, though not at this precise spot. I now thought ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Oliphant, whether he would recant his opinions, he answered in the negative, saying, He would sooner forfeit ten thousand lives, than relinquish a particle of those heavenly principles he had received from the suffrages of his ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... devil which is worth all the prettiness in the world; and, what is worst of all, you miss sex. His young ladies are not womanly to nearly the same degree as his men are masculine; they are so in a negative sense; in short, they are the typical young ladies ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... governing the action of Life, as a tendency to individuation, is here designated polarity; for instance, the power termed magnetism (not meaning that there is necessarily an actual tangible magnet in the case) has two poles, the negative, answering to attraction, rest, carbon, &c., and the positive, answering to repulsion, mobility, azote, &c.; and as the magnetic needle which points to the north necessarily indicates thereby the south, so the power disposing to rest has necessarily a counteracting influence disposing ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... it must, in its attempt at self-realization, meet the constraint which the community, whose only object is likewise self-realization and self-preservation, puts upon all within its power. The law is negative and repressive, self-interest is positive and assertive; between the two there is no possible reconciliation—at most a compromise—so that in the last analysis it appears that the assertion of individual will as such is immoral, that is, contrary to the will of the community; and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... who truly loved each other were cast away upon a desert island, he would tire of her long before she wearied of him. The sequence of attraction and repulsion, the ultimate balance of positive and negative, are familiar electrical phenomena. Is it unreasonable to suppose that the supreme form of attraction is ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed

... that twining stems have a dull kind of irritability, so that they bend towards any object which they touch; but this is denied by Palm. Even before reading Mohl's interesting treatise, this view seemed to me so probable that I tested it in every way that I could, but always with a negative result. I rubbed many shoots much harder than is necessary to excite movement in any tendril or in the foot-stalk of any leaf climber, but without any effect. I then tied a light forked twig to a shoot of a Hop, a Ceropegia, Sphaerostemma, and Adhatoda, so that the fork pressed on one side alone ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin

... "surface," or identical susceptibility, of this ebbing and flowing stream of emotion is memory; but the emotion itself, divided into the positive and negative "pole," as we say of love and malice, is an actual projection upon the objective universe of the intrinsic "stuff" or psycho-material "substance" of which the substratum of the soul is actually composed. The other ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... her two neighbours, while the weak-eyed child, and the pale sewing girl who had helped to finish Evelina's wedding dress, took turns in minding the shop. Every morning, when her friends appeared, Ann Eliza lifted her head to ask: "Is there a letter?" and at their gentle negative sank back in silence. Mrs. Hawkins, for several days, spoke no more of her promise to consult her husband as to the best way of tracing Mrs. Hochmuller; and dread of fresh disappointment kept Ann Eliza from ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... last negative thought of the day. It came to him then and there with cruel, biting plainness, that no one else in the house felt as he did toward his chief treasure. Allan didn't. He had spent hardly a moment with it. Clytie didn't; he had seen her pick it up when she dusted the sitting-room; there was sacrilege ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... for the apprehension of delinquents, a sincere desire of promoting the end of public justice induces me to address a word to them on the best means of attaining those ends. I will endeavor to lay down a few practical, or rather negative, rules for their use, for my ambition extends no further than to arm them with cautions against the self-defeating ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... of the West and Northwest, destroyed the hopes of the secession element in Kentucky, renewed the drooping spirits of the East Tennesseans, and demoralized the disunionists in Middle Tennessee; yet it was a negative victory so far as concerned the result on the battle-field. Rosecrans seems to have planned the battle with the idea that the enemy would continue passive, remain entirely on the defensive, and that it was necessary only to push forward our left in ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... almost needless question whether Clarence had been with his brother on these occasions, there was a most decided negative. He had never gone out with Griffith except once to the theatre, and to dine at the Castlefords, and at first he had sat up for his return, 'but it led to words between the young gentlemen,' said Peter, whose confidences ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... inquire who I might be. Finally, he came up to me and said that as I bore a striking resemblance to a family of Stanburys, he was induced to inquire if I was connected with them. I was sorry to be obliged to answer in the negative. At another place they took me for a lawyer in search of a place to settle, and strongly recommended their own village. Moreover, I heard some of the students at Yale College conjecturing that I was an Englishman, and to-day, as I was standing ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... are equivalent to 100 of the given colour; and the sum of V, U, E gives a coefficient, which gives a general idea of the brightness. It will be seen that the first admixture of yellow diminishes the brightness of the blue. The negative values of U indicate that a mixture of V, U, and E cannot be made equivalent to the given colour. The experiments from which these results were taken had the negative values transferred to the other side of the equation. They were all made by means of the colour-top, ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell

