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Approximation   /əprˌɑksəmˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Approximation

noun
1.
An approximate calculation of quantity or degree or worth.  Synonyms: estimate, estimation, idea.  "A rough idea how long it would take"
2.
The quality of coming near to identity (especially close in quantity).
3.
An imprecise or incomplete account.
4.
The act of bringing near or bringing together especially the cut edges of tissue.  Synonym: bringing close together.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Approximation" Quotes from Famous Books



... formula should not be used. As the period between firing and the maximum temperature is increased, the plotted results are further and further away from the theoretical straight line curve. Where this period is not over five intervals, or two and a half minutes, an approximation of the straight line curve may be plotted by eye, and ordinarily the radiation correction to be applied may be determined very closely ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... tidal pull of its victim. But a close approach of that kind would be expected to result in the formation of a binary system, with orbits of great eccentricity, perhaps, and after the lapse of a certain time the outburst should be renewed by another approximation of the two bodies. A temporary star of that kind would rather ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... known. The simplest physical peculiarity is mostly reproduced. I know a case of a man whose wife has the lobe of one of her ears a little flattened. An ordinary observer might scarcely notice it, and yet every one of her children has an approximation to the same peculiarity to some extent. If you look at the other extreme, too, the gravest diseases, such as gout, scrofula, and consumption, may be handed down with just the same certainty and persistence as we noticed in the perpetuation ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... spontaneous claims of her own individual nature. Just as the readjustment of Labour is really only an approach to the long recognised ideals of Democracy, so the readjustment of the Home, far from being subversive or revolutionary, is merely an approximation to the ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis

... statue of the Magdalen in Santa Trinita at Florence shows Desiderio's approximation to the style of his master. She is a careworn and ascetic saint, with the pathetic traces of great ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... be ascertained that the pattern in figure 376 is a loop, but an accurate ridge count cannot be obtained because the left delta does not appear. The approximate ridge count of this loop is 14 to 16. This approximation is sufficient for a fingerprint expert to place this loop in the "O" group of any finger of the subsecondary. The correct ridge count of this loop is 19, and it appears in illustration 377. The approximate ridge count is not sufficient to place this print properly in the large files of the ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation

... started up the ridge, and the measurement began. As Blake required only a rough approximation, they soon crossed the ridge and chained down through the trees to the edge of Deep Canyon. Ashton was astonished at the shortness of the distance. The canyon at this point ran towards the mesa escarpment ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... spring-time, when his emotions blossomed with the blossoming year, he met the girl after a long interval, and saw her with changed eyes. She had something more than prettiness; her looks undeniably improved. It seemed, too, that she bore herself more gracefully, and even talked with, at times, an approximation to the speech of a lady. These admissions signified much in a man of Tarrant's social prejudice—so strong that it exercised an appreciable effect upon his every-day morals. He began to muse about Miss. Lord, and the upshot of his musing was that, having learnt of her departure for Teignmouth, he ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... a per cent was enough to show that the known universe was not totally Einsteinian. In a purely Einsteinian universe, antigravity was impossible, but if the equations of Dr. Theodore Nordred were actually a closer approximation to true reality than those of Einstein, then antigravity ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett

... "Allah, O my lord, do not that!"[FN146] Cried he, "Be silent. By Allah, I had said that there was not in the world the like of me; but now I have found my dinar in the art but a danik,[FN147] for thou art more excellent of skill than I, beyond comparison or approximation or calculation! This very day will I carry[FN148] thee up to the Commander of the Faithful, Harun al-Rashid, and when his glance lighteth on thee, thou wilt become a Princess of womankind. So Allah, Allah upon thee, O my lady, whenas thou becomes" of the household ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... N. relation, bearing, reference, connection, concern, cognation; correlation &c 12; analogy; similarity &c 17; affinity, homology, alliance, homogeneity, association; approximation &c (nearness) 197; filiation &c (consanguinity) 11; interest; relevancy &c 23; dependency, relationship, relative position. comparison &c 464; ratio, proportion. link, tie, bond of union. V. be ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... influence, ranks only as an incident. It comes after the main impression of his character has been given. Beyond doubt he represents a real type; no error has been made in this respect; his failure to win higher favour with us arises from his too close approximation to the common clay. There is absent just that small element of the ideal with which even the sternest of the apostles of realism in letters have found it ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... yet been found in any other part of Australia. In the 170 are included some occasional and rare visitants to our shores, but several others will, no doubt, have hereafter to be added; this is, however, a close enough approximation for ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... familiarity with Greek ideals and methods of thinking, but his point of view in general was distinctly Jewish. He gathered together all that was best in the earlier teachings of his race. In many ways he represents an advance beyond all that had gone before and a close approximation to the spirit and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. The God of his faith was omnipotent, majestic, omniscient, just, and merciful. He was the God of all mankind, although it was through Israel that he especially revealed himself. Ben Sira did ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... generally to move. Nothing so reliable in regard to the rate of voluntary eye-movements as these measurements of Dodge and Cline had been published at the time when the experiments on anaesthesia were carried on, and it is perhaps regrettable that in the 'empirical' approximation of the natural rate of the eye through 40 deg. the pendulum was set to move ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... writings have been forged by previously making a study and practice of the writing, to be copied until it has been to a greater or less degree idealized, the hand must be trained to its imitation so that it can be written with a more or less approximation as ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay

... belonged to the opposite party—the crudest possible measure of merit For the odium politicum and the odium theologicum are twin agents of detraction, and the writing of history would be dull indeed were it not for the joy of digging out an approximation to the truth from opposing opinions. Where the material is so scanty it will be safer [30]to summarize what is known, without attempting to pass finally upon ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville

... the joyous mother was thinking at the same time. Hawthorne must leave one and go to the other until they meet in their awful desolation. The only rule that can be given is, introduce causes before effects. In all stories, short or long, this will result in an approximation to the order of time; in a simple story it will ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... Emperor in the Memoirs to make them comfortable reading for his opponents, though very many of the old calumnies were disposed of in them. They contained indeed the nearest approximation to the truth which had yet appeared. Metternich, who must have been a good judge, as no man was better acquainted with what he himself calls the "age of Napoleon," says of the Memoirs: "If you want something to read, both interesting and amusing, get the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... rags and tatters; and what was worse, we had very little means of renovation. Fort Laramie was but seven miles before us. Being totally averse to appearing in such plight among any society that could boast an approximation to the civilized, we soon stopped by the river to make our toilet in the best way we could. We hung up small looking-glasses against the trees and shaved, an operation neglected for six weeks; ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... bodies, but it also indicates the reference-bodies or systems of coordinates, permissible in mechanics, which can be used in mechanical description. The visible fixed stars are bodies for which the law of inertia certainly holds to a high degree of approximation. Now if we use a system of co-ordinates which is rigidly attached to the earth, then, relative to this system, every fixed star describes a circle of immense radius in the course of an astronomical day, a result which is opposed to the statement of the law of inertia. So that if we adhere to this ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein

... present bad state of the harbor, and the tide having now ebbed a little way, the boat could not get close either to quay or shore. Six of the crew were on board, seated on the thwarts with their oars shipped, for Peter had insisted on a certain approximation to man-of-war manners and discipline for the evening, or at least until they got to the fishing-ground. The shore itself formed one side of the harbor, and sloped down into it, and on the sand stood Malcolm with a young ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... State of Qatar conventional short form: Qatar local long form: Dawlat Qatar local short form: Qatar note: closest approximation of the native pronunciation falls between cutter and gutter, but ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... pictures of birds and feathers where the design has become so conventionalized that it is very difficult to recognize the intention of the decorator. Plate CXLVII, f, shows one of these in which the feather motive is prominent and an approximation to a bird form evident. The wings are shown with a symmetric arrangement on the sides of the tail, while the latter member has the three feathers which form so constant a feature in many bird symbols. In b of the same ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... England. A man is surely not united to a jailer because he is bound to him by an iron chain which his jailer has forged for his safe keeping. This is not union; and the term "United Kingdom" is in fact a most miserable misnomer. Unity requires something more than a mere material approximation. I believe it to be possible that England and Ireland may become united; and if ever this should be accomplished, let no man forget that the first link in the golden chain issued from the hands of the right honorable member for South Lancashire, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... nebula began to condense, new relations among its constituent parts would, for this reason, begin to be established. "Given a rare and widely diffused mass of nebulous matter,... what are the successive changes that will take place? Mutual gravitation will approximate its atoms, but their approximation will be opposed by atomic repulsion, the overcoming of which implies the evolution of heat." That is to say, the condensation of the nebula as a whole of necessity implies at least the origination of these new material and dynamical relations among its constituent parts. "As fast as this heat ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... only for the houses of the country. In small villages the same style as the country-house is observed, with very slight modifications; but in large towns, although some of the characteristics are still retained, there is an approximation to the architecture of European cities—more particularly, of course, ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... perseverance during the daytime, consistently refraining from night attacks, which was remarkable since ordinarily they are much addicted to the chapao. There never was any investment of Sherpur, or indeed any approximation to investment. Cavalry reconnaissances constantly went out, and piquets and videttes were habitually on external duty; infantry detachments sallied forth whenever occasion demanded to dislodge the assailants from points occupied by them in inconvenient proximity to the defences. The Afghan ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... comrades were safe; but if the second explanation was to account for our non-success, in what direction ought we to continue our search? The question was a very difficult one to answer with any approach to accuracy, but an approximation to the truth might be arrived at. I reasoned thus: The boats were undoubtedly within the limits of the trade wind when we parted with them, and the only disturbing influence that they would be likely ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... shrugged. "I can set it up and get an approximation. But there is no definite point on the scale where war has to break out. Just a going and going ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)

... difficult," he said, "to calculate exactly; perhaps even impossible, since during these three stormy days I have been unable to keep any account of the rate or direction of the raft; but still we may get an approximation." ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... currents passing through them in the same direction will attract each other. This is because the oppositely directed segments of lines of force between the conductors destroy each other, and the resultant of the two circles is an approximation to an ellipse. As lines of force tend to be as short as possible the conductors tend to approach each other to make the ellipse become of as small area as possible, in other ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... though the unravelling of all the minutiae of these processes, may, for the present, baffle the conjoined attacks of the most accomplished physicists, chemists, and mathematicians. To know the anatomy of the human body, with even an approximation to thoroughness, is the work of a life; but as much as is needed for a sound comprehension of elementary physiological truths, may ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... that the she-ape had left her cub alone among the grasses. He moved his tail again, as though this closest approximation of lashing in which he dared indulge might stimulate his momentarily waned courage. The cry of the victorious ape-man still held his nerves beneath its spell. It would be several minutes before ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... there were executive orders passed by the Governor-General in Council for the 'non-regulation' provinces (the North-western Provinces, the Punjab, Oudh, the Central Provinces, and Burmah). These had more or less introduced the same laws into the regions successively annexed, or such an approximation to those laws as was practicable, and dictated according to an accustomed formula by 'justice, equity, and good conscience.' Certain doubts existed as to the precise legal character of these orders. Their validity had been confirmed by the Act of 1861, but for the future ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... better. Now it is some feature of alleviation in a servile condition, if the lord appears by natural endowments superior to his slave; or at least it embitters the degradation of slavery, if he does not. Greatly, therefore, must human interests have suffered, had this jealous approximation of the two parties been the sole feature noticeable in the relations between them. But there was a worse. There was an original enmity between man and the Pantheon; not the sort of enmity which we Christians ascribe to our God; that is but a figure of speech: and even there ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... generative system. The lowest of the mammalia—the Monotremata—in common with birds, have oviducts which towards their lower extremities are dilated into cavities severally performing in an imperfect way the function of a uterus. "In the Marsupialia, there is a closer approximation of the two lateral sets of organs on the median line; for the oviducts converge towards one another and meet (without coalescing) on the median line; so that their uterine dilatations are in contact with each other, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... this explanation of mine is not technically accurate, but only what might be termed an illustrative approximation. ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan

... necessary in order to assist and control the motion of the link at and near the dead-points. The arc of the pitch-curves through which the teeth must extend will vary with their eccentricity; but in many cases it would not be greater than that which in the approximation may be struck about one centre; so that, in fact, it would not be necessary to go through the process of rectifying and subdividing the quarter of the ellipse at all, as in this case it can make no possible difference whether the ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose

... most active and stirring spirits who had not been regularly educated, or who, from mischance or otherwise, had forsaken the beaten track of preferment,—and the universities on the other. The latter prided themselves on their closer approximation to the ancient rules and ancient regularity—taking the theatre of Greece, or rather its dim reflection, the rhetorical tragedies of the poet Seneca, as a perfect ideal, without any critical collation of the times, origin, or circumstances;—whilst, in the mean time, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... kind of men we want; these, the nearest possible approximation to these, are the men we must find and have, or go bankrupt altogether; for the concern as it is will evidently not hold long together. How true is this of Crabbe: "Men sit in Parliament eighty-three ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... vile market; but the greater number of the slaves go to Kilwa. We did not see much evidence of a wish to barter. Some ivory was offered for sale; but the chief traffic was in human chattels. Would that we could give a comprehensive account of the horrors of the slave-trade, with an approximation to the number of lives it yearly destroys! for we feel sure that were even half the truth told and recognized, the feelings of men would be so thoroughly roused, that this devilish traffic in human flesh would be put down at all risks; but neither we, nor any one else, have the statistics necessary ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... follows—general hairiness, adiposity and sexual precocity. One fact should be noted. When the adrenals evoke precocity, and an early awakening of the secondary sex characteristics, it is a masculine precocity, and an approximation to the masculine even in females. There is a definite trend toward an increase of the male in the individual's composition at the expense of the female. We shall have to consider this in greater detail when we analyze the internal secretion basis of masculinity and femininity. In general, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... was our earliest friend and ally in the infancy of our political existence the most friendly relations have subsisted through the late revolutions of its Government, and, from the events of the last, promise a permanent duration. It has made an approximation in some of its political institutions to our own, and raised a monarch to the throne who preserves, it is said, a friendly recollection of the period during which he acquired among our citizens the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson

... they spent it during the remaining nine months of the year: the other class were the children of the wealthy landowners who migrated each season to the town-house; these were pale and collected, showed less enjoyment in their countenances, and wore in general an approximation to the languid manners of ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... exemplification. A simile may be compared to lines converging at a point, and is more excellent as the lines approach from greater distance; an exemplification may be considered as two parallel lines, which run on together without approximation, never far separated, and never joined. Marlborough is so like the angel in the poem, that the action of both is almost the same, and performed by both in the same manner. Marlborough "teaches the battle to rage;" the angel "directs the storm:" Marlborough is "unmoved ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... taken notice of by historians and other writers. We must generally, therefore, content ourselves with them, not as being always exactly in the same proportion as the current prices of labour, but as being the nearest approximation which can commonly be had to that proportion. I shall hereafter have occasion to make several comparisons of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... cheek-bones, is good; the contour of the forehead ennobles it; the eyes are large and well-formed, and the upper features are frequently handsome and expressive. The jaw, however, is almost invariably prognathous and African; the broad, turned- out lips betray approximation to the Negro; and the chin projects to the detriment of the facial angle. The beard is represented by a few tufts; it is rare to see anything equal to even the Arab development: the long and ample eyebrows admired ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... more pleasing and interesting forms of this moral malady than that which I have been depicting: I have spoken of the effect of intellectual culture on proud natures; but it will show to greater advantage, yet with as little approximation to religious faith, in amiable and unaffected minds. Observe, Gentlemen, the heresy, as it may be called, of which I speak, is the substitution of a moral sense or taste for conscience in the true meaning of the word; now this error may be the foundation of a character ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... what some call the philosophy of language, were to supersede, altogether, the province of philology as it applies to the present, progressive and refined state of English literature, the great object contemplated by the learned, in all ages, namely, the approximation of language, in common with every thing else, to that point of perfection at which it is the object of correct philology to arrive, would ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... mineralogic, astronomic, it is not customary to say that they act to achieve Truth or Entity, but it is understood that all motions are toward Equilibrium: that there is no motion except toward Equilibrium, of course always away from some other approximation ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... elk in and around the Yellowstone Park, revealed the real number of that largest contingent. By taking those results, and Mr. Seton's figures for elk outside the United States, we obtain the following very close approximation of the wild elk alive in North ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... the same period there have been from eighty-five counties, only eleven commitments to the state prison, nine for manslaughter, and two for shooting with intent to kill, and not an instance of capital punishment in the person of any white offender. Thus an approximation is made to a general average, which probably would not vary much from one in each county every three years, or about ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... it would still be a glorious dream, which a man of genius might be content to live in and die for: but is it untrue? Is it not, on the contrary, true, if not absolutely, yet with a most genuine and substantial approximation? I believe it is thus true. I believe that Whitman is one of the huge, as yet mainly unrecognised, forces of our time; privileged to evoke, in a country hitherto still asking for its poet, a fresh, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... through the columns of Land and Water, the Illustrated Sunday Herald, and other journals and periodicals, or have swelled the audiences at his lectures in London and the various provincial centres, his name promises escape from the bewilderment engendered by an irritated Press and an approximation, at least, to a clear conception of the progress of the war. Those who realize, as Mr. Belloc himself points out somewhere, that there has never been a great public occasion in regard to which it is more necessary that men should have a sound judgment than it is in regard to ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... or scanty. In this sense I adhere strictly to the opinion I then gave; but, since that period, an event has occurred which has shewn, in the clearest manner, that it is entirely out of our power, even in time of peace, to obtain a free trade in corn, or an approximation towards it, whatever may be our ...
— The Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of Restricting the Importation of Foreign Corn: intended as an appendix to "Observations on the corn laws" • Thomas Malthus