... that the pictures, or negatives, are taken on a continuous strip of celluloid film in a specially prepared camera, which takes views at the rate of sixteen per second. Then, after this long strip of negative is developed, a positive, as it is called, is made, and this is run through the projecting machine in the theatre. Thus, by means of powerful lenses, and intense lights, the miniature pictures, less than an inch in width, are ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope

... property-man or assistant director, a very realistic storm scene can be secured. Many extremely realistic rainstorm effects can also be arranged for exterior scenes, and as for lightning—sheet, forked, or any other variety—it is one of the easiest things to "get" imaginable. The mere scratching of the negative film with a pin, throughout the number of frames covering the flash of the lightning, the scratching, of course, being in the shape the lightning is to take, makes it possible to have thrillingly natural stabs of fork and chain lightning just where it is needed in any ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... way of negative argument as against the reputed differences between Biological and other methods. No such differences, I believe, really exist. The subject-matter of Biological science is different from that of other sciences, but the methods of all ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... am of the difficulty of disproving a negative, and aware as I must be of the weighty grounds there are for opposing my belief, it still seems to me that the Homeric question is one that is reserved for a higher criticism than it has often obtained. We are ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... seemed that the answer would be negative, for he disappeared behind some dense shrubbery on the plain below and seemed to be on the point of passing the hill. But just at the edge of the shrubbery Mustard suddenly swerved and came directly toward ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer

... the Arabic philosophers into two schools. Maimonides naturally espoused the view permitting the most exalted conception of God, that is, the conception of God free from human attributes. He recognizes none but negative attributes; in other words, he defines God by means of negations only. For instance, asserting that the Supreme Being is omniscient or omnipotent, is not investing Him with a positive attribute, it is ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... which at times was very like imbecility. His income allowed him to do no good to the parish, whether in work, trade, or charity; and thus he had no moral weight with the parishioners beyond the example of his sinless life, and such negative effect as might be produced by his slumberous exhortations. Therefore his parishioners troubled him very little; and but for the influence which, in hours of Montfydget activity, Mrs. Leslie exercised ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... laboriously gathered from the tears of tortured experience, had become an obsession. She was silent, brooding over it; but she herself was there, larger, less puzzling and negative than hitherto,—an awakening force. The man lost his anchor of convention and traditional reasoning. He felt with her an excitement, a thirst for this evanescent ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... accordance with the dictates of their collective wisdom. [535:2] The bishop of after-times rather resembled a despotic sovereign in the midst of his counsellors. He might ask the advice of the presbyters, and condescend to defer to their recommendations; but he could also negative their united resolutions, and cause the refractory quickly to feel ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... a negative response from the first. 'Though they say she's a rosy-cheeked, tisty-tosty little body enough,' she added; and as the milkmaid spoke she turned her face so that she could glance past her cow's tail to the other side of the barton, where a thin, fading ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... the paths through which learning and genius press forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress. Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... Lady Audley's departure, the two young men (one of whom was disabled by that heart wound which he bore so quietly, from really taking pleasure in anything, and the other of whom looked upon almost all pleasure as a negative kind of trouble) began to grow weary of the shade of the willows overhanging the ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... Ireland—a haughty boast, not quite so easily accomplished. His speech was repeated to the King of Leinster, who inquired "if the king, in his great threatening, had added, 'if it so please God'?" The reporter answered in the negative. "Then," said he, "seeing this king putteth his trust only in man, and not in God, I fear not his coming." When Dermod Mac Murrough was driven in disgrace from Ireland, he fled at once to Bristol. There he learned that Henry was still ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... that it "could legislate in all cases to which the separate States are incompetent or in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual legislation," with power "to negative all laws passed by the several States contravening in the opinion of the national legislature the ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... and sometimes turtle, being all they procured. I inquired if they knew of any rivers or openings leading far inland, if they made charts of what they saw, or used any charts? To all which Pobassoo answered in the negative. There was a river at Timor, into which the ship could go; and he informed me of two turtle islands, one of them not far to the north-west of our situation in the road; the other would be seen from the mast head as we ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... being blown down by the hurricane, small fungi or other minute vegetation spring up in its rifts; every social shock of the day is promptly scened and 'tagged' at the minor theatres; and shall this war escape its novels? Mr. WOOD votes in the negative, and supplies us with a somewhat sensational yet not badly manufactured article, which, like the melo-dramas referred to, will be received with delight by a certain line of patrons, and, we presume, be also relished. It is a first-rate specimen of ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... congratulating himself on the picture he was about to take of four Chinese women in their native costumes, and was just going to make the exposure, when four Chinamen who were watching him deliberately stepped in front of the camera, completely spoiling the negative. The younger generation, and especially the girls, will occasionally pose for you, and a truly picturesque group they make in their queer mannish dress of bright colors, as they laugh and chatter in their ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson

... however, a freedom that the occasion doubtless scarce demands, though we may retain it for its rough negative value. It was to come to pass, by a pressure applied to the situation wholly from within, that before the first ten days of November had elapsed he found himself practically alone at Fawns with his young friend; Amerigo and Maggie having, with a certain abruptness, invited his assent ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... alone, both red-faced, flurried, shuffling along the sidewalks of Bourges. That was enough. For me she will always wear that look, that frock, that clumsy gait. Recollections, my good uncle, are not unlike instantaneous photographs; and this one is a distinct negative ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... avowed fact, that the publishers of the day will purchase the copyrights of only such works as "the libraries will take;" which libraries, besotted by the mystic charm of three volumes, immutable as the sacred triad of the Graces or Destinies, would negative without a division such a work as the "Vicar of Wakefield" were it now to undergo probation. "Robinson Crusoe" or "Paul and Virginia" would be returned unread to their authors, with a civil note of "extremely sorry to decline," &c. "The Man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... was none too proud to take the food in any way it might be offered, and when my humble "Orcheh, orcheh tchuen mangbo terokchi" ("Please give me some more") met with the disapproval of the Lamas, and brought out the everlasting negative, "Middu, middu," I was still too hungry to waste any of the precious food: so the Tibetans revolved the wooden bowl round and round my mouth, and I licked it as clean as if ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... that he owed him any gratitude. The balance of favors was on the other side. He had done more for Jack than Jack for him. He asked himself if he wanted to go with Jack Morgan on this journey, and he answered his own question in the negative. It was better that he should leave him now forever. With him he could only look forward to a ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger

... of governing still remaining in the hands of the king, he will have a negative over the whole legislation of this continent. And as he hath shewn himself such an inveterate enemy to liberty, and discovered such a thirst for arbitrary power; is he, or is he not, a proper man to say to these colonies, "YOU SHALL ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine

... rejection of ideas is necessary. But there are many works that have been tried for ages and found undoubtedly excellent. There are many men, also, who are acknowledged authorities in their specialties. In the case of such books and men, where little if any negative criticism is to be expected, cannot the student set out merely to enjoy the merits and not bother about the defects? Can he not, therefore, abandon the critical attitude and accept ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... all this calling a man a muddler, a groper, etc.... The very man who throws such words as these knows in his heart that he is also facing a wall." This remark seems to me both dignified and strong, yet it must be admitted that there was some justice in the negative responses to his later work. For what characterized it was not so much "groping" as the imitation of "groping," the self-caricature of a writer who feels driven back upon an earlier self that is, alas, no ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... A weary little negative sent her into the pantry, and soon the hungry lad was eating bread and butter and cheese and cookies, and feasting his eyes upon Polly at ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd

... view to a final return to it. Let me know soon, in a post or two, if possible, as well as the circuit you mean to go on.... Now as I have gone on with this scheme, I find myself grow warm on it, so do not throw cold water upon it by a negative. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... us as it is to answer the majority of our invitations in either the affirmative or negative, there are degrees of necessity even here, for, sin as we may in all other particulars, there is an unwritten code like unto the laws of the Medes and Persians which declareth that the invitations to a dinner are not to be lightly set aside. First, an invitation to ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... expressed during this time referred to a few topics only, namely, marriage, wealth, and State prison. The remarkable fact was that all the ideas about marriage and wealth were spoken of, often immediately, again after some interval, now in the positive and again in the negative sense. Thus she said she was "Mrs. S.," again "You kept me from marrying Mattie S.," or "I am not supposed to be here—I am a married person," but also "You kept me from getting married." Or, "Take off that black dress, I am a bride," again "You have taken my bridal crown off my ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch

... askit for the pipes?" old Donald whispered mysteriously; and, on receiving an answer in the negative, he looked reproachfully at the speaker. "She's waiting and retty," he would say; "and a good lilt on ta pipes would do her all ta petter ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... and calculations, they could at least whisper that Mr. Montague was very cunning, that it was not easy to track him, but that it might be taken for granted that for whatever he did he had some sinister motive, and that the safest course was to negative whatever he proposed. Though that House of Commons was economical even to a vice, the majority preferred paying high interest to paying low interest, solely because the plan for raising money at low interest had been framed by him. In a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... not offer that reasonable chance of reconciliation with the mass of the Irish people which might be a compensation for a repeal of the Union, and is as much opposed to the interests of Great Britain as would be the national independence of Ireland. This conclusion is a purely negative one, but it is, as far as English statesmen are concerned, the reductio ad impossibile of the case in favour of Home Rule in so far as Home Rule takes the form ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey

... umbrageous and old-fashioned. But of the district itself he knew next to nothing, save that up to the war it had been the favorite roosting-place of short-haired women and long-haired men. He wondered whether Maisie's hair was short. He decided in the negative. To have attracted three husbands in four and a half years she must be outwardly conventional. An unconventional woman might persuade one man to marry her, but not three in such rapid succession. She probably belonged to the apparently harmless, sympathetic, ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... draught, draft; pencil &c. drawing, water color drawing, etching, charcoal, pen-and-ink; sketch, outline, study. photograph, color photograph, black-and-white photograph, holograph, heliograph; daguerreotype, talbotype[obs3], calotype[obs3], heliotype[obs3]; negative, positive; print, glossy print, matte print; enlargement, reduction, life-size print; instant photo, Polaroid photo. technicolor, Kodachrome, Ektachrome; Polaroid. portrait &c. (representation) 554; whole length, full length, half length; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... danger for him in her presence? If he asked himself this question nowadays, he was able to answer boldly in the negative. There might have been a time of peril, just one perilous interval when he was in some danger of stumbling; but he had pulled himself up in time, with an admirable discretion, he thought, and now felt as bold as a lion. After that morning with Lady Geraldine ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... the social system and attempt to put it right. This sterile pitfall is now the temptation of the greatest minds. Your Shelley, your Coleridge, even your Byron,—what did they do? Menaced by this same vortex of negative effort, sentenced to intellectual annihilation if they attempted to straighten out the muddle of modernity, they fled, or drowned ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... plants have risen almost overnight, and on every hand there are miracles of rapid construction. The business is overshadowing all other activities. A leading merchant of Detroit asked a contractor the other day if he could do some work for him. On receiving a negative reply, he asked the reason, whereupon the man said: "These automobile people keep me so busy that I can't do anything else. I have a year's work ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... translated "noble" in Noble Path, Noble Truth, is ariya, which also means Aryan.[5] The negative, un-Aryan, is used of each of the two low aims. It is possible that this rendering should have been introduced into the translation; but the ethical meaning, though still associated with the tribal meaning, had probably already become predominant in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... labelled her as the Scarlet Woman, the Martyred Saint, the Jolly Bohemian, or the Bold Adventuress, my task would have been easy. But I had an uncomfortable feeling that Lola Brandt was not to be classified in so simple a fashion. I took refuge in a negative. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... my aunt Hervey, to supplicate her interest in my behalf, for my clothes, books, and money; signifying to her, 'That, if I may be restored to the favour of my family, and allowed a negative only, as to any man who may be proposed to me, and be used like a daughter, a niece, and a sister, I will stand by my offer to live single, and submit, as I ought, to a negative from my father.' Intimating, nevertheless, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... the Lady of the Mantle, I will lay a wager that the sun so bedazzled thine eyes on that memorable morning, that everything thou didst look upon seemed green; and notwithstanding James Wilkinson's experience in the Fusileers, as well as his negative whistle, I will venture to hold a crown that she is but a what-shall-call-'um after all. Let not even the gold persuade you to the contrary. She may make a shift to cause you to disgorge that, and (immense spoil!) a session's fees to boot, if you look not all the ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... other, with a negative shake of his head. "I myself haf also read ze signs pret well, but zey do not tell vat it ees zey haf do to cage us. Zere, you see ze smoke ett haf done. I zink zey must be put ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson

... offered to teach you," said Hardy, "and you replied in the negative so decidedly that I did not like to refer ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary

... "it will be impossible for me to make a good negative of you unless you quit being ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey

... wonderfully knowing creatures, who, with their masters, look upon every visitor, as in duty bound, to engage their services. To say them nay, and to suggest that your legs are quite capable of bearing you to the town, is only provocative of an incredulous smile, or a negative shake of the head. Never was seen such patience and importunity as that displayed by boy and beast. The most striking thing about them is their names—shared in common—which furnish one with a running commentary on current events in Europe. For example, there were the "Prince of Wales" ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... existence. Eleventhly, that wisdom, justice, goodness, &c. are qualities peculiar to matter combined and modified, as it is found in some beings of the human species; that the idea of perfection is an abstract, negative, metaphysical idea, or mode of considering objects, which supposes nothing real to be exterior to itself. Twelfthly, that matter is the principle of motion, which it contains within itself: since ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... was but negative evidence. The real solution of the problem was first positively suggested by the discovery of vaults in place, in the drains and water channels, and in the city gates. The bas-reliefs in which towns or fortresses are represented ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... of the 2nd line is a negative interrogative, implying,—'I hope the Kurus did not ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... possessors of a great historic name or should occupy in their own country a position out of the reach of ordinary mortals. This careful exclusion of all originality and diversity has, by degrees, communicated to the club a complexion somewhat negative and colorless, but at the same time, it must be admitted, of the most perfect distinction. The most influential members, although generally very wealthy, live in Paris with but few of the external signs of luxury, and devote their incomes to home comforts and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... circumstances in which he found himself, and also that there was no exceptional fact or excuse present which took the case out of the general rule. It is an averment of a conclusion of law which is permitted to abridge the facts (positive and negative) ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... the negative. But he, too, was disagreeably arrested by the recollection of the two girls walking together, and of the intimacy and animation of their talk. And he could recall what Sir James had not seen—the strangeness of Alicia's manner, and the peremptoriness ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... mainly owing to the centrifugal action of the screw, which interposes a film or wedge of water between the screw itself and the water on which the screw reacts. This negative slip, as it is called, chiefly occurs when the pitch of the screw is less than its diameter, and when, consequently, the velocity of rotation is greater than if a coarser pitch had been employed. There is, moreover, in all vessels passing through the water ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... from the invisible blent these two hitherto widely separated souls into one, even as the positive electricity leaps through the spaces to find the negative, and when met, dissolves the separateness into a harmonious oneness which can never be sundered. The unsophisticated Indian maiden went her way, thrilling with the thought that her heart is in his bosom, and his in hers, useless one without ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... she called it, "right and tight;" for abroad the only system in vogue was one of fluctuation and uncertainty. Mr. Rossitur's Irishman, Donohan, staid his year out, doing as little good, and as much, at least, negative harm, as he well could; and then went, leaving them a good deal poorer than he found them. Dr. Gregory's generosity had added to Mr. Rossitur's own small stock of ready money, giving him the means to make some needed outlays on the farm. But the outlay, ill-applied, had been greater ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... head with a vehement negative, beckoned Cecily impatiently, and said earnestly, 'Is it the contagion? Is she sick? ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... was eager to meet Gade, and an opportunity soon occurred. Gade expressed a willingness to look at some of his compositions, and asked if he had anything to show him. Edward modestly answered in the negative. "Go home and write a symphony," was the retort. This the young composer started obediently to do, but the work was never finished in this form. It became later Two Symphonic Pieces ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... cross over to a mill and exchange her corn for meal. This, of course, I had to reluctantly deny, however gallantly disposed I might otherwise have been. The lass asked me, with some feeling of scorn, "Is the boat yours?" to which I was forced to answer in the negative. She protested that she would not go back and get a permit or pass from anyone on earth; that the boat was not mine, and she had as much right to its use as anyone, and that no one should prevent her from getting ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... to direct the course of their caravans across the desert. For this purpose a figure, placed in a waggon which led the caravan, was so constructed that the arm and hand moved with perfect freedom, the magnetic needle being attached to it; the hand, however, pointed to the south, the negative end being fixed in it. The Chinese also used a needle which was freely suspended in the air, attached to a silken thread, and by this means they were able to determine the amount of the western variation of the needle. It is possible that both the Chinese and Arabs discovered the magnetic ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... my shop, running yet if it hasn't been frightened by the airship smash," replied the lad, somewhat proudly. "It's an oxide of nickel battery, with steel and oxide of iron negative electrodes." ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton

... the negative. "We have been treated by you with kindness and affection. It is not for any slight we have received that we weep. Our mission is not to you only. We come from the other land to test mankind, and to try the sincerity of the living. ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews

... 'Eternal Fire,' or 'Eternal Punishment,' it seems to me, may mean simply, that long continued suffering, both negative and positive, which wilful imperfection brings. It does not seem to me that the time can ever come when the Everlasting Father will abandon His child that He has created. No; it is infinitely less likely that He would do this than an earthly parent. ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio

... of Ireland,' he wrote, 'are willing to give a direct negative power to his Majesty's Government with respect to the nomination of their titular bishoprics, in such manner that when they have among themselves resolved who is the fittest person for the vacant see, they will transmit his name to his Majesty's Ministers; and if the latter should object to that ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... negative part first. This tells us that none of the Cakes, belonging to the upper half of the cupboard, are to be found OUTSIDE the central Square: that is, the two compartments, No. 9 and No. 10, are EMPTY. This, of ...
— The Game of Logic • Lewis Carroll

... light for snapshots," she went on coolly. "I went out with my kodak and was lucky enough to get a good negative. I have brought you up a proof. I thought you would be ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... otherwise would. The matrons, instead of their tongues, had other instruments to convey their ideas: each of them had three quizzes, one quiz pendent from the string that sewed up her mouth, and another quiz in either hand. When she wished to express her negative, she darted and recoiled the quizzes in her right and left hand; and when she desired to express her affirmative, she, nodding, made the quiz pendent from her mouth flow down and recoil again. The trial proceeded in this manner for a long time, to the admiration of the whole empire, when at length ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... "I mean, between Honor and Jimsy?" He was visibly expecting a negative answer. "I know that Mrs. ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... a loud chuckle, and a full display of his magnificent teeth, which Frank understood to signify a decided negative. ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... silent. Her husband thought she was wavering in her decision, but on that point he was entirely mistaken. She was doing what Nehemiah did when he "prayed to the God of heaven" between the King's question and his answer. Well she knew that to reply in the negative might lead to reproach, prison, torture, even death. Yet that was the path of God's commandments, and no flowery By-path Meadow must tempt her to stray from it. In her heart she said to ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt



Words linked to "Negative" :   unsupportive, unfavorable, defeat, negative pole, shoot down, negatively charged, mathematics, medicine, dissident, perverse, kill, counter, blackball, negative feedback, antagonistic, negative reinforcer, unfavourable, dissenting, negative stimulus, denial, controvert, negative charge, Rh-negative blood, charged, photographic film, film, negative magnetic pole, dissentient, damaging, veto, negate, negative chemotaxis, negative muon, negative correlation, nay, Gram-negative, positive, negative stimulation, math, quality, negative feedback circuit, electronegative, disconfirming, disadvantageous, double negative, Rh negative, destructive, Rh-negative blood type, rh-negative, pessimistic, negative identification, maths, negative reinforcing stimulus



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