... identity of many of the species which flourished apparently at the same time in all or in the most widely-separated parts of the world, in the tertiary epoch, on the contrary, along with the increasing specialization of climates and their approximation to the present state, we find abundant evidence of increasing localization of orders, genera and species, and this localization strikingly accords with the present geographical distribution of the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... is a voluntary approximation of the Infinite Being to the ways and thoughts of finite humanity. But until this step has been taken by Almighty Grace, how should man have a warrant for loving with all his heart and mind and strength?... Without the gospel, nature exhibits a want of harmony between our intrinsic constitution, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... when I met them on the stage, were a revelation to me. Paint and powder though I knew their appearance to consist of chiefly, yet in that hot atmosphere of the theatre, under that artificial glare, it seemed fit and fascinating. The close approximation to so much bare flesh, its curious, subtle odour was almost intoxicating. Dr. Johnson's excuse to Garrick for the rarity of his visits to the theatre recurred to ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... application to concrete cases must be very common. Correct theory about any matter by no means carries with it the correct application of that theory, as every one finds out sooner or later. It follows, then, that the highest wisdom represents only a rough approximation to the truth, and that ordinary facts are more nearly hypotheses than certainties. Since, therefore, so few ideas are fully reliable and unalterably fixed, a settled attitude toward them is undesirable, not only because it is opposed to utility, growth, and ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... the church of St. Nicholas, (see plate fifty-six,) may be remarked a sensible approximation in point of style, to the same part in the church of the Trinity. The circular apsis is divided into compartments by slender cylindrical pillars; and each intercolumniation is filled by a couple of windows ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... the higher Mammalia stands so apparently separate and isolated from the rest as that of the Cetacea; though a careful consideration of the structure of the pinnipede Carnivora, or Seals, shows, in them, many an approximation towards the still more completely marine mammals. The extinct Zeuglodon, however, presents us with an intercalary form between the type of the Seals and that of the Whales. The skull of this great Eocene sea-monster, in fact, shows by the narrow and prolonged interorbital region; the extensive ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... FEELING," said the King, "approaching so close as to leave no space between two individuals, know, Stranger, that this offence is punishable in my dominions by death. And the reason is obvious. The frail form of a Woman, being liable to be shattered by such an approximation, must be preserved by the State; but since Women cannot be distinguished by the sense of sight from Men, the Law ordains universally that neither Man nor Woman shall be approached so closely as to destroy the interval between ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott

... behind a protecting sea-wall. As, at the time of our visit, nothing marked this remnant of the historic acre, we undertook to locate it. Fortunately, the Confederate fort stands in such position as to help in running the boundaries by the map. For a rough approximation, all we had to do was to get Mr. Leal, the caretaker, to stand at the most westerly angle of the fort, and his son on the sea-wall at the lower end of the fort, and Henry on the sea-wall a hundred yards farther up stream; then, ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... mentioned the hypothesis held as an approximation of reality—this is the truly scientific position. It is accompanied by a provisional and ever-revocable belief. This is admitted, in principle at least, by all scientists, and has been put into ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... the trifles, and lose the substantial—to scan the dress, and neglect the wearer, so we opine the capabilities of D. Maclise, R.A., are brought into requisition to accommodate such beholders. He has, moreover, carefully avoided any approximation to the vulgarity of flesh and blood, in his representations of humanity; and has, therefore, ingeniously sought the delicacy of Dresden china for his models. To conclude our notice, we beg to suggest the addition of a torch and a rosin-box, which, with the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... approximation of Hungary's standards in waste management, energy efficiency, and air, soil, and water pollution with environmental requirements for EU accession will require large investments, estimated by the Government of Hungary at $4 billion over six years; the 1997 budget allocated ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... they could talk together about Walter, though but the adoptive brother of the one, and the real son of the other. Richard had inherited, apparently, his wife's love to Molly, and added to it his own; but their union had its root in the perfect truthfulness of the two. Real approximation, real union must ever be in proportion to mutual truthfulness. It was quite after the usual fashion, therefore, between them, when Molly began, to tell her father about the conversation she had had ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... December 11 as shown in fig. 12; and on or about March 10 as shown in fig. 15. The inclination of his equator to the ecliptic being so small, the student can find little difficulty in determining with sufficient approximation the relation of the sun's polar axis to the ecliptic on intermediate days, since the equator is never more inclined than in figs. 12 and 14, never more opened out than in figs. 13 and 15. Having then drawn a line to represent the sun's ecliptical diameter inclined to the horizontal diameter ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... comes about that, while the supreme artists, whose approximation, to the vision of the invisible ones is closest, remain our unique masters, the lower crowd of moderately sane and moderately well-balanced persons are of less value to humanity than those abnormal and wayward ones whose psychic distortions are the ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... in a street—the Rue des Poirees—in the immediate neighbourhood of the cloister. M. Longnon is almost ready to identify Catherine as the niece of Pierre; Regnier as the nephew of Etienne, and Colin as the son of Nicolas. Without going so far, it must be owned that the approximation of names is significant. As we go on to see the part played by each of these persons in the sordid melodrama of the poet's life, we shall come to regard it as even more notable. Is it not Clough who has remarked that, after all, everything lies ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and the expense of redrawing and reproduction, these seven tables are printed instead of Mr. Sherman's graphic charts. With a ruler and pencil, lines can be drawn through the "D's of Duke", and so forth, to give an approximation of the original graphs.—Editor.] ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various

... but the end here specified—namely, an equality of opportunity which is relative—is the only kind of equality which is even theoretically possible; and it is one, moreover, to which a constant approximation can be made. The absolute equality which is contemplated by socialists, and by others who are more or less vaguely influenced by socialistic sentiment, is, on the contrary, an ideal which either could not be ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... three thousand feet above the level of the sea, on the Cape Table Mountain, and again on the northern slope of the Cashan Mountains, and here at considerably greater heights (four thousand feet), the difference of climate prevents the botanical range being considered as affording a good approximation to the altitude. The rapid flow of the Leeambye, which once seemed to me evidence of much elevation of the country from which it comes, I now found, by the boiling point of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... flattery, yet innocent and modest; full of petty artifice and coquetry, yet natural and unaffected in affairs of importance; capricious and giddy in appearance, but warm-hearted and affectionate in reality. It is a character to which there is a kind of approximation among many French women; and if it were as well supported by them in real life, as by her on the stage, it would be difficult even for French vanity to describe the fascination of their manner, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... artificial creation of naturalists themselves. In other words, it was believed, and in many cases known, that if we could go far enough back in the history of the earth, we should everywhere find a tendency to mutual approximation between allied groups of species; so that, for instance, birds and reptiles would be found to be drawing nearer and nearer together, until eventually they would seem to become fused in a single type; that the existing distinctions between herbivorous and carnivorous mammals would be ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... pleasant for all who were around her. Amiability was never artificial with her, for she had the true instincts of a lady—those instincts so often spoken of, so seldom, so very seldom seen. Like a gentleman, or a Christian, or any other ideal, it is but a poor approximation ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... and dissolution shall draw the curtain of death over his sleep—shall prove his apparent sleep to be veritable death. The prolonged interchange in Adonais between the ideas of death and of sleep may remind us that Shelley opened with a similar contrast or approximation his first considerable (though in part ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... them zealous on behalf of his plan, fertile in expedients to test its correctness, and untiring in his efforts to make known its success—each of them merciless in his criticism on the rest; there cannot fail, by composition of forces, to be a gradual approximation of all towards the right course. Whatever portion of the normal method any one has discovered, must, by the constant exhibition of its results, force itself into adoption; whatever wrong practices he has joined with it must, by repeated experiment ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... can we express the position of the native Church with any approximation to truth? We can only suggest that these arbitrary standards should be accepted, and ask that they should be defined in every case. We should ask the missionaries, or the societies, to estimate the amount required to supply that minimum upon which they insist. ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen

... therefore, relinquish its prey. It was ten or twelve days before the storm had sufficiently abated to leave the vessel manageable in the hands of the captain and crew, and then the captain's reckoning was gone. He could get his latitude correctly, but not his longitude, except by a remote approximation. His first observation, when the sky gave an opportunity, showed us to be in latitude forty-five degrees south. This he explained to me, and also the impracticability of now making the Cape, pointing out upon the map ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur

... the Federal Union appears to me to be incompatible with the public interests of the country. While it is desirable that Territories, when sufficiently matured, should be organized as States, yet the spirit of the Constitution seems to require that there should be an approximation toward equality among the several States composing the Union. No State can have less or more than two Senators in Congress. The largest State has a population of 4,000,000; several of the States have a population ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... derived its principal strength, were still devoted to the See of Rome with that blind obedience which, ever since the days of the Gothic dynasty, had been the peculiar characteristic of the Spaniard. The slightest approximation, in a Spanish prince, to the obnoxious tenets of Luther and Calvin, would have alienated for ever the affections of his subjects, and a defection from the Pope would have cost him the kingdom. A Spanish prince had no alternative but orthodoxy or abdication. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the structure of the pelvis and of the hind limb that some of these ancient reptiles present the most remarkable approximation to birds, and clearly indicate the way by which the most specialized and characteristic features of the bird may have been evolved from the ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley

... ratio. But I also find, I frankly admit, that on many of my difficulties, and especially that connected with the origin of evil, and other precisely analogous difficulties of Scripture, no light whatever is cast: to the solution of them, man has not made the slightest conceivable approximation. These things I submit to, as an exercise of my faith and a test of my docility, and that is all I have to say about them; you will not alter my views by dwelling on them, for your sense of them cannot be stronger than mine.' Thus speaks the Christian; and the ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... would necessarily expect to find lower orders of fish passing into higher, and taking precedence of the higher in their appearance in point of time. If such be not the case,—if fish made their first appearance, not in their least perfect, but in their most perfect state,—not in their nearest approximation to the worm, but in their nearest approximation to the reptile,—there is no room for progression, and the argument falls. Now, it is a geological fact, that it is fish of the higher orders that appear first on the stage, ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... Tennessee and Kentucky were settled largely from Virginia and North Carolina, the application of the North Carolina proportions to the white population of these three results in what is doubtless an approximation ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... policy they again coincided with Crassus, to whom no course was left for encountering his envied and hated rival but that of allying himself afresh, and more closely than before, with the democracy. Already in the first coalition a special approximation had taken place between Caesar and Crassus as the two weaker parties; a common interest and a common danger tightened yet more the bond which joined the richest and the most insolvent of Romans in closest alliance. While in public the democrats ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... great wits are to madness near allied, it is that great wits are sometimes actually in part mad. Madness is a matter of degree. The slightest departure from the normal and healthy action of the mind is an approximation to it. Every mind is a little unsound; but you don't talk of insanity till the un.-oundness becomes very glaring, and unfits for the duty of life. Just as almost every horse is a little lame: one leg ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... entails, in all probability, an infinite number of aberrations. This number is only finite if the object and aperture are assumed to be "infinitely small of a certain order''; and with each order of infinite smallness, i.e. with each degree of approximation to reality (to finite objects and apertures), a certain number of aberrations is associated. This connexion is only supplied by theories which treat aberrations generally and analytically by means ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... that of all the customs prevailing in the different parts of Europe, not excepting the most civilized states of Germany, this one of making the women do all the heavy work strikes me as the nearest approximation to the perfection of domestic discipline. The Diggers of California and the Kaffres of Africa understand this thing exactly, and no man of any spirit belonging to those tribes would any more think of performing the drudgery which he imposes ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... infer the date of Papias entirely from the notices of his friends and contemporaries; but these will assist us to a very fair approximation. (1) He was a hearer of at least two personal disciples of Christ, Aristion and the Presbyter John. If we suppose that they were among the youngest disciples of our Lord, and lived to old age, we shall be ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... explanation of the remarkable facts of observation which seemed so complete, it is not surprising that there should have been but little temptation to doubt it. On undertaking a new calculation of the same question, Professor Adams found that Laplace had not pursued this approximation sufficiently far, and that consequently there was a considerable error in the result of his analysis. Adams, it must be observed, did not impugn the value of the lunar acceleration which Halley had deduced ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... the first time I had ever seen that of a murderer. I looked upon it with an impression which it is difficult, if not impossible, to describe. I felt my nerves tingle, and my heart palpitate. To a young man, fresh, and filled with the light-hearted humanity of youth, approximation to such an object as then lay before me is a singular trial of feeling, and a painful test of moral courage. The sight, however, and the reflections connected with it, rendered a long contemplation ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... creed is an approximation to the Nicene creed but without the use of the word of especial importance, homoousios. Valuable critical notes on the text of this and the preceding creed are to be found in Hahn; as these creeds are to be found both in the work of Athanasius on the councils ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... told, "is a solid body, ninety-five millions of miles distant from the earth we inhabit, one million times larger in cubic measurement, and to such a degree impregnated with heat, that a comet, approaching to it within a certain distance, was by that approximation raised to a heat two thousand times greater than ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... or susceptibilities of which I have been speaking. In the notes of witching music, in the numbers of poesy, in the sight of beauty, either of nature or of art, either aesthetic or moral, these silent powers recognize a faint approximation to that beauty with which they will have to do in that world where they shall be called into action: they too recognize the kindred spirit, and, springing forward to meet it, vibrate in unison with the chord. But yet, restrained by their prison of clay, bound down by the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... constant, the surface sculpture will change; if the capitals are of a fixed design, the traceries will change; if the traceries are monotonous, the capitals will change; and if even, as in some fine schools, the early English for example, there is the slightest approximation to an unvarying type of mouldings, capitals, and floral decoration, the variety is found in the disposition of the masses, and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... whereabouts it will probably be found situated, when our feeble reason shall be strengthened and expanded. For one cause of their discomfiture certainly has been their aiming too high, attempting a complete solution of a problem which only admitted of approximation, and discussion ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham

... better to use an enema than to go to bed without a bowel movement. If the woman is going around, so that she can give the enema to herself, the most effective way to take it is in the knee-chest position or an approximation to this. Either a fountain or bulb syringe may be used for this purpose; a quart of water at a temperature of 110 F. should be prepared by making it into a suds with castile soap, or one tablespoonful ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith

... the Perseus of Canova, I shall content myself with remarking that the sculptor had evidently the Apollo Belvedere in his ideal, and if he has not quite equalled that celebrated statue, it is because it is impossible; but he certainly has given the nearest possible approximation to its excellence. ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... This approximation of men apparently of opposite pursuits is so natural, that when Gesner, in his inspiring letter on landscape-painting,[A] recommends to the young painter a constant study of poetry and literature, the impatient ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... administers requires modification in different times and places. The old critic spoke like the organ of an infallible Church, regarding all forms of art except his own as simply heretical. The modern critic speaks like the liberal theologian, who sees in heretical and heathen creeds an approximation to the truth, and admits that they may have a relative value, and even be the best fitted for the existing conditions. There are, undoubtedly, some principles of universal application; and the old critics often expounded ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... supposed these heroes to be, in some way or other, partakers of a divine nature; akin to the gods; usually, either they, or some ancestor of theirs, descended from a god or goddess. Those who have read Mr. Gladstone's "Juventus Mundi" will remember the section (cap. ix. 6) on the modes of the approximation between the divine and the human natures; and whether or not they agree with the author altogether, all will agree, I think, that the first idea of a hero or a heroine was a godlike man or ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... exercises in which they then engaged. The Sabbath day was a season of great delight. She did not know that on the following her translation was to take place; but had she foreseen it, scarcely could she have passed the day in communications more fitted to her near approximation to eternal joy. ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various

... given time, and the probable effect of any wage change upon that supply. The differentials which would be established from a consideration of such material could not claim to be more than a practical approximation to the differentials which would carry out ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis

... deep and wide as that between Lazarus and Dives. Would it ever be bridged over? This thought took possession of the doctor's mind, and he imagined all sorts of ways of effecting some experimental approximation between Maurice and Euthymia. From this delicate subject he glanced off to certain general considerations suggested by the extraordinary history he had been reading. He began by speculating as to the possibility of the personal presence of an individual making ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... purchased so dearly, was on every side extolled and worshipped. Even those distinctions of party which must almost always be found in a free state could scarcely be traced. The two great bodies which, from the time of the Revolution, had been gradually tending to approximation, were now united in emulous support of that splendid Administration which smote to the dust both the branches of the House of Bourbon. The great battle for our ecclesiastical and civil polity had been fought and won. The wounds had been healed. The victors and the vanquished were ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... turn me back from my momentary contemplation of those popular effigies inflated by old newspapers and windy report, the earthly great. He sets me thinking of more personal and intimate applications, of the human beings one knows with a certain approximation to real knowledge, of the actual common substance of life. He turns me to the thought of rivalries and tendernesses, of differences and disappointments. I am suddenly brought painfully against the things that ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... military systems of these States to that of Prussia. A Customs-Parliament was established for the whole of Germany, which, it was hoped, would be the precursor of a National Assembly uniting the North and the South of the Main. But in spite of this military and commercial approximation, the progress towards union was neither so rapid nor so smooth as the patriots of the North could desire. There was much in the harshness and self-assertion of the Prussian character that repelled the less disciplined communities ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... labelled—The numbers should correspond with a catalogue which should declare for each plant: 1 The country from which it comes—2 The kind of soil where it grows, such as woods, rocks, meadows, marshes, etc.—3 An approximation to the height of the place, if it comes from a mountainous country, so as to distinguish the plants of the tropics and the temperate and frigid zones—4 The common name of the plant, either among the Europeans established in the country or ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various

... of transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity. We hold a theory true just in proportion to its success in solving this 'problem of maxima and minima.' But success in solving this problem is eminently a matter of approximation. We say this theory solves it on the whole more satisfactorily than that theory; but that means more satisfactorily to ourselves, and individuals will emphasize their points of satisfaction differently. To a certain degree, ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... the other from carronades, at short range they are equal; at long, one has it all her own way. Her captain thus certainly has a great superiority of force, and if he does not take advantage of it it is owing to his adversary's skill or his own mismanagement. As a mere approximation, it may be assumed, in comparing the broadsides of two vessels or squadrons, that long guns count for at least twice as much as carronades of the same calibre. Thus on Lake Champlain Captain Downie possessed an immense advantage ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... course of civilization. Real monogamy, real faithfulness of the male parent, belongs to a comparatively advanced stage; but in the early stages the knitting together of permanent relations between mother and infant, and the approximation toward steady relations on the part of the male parent, came to bring about the family, and gradually to knit those organizations ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske

... have mountains that contain the ore. We might for the same reason dig among our rocks for the scattered grains of gold and silver which might be found there. The true inquiry is, Can we produce the article in a useful state at the same cost, or nearly at the same cost, or at any reasonable approximation towards the same cost, at which ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... then, as afterwards, in favour of the conforming puritanism in the Church, as opposed to the extreme and thorough-going puritanism of Cartwright. Of the conforming puritans, who would have been glad of a greater approximation to the Swiss model, but who, whatever their private wishes or dislikes, thought it best, for good reasons or bad, to submit to the strong determination of the government against it, and to accept what the government approved and imposed, Grindal, who held successively ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... frictionless ocean. But as our earth is not covered entirely by water, and as the ocean is very far from being frictionless, the ideal tide is not the tide that we actually know; nor is the ideal tide represented by this oval even an approximation to the actual tides to which our oceans are subject. Indeed, the oval does not represent the facts at all, and of this it is only necessary to adduce a single fact in demonstration. I take the fundamental issue so often debated, as to whether ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball

... presents these bones in something like their relative positions. A closer approximation to the state of the case will be reached if the student will imagine the maxilla raised up so as to overlie and hide the palatine and presphenoid, the squamosal similarly overlying the periotic bone, and the jugal reaching between them. Membrane ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... the trams. To those of us who knew the store she set by her equipage its exchange for the St. Michael indicated a fairly fanatical devotion. To her aunts it meant that she had spent her principal, which, in their eyes, was an approximation to the mysterious "sin ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... 1883), I determined to put to the test the statement of some of our theorists, that the surface of a rotating fluid is either a parabola or a hyperbola. I found by experiment that it is neither, but an approximation to the tractrix (a modification of the catenary), if anything definite; as indeed one, on thinking over the matter, might feel certain it would be—the tractrix being ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... He does not approve of them, but says that men ought to be satisfied with sandwiches out shooting. A telescope? He never lifts his eyes high enough above our delinquencies to look at the stars. I cannot arrive at any approximation to a decision. As I issue from a china-shop, with a brown-paper parcel under my arm, and out on the hot and glaring flags, I see a young man come stepping down the street, with a long, loose, British stride; a young man, pale and comely, and a good deal worn out by the ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... looking down the street from one extremity. Now in all cases, unless the person has happened to observe in pictures how it is that artists produce these effects, he will be utterly unable to make the smallest approximation to it. Yet why? For he has actually seen the effect every day of his life. The reason is—that he allows his understanding to overrule his eyes. His understanding, which includes no intuitive knowledge of the laws of vision, can furnish him with ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... proportion between his will and his intellect. The more exact and true this fitness and proportion are by nature, the easier, safer, and pleasanter it will be for him to get through the world. At the same time, a mere approximation to this exact point will protect him from destruction. There is, in consequence, a certain scope within the limits of exactness and fitness of this so-called proportion. The normal proportion is as follows. As the object of the intellect ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... particular—her hair. Its abundance made it almost unmanageable; its color was, roughly speaking, and as seen here by firelight, brown, but careful notice, or an observation by day, would have revealed that its true shade was a rare and beautiful approximation to chestnut. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... desired. Unions among Sections of the visible church may possibly be effected at the expense of deviations on either hand from the direct line from each to the perfection of the church's character on earth. And though, after confederation is effected, tolerable approximation to it may be made, the sacrifice required may often not be excused. But when each party aims at the truth, the more they advance, the more they will approach each other; and happy will they be and honoured who ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... the Norman. The former were now free tenants, who paid rent for their land to the lord of the manor, and were not bound to work for him, while the latter worked for wages like our modern agricultural labourer. There was thus in the twelfth century a gradual approximation to modern conditions on many estates; the home farm was worked by hired labourers who received wages; while the villeins had bought themselves off from the obligation of doing customary work by paying ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... have been assigned for the week. There are those who assert that it is simply the closest possible approximation to the quarter-month; the mean month being 29-1/2 days in length, a quarter-month would be 7-3/8 days, and since fractions of a day cannot be recognized in any practical division of time for general ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... less powers of the mind than the discovery of an alphabet; a discovery so sublime that, according to the opinion of some, nothing less than a divine origin ought to be ascribed to it. It may, however, be considered as the nearest approximation to an universal character that has hitherto been attempted by the learned and ingenious of any nation; each character conveying at once to the eye, not only simple, but the most combined ideas. The plan of our countryman, Bishop Wilkins, for ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... which the letter [of Mr. Wright] refers entitles it to much consideration. As yet I have had no leisure nor means to form even an approximation towards any opinion as to the proposal Mr. W. mentions, far less to commit my friend. In a word, I am perfectly in the dark as to everything else, except that I am sure it will give Mrs. Lockhart and myself very great pleasure to see Mr. Disraeli under this roof.... ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... modern, so far as it has remained true to its own spirit, we observe a keen struggle to unite the two, as being naturally in opposition to each other. The Grecian executed what it proposed in the utmost perfection; but the modern can only do justice to its endeavours after what is infinite by approximation; and, from a certain appearance of imperfection, is in greater danger of not ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... the ground. It may claim to be a very exact representation of many of the original grants and farms. The locality of the houses, mills, and bridges, in 1692, is given in some cases precisely, and in all with near approximation. The task has been a difficult one. An original plot of Governor Endicott's Ipswich River grant, No. III., is in the State House, and one of the Swinnerton grant, No. XIX., in the Salem town-books. Neither of them, however, affords elements by which to establish its exact location. A plot ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... however, remained satisfied with mere approximation: we have determined accurately, in certain cases, the quantity of carbon taken daily in the food, and of that which passes out of the body in the faeces and urine combined—that is, uncombined with oxygen; and from these investigations it appears that an adult man ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig

... Gobler!' cried Mrs. Bloss, with a proper approximation to hysterics; 'I think the house is on fire, or else there's thieves in it. I have ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... prodigiously successful. Nothing could be worse in point of tactics than renewing this contest, neither party having, in fact, a good case. Parliament is going to separate soon, and the cholera will accelerate the prorogation; not a step has been made towards an approximation between the rival parties, who appear to be animated against each other with unabated virulence. The moderate Tories talk of their desire to see the Government discard their Radical friends, but the great body give them no encouragement to do so by ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... observation of the manifested action of God and the Soul, and from a wise analogy. It is the intellectual guide which the religious sentiment needs. The true religious philosophy of an imperfect being, is not a system of creed, but, as SOCRATES thought, an infinite search or approximation. Philosophy is that intellectual and moral progress, which the religious sentiment ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... mariner's compass may be employed as a first rough approximation. It is well known that the needle of the compass, when free to move horizontally, oscillates upon its pivot and settles in a direction termed the magnetic meridian. This does not coincide with the true north and south line, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... science, be its consequences whatever they may. If, on the other hand, Mr. Darwin has erred, either in fact or in reasoning, his fellow-workers will soon find out the weak points in his doctrines, and their extinction by some nearer approximation to the truth will exemplify his ...
— Time and Life • Thomas H. Huxley

... likeness of opposites, of complements. Art, in short, is entirely a matter of reciprocity. The kind of beauty that jumps at you is the kind you end by getting heartily tired of—is the skin-deep kind; and therefore it is n't really beauty at all—it is only an approximation to beauty—it may be only a ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... just want to give you an idea of how the tamarisk will be swayed," she said, holding a crayon between her tiny white teeth, and motioning me to a couch under the window. "Sit down there and wait a minute. I'll just sketch them roughly for you to get an approximation." ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross

... nor Greek historians are admired by those dry critics who seek to give to rare antiquarian matter a disproportionate importance, and to make this matter as fixed and certain as the truths of natural science. History can never be other than an approximation to the truth, even when it relates to the events and characters of its own age. History does not give positive, indisputable knowledge. We know that Caesar was ambitious; but we do not know whether he was more or less so than Pompey, nor do we know ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... majesty. Perhaps nowhere else in the world is so abrupt and great an uplift from so low a base. The marshes and forests of the upper Kuskokwim, from which these mountains rise, cannot be more than one thousand five hundred feet above the sea. The rough approximation by the author's aneroid in the journey from the Tanana to the Kuskokwim would indicate a still lower level—would make this wide plain little more than one thousand feet high. And they rise sheer, the tremendous cliffs of them apparently unbroken, soaring superbly to more than ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck

... there to forget the interests of the other party to the transaction. But to yield to such temptation would merely be to abuse a principle which on the whole is sanctioned by the requirements of economic efficiency. This principle is that the nearest approximation to effective justice in business transactions is reached when on each side the parties devote themselves to their respective interests and points of view. If A has a house for sale and B is a prospective buyer, ...
— Creating Capital - Money-making as an aim in business • Frederick L. Lipman

... Society commonly known as the Ku-Klux-Klan, has no such name among its members. That is an approximation in letters and sound to the challenging signal of the Order. For instance, when a Brother approaches the spot where a band is assembled, the sentinels, always concealed, challenge him by bringing ...
— The Oaths, Signs, Ceremonies and Objects of the Ku-Klux-Klan. - A Full Expose. By A Late Member • Anonymous

... learned Selden's solution of the origin of the term "gentleman" seems to include in it something not altogether complimentary to religion. This is his only objection to it. He speaks French; and his accent is, he flatters himself, an approximation to the veritable Parisian. Modern novels he does not read, but has ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various

... consideration of the amazing waste of property, which the use of tobacco involves. On this point I have been unable to obtain the means for making out a perfectly accurate statistical result. I can only approximate a definite calculation. This approximation, however, will serve all the purposes of ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler

... sculpture, as compared with the antique, or the pseudo-classical of subsequent periods. We agree with Lord Lindsay in thinking the Psyche of Naples the nearest approach to the Christian ideal of all ancient efforts; but even in this the approximation is more accidental than real—a fair type of feature, further exalted by the mode in which the imagination supplies the lost upper folds of the hair. The fountain of life and emotion remains sealed; nor was the opening of that fountain due to any study of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... extremity of the muscle is attached to the shoulder-bone, which acts as a fixed point; the tendon of the other extremity is attached to one of the bones of the fore-arm. When the swell of the muscle contracts, or shortens, its two extremities approach nearer each other, and by the approximation of the terminal extremities of the muscle, the joint at the elbow bends. On this principle, all the joints of the system are moved. This is illustrated ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter

... said. "I wouldn't have understood all that in your language. If I had read it, maybe, but not if I heard it." He put his upper right hand on Paula's shoulder and uttered a clicking approximation of her name. He turned and introduced another Kragan, about his own age, who wore the equipment and insignia of a Company native-major and was freshly painted with the Company emblem. "This is Kormork. ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper

... bottle. Of William himself little is known, or rather nothing, except that he must have been, as his continuator certainly was, a native of the Loire district; so that the Rose is a product of Central, not, like Renart, of Northern France, and exhibits, especially in the Lorris portion, an approximation ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... accomplished in all its wealth of octave at Hampton Institute, Virginia, under the auspices of which the collection was undertaken and for the benefit of which the publications are made. Not content with a by-ear approximation only of the folk-song, Mrs. Burlin gave especial care to the notation of every nuance of Negro singing—organic and rhythmic. The changing nuance syncopations that give such expressive accent to the different solo verses ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... book, each text page contained several types of secondary material printed in all four margins. The HTML version of this e-text offers a closer approximation of ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... we also find the Pope declaring of one of the brightest saints and luminaries of the Church that we need not follow him when it is plainly impossible for us to do so. Is it so very much to hope that ere many years are over the approximation will become closer still? ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... and he had not that noble hatred of the crooked, the mean, and the dishonorable which becomes a gentleman. Mazarin once said,—"There is stuff enough in him to make four kings and one worthy man." Divide this favorable opinion by four, and the result will be an approximation to the value of Louis XIV. as a monarch and a man. There was a king in him,—a determination to be master, and to bear no rival near the throne, no matter of how secondary or trifling a nature ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... child be instructed in those general views of the phaenomena of nature for which we have no exact English name. The nearest approximation to a name for what I mean which we possess is physical geography; the Germans have a better, 'Erdkunde' (earth knowledge or geology in its etymological sense), that is to say, a general knowledge of the earth, and what is on it and in it and about it. If anyone who has experience ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... of the atomic weight of a substance by its specific heat. This product is approximately the same, 6.4; this approximation is so close that it is of use in determining the valency and atomic weights of substances. The atomic weight of a substance therefore represents the approximate number of gram-calories required to raise one gram-atom, q. v., of such substance through ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... will be seen that the problem is an exceedingly complex one, not to be decided off-hand, or by any simple method. It has in fact been usually considered as (strictly speaking) insoluble, and only to be estimated by a more or less rough approximation, or by the method of general analogy from certain known facts. It will be seen, from what has been said in previous chapters, that Mr. Lowell, in his book, has used the latter method, and, by taking the presence ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace

... all spoken language—and this is as true of prose as it is of verse—there are time-intervals more or less clearly marked, and that the ear is the final judge as to the nature of these intervals. But can the ear really measure the intervals with any approximation to certainty, so that prosodists, for instance, can agree that a given poem is written in a definite metre? In one sense "yes." No one doubts that the Odyssey is written in "dactylic hexameters," i.e., in lines made up of six "feet," each one of which is normally composed ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry

... years before, or 159 years) they are fighting for persons, for rival candidates. In 1460 they could not have conceived more than an Esquimaux can entertain a question about the constitution of lyric poetry, or the differential principles of English and Greek tragedy, the barest approximation to questions that in 1642 are grounds of furious quarrel, of bloody quarrel, of extermination. Now then, looking forward, you would see from year to year little if any growth; but inverting your glass, looking back from the station of 1642 to ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey



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