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Basic   /bˈeɪsɪk/   Listen
Basic

adjective
1.
Pertaining to or constituting a base or basis.  "The basic ingredients" , "Basic changes in public opinion occur because of changes in priorities"
2.
Reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible without loss of generality.  Synonyms: canonic, canonical.  "A canonical syllable pattern"
3.
Serving as a base or starting point.  Synonym: introductory.  "Basic training for raw recruits" , "A set of basic tools" , "An introductory art course"
4.
Of or denoting or of the nature of or containing a base.



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"Basic" Quotes from Famous Books



... are the most wonderful examples of volcanic rock on the globe. Formed of rough and crystalline products of the basic fire of earth, they hold high up in their recesses coral beds once under the sea, and lava in many shapes, tokens of the island's rise from the slime, and of mammoth craters now almost entirely obliterated by denudation—the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... thing that must be said in favor of the Chinese system of education, however, and that is the emphasis it has always laid on moral or ethical training. The teaching, too, seems to have been remarkably effective. Take so basic a matter as paying one's debts, for example: it is a part of the Chinaman's religion to get even with the world on every Chinese New Year, which comes in February. If he fails to "square up" at this time he "loses ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... work on machines too heavy or unsafe for children to handle and who will help to supervise and direct the children in their tasks. The shop itself will equal the best of shops in point of equipment, safety and sanitation. It will not, however, like many of the best, elaborate these basic features in ornamental expenditures. The shop will present itself to the young workers as sustaining the best and most essential standards in use, but like all other problems connected with the shop, the best will ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot

... Commodore said musingly. "It's a shame you had to burn them so badly. We've never recovered a Kraden ship in good enough shape to give our techs something to work on. It might make a basic difference in the war, particularly if there was something aboard that'd give us some indication of where they were coming from. We've been fighting this war in our backyard for a full century. It would help if we could get into their backyard for a change. It's problematical how ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... basic excellence of this man's character that he was popular among his fellows, who, liking the man, overlooked the amateur ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse

... he waited, he could not keep his eyes from this photograph. It was Di at her curliest, at her fluffiest, Di conscious of her bracelet, Di smiling. Bobby gazed, his basic aversion to her hard-pressed by a most reluctant pleasure. He hoped that he would not see her, and ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale

... CLEAN DIATOMS.—As a general rule, we may say that every specimen of diatomaceous earth or rock needs a special treatment. The following, however, may serve as a basic treatment, from which such departure may be taken in each case as the nature of the specimen would indicate: Boil the material in hydrochloric acid, in a test tube, from two to five minutes. Let settle, pour off the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various

... effort induced by conscious volition, is the basic mental operation upon which is reared that complex psychical structure which is to be found in the higher animals, and especially in man—the ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... was some good. We had, however, very good luck with bright blankets and cotton cloth. Our beads did not happen here to be in fashion. Probably three months earlier or later we might have done better with them. The feminine mind here differs in no basic essential from that of civilization. Fashions change as rapidly, as often and as completely in the jungle as in Paris. The trader who brings blue beads when blue beads have "gone out" might just as well ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... conventional distilling plants of Earth," I said, "except that the basic ingredient, a silicon compound, is irradiated as it passes through zirconium tubes to the heating pile, where it is activated and broken down into the droplets of the elixir called Moon Glow. You see the golden ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns

... understandable that Governments, for political or military reasons, often endeavor to conceal their real intentions until the decisive moment. In this matter, however, as in the conduct of war itself, there exists the basic principle, acknowledged throughout the civilized world, that no methods may be employed which could not be employed by men of honor even when they are opponents. One cannot, unfortunately, acquit Russia ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... of volcanic mountain is that which has been built up by successive eruptions of basic lava, such as basalt or dolerite, when in a molten condition. These are very rare, and the slope of the sides depends on the amount of original viscosity. Where the lava is highly fused its slope will be slight, but if in a viscous condition, successive outpourings from the orifice, unable ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull

... person. But our reaction to that wrong is wrong too! The mote in him has provoked in us resentment, or coldness, or criticism, or bitterness, or evil speaking, or ill will—all of them variants of the basic ill, unlove. And that, says the Lord Jesus, is far, far worse than the tiny wrong (sometimes quite unconscious) that provoked it. A mote means in the Greek a little splinter, whereas a beam means a rafter. ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession

... an international exhibition is to single out those things which appeal on the basis of certain artistic principles which are the same the world over. To go into the many religious and other sentimental considerations which are sometimes the basic justification for some very extraordinary fantastic things, charmingly exploited by certain art dealers, is impossible within the ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... sectarian systems brought to America have been thawed out by our free American religious atmosphere so that there is not a large sectarian body that would dare to promulgate seriously and persistently the basic principles that gave birth to it in Europe. The consequence is that sects are hastening to revise their creeds so as to get rid of their out-of-date features as gracefully as possible. One of the leading arguments for union with other denominations used ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz

... he was vehement in his views and clear as to the course he meant to take. He was so eloquent in his discourse and so full of that divine spark of enthusiasm, that he was always listened to, no matter how unpalatably Tory the basic principles of his utterances were. He never posed as anything but an aristocrat, and while he whimsically admitted that in the present day to be one was an enormous disadvantage for a man who wished to get on, he ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... done was a one-hundred-per cent failure. He had managed to come up with a few basic improvements, patented them, and licensed them out to various manufacturers. But these were purely an accidental by-product. Malcom Porter was interested in "basic research" and not much ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett

... mere sleight of hand that launched this cult upon the world as the last days came. Beyond all the physical manifestations, the religious idea in Spiritualism has leavened the religious thought of millions. No one can deny that the basic idea is the one that the serpent promulgated in Eden, "Ye shall ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... primary function of personality is self-preservation, but personality itself is not a static but a dynamic thing. The basic factor in its development, is integration: each new situation calls forth a new adjustment which modifies or alters the personality in the process. The proper aim of personality, therefore, is not permanence ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn

... supported by every member with the sole exception of the New Yorker, Abraham Yates. Delegations from all of the Southern states but Maryland were present, and all of them voted aye. Its enactment gave to the country a basic law for the territories in phrasing and in substance comparable to the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution. Applying only to the region north of the Ohio River, the ordinance provided for the erection of territories later to be admitted ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... glorious woman like Prudence Crandall,[158] who suffered shameful persecutions in establishing a school for colored girls at Canterbury, in 1833, should have been sufficient to rouse every woman in Connecticut to some thought on the basic principles of the government and religion of the country. Yet we have no record of any woman in that State publicly sustaining her in that grand enterprise, though no doubt her heroism gave fresh inspiration to the sermons of Samuel J. May, then preaching ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... this attitude or impose it upon those under his charge. If he does so, he is out of harmony with his principles and denies the basic rule of his belief. A Protestant believes in no infallible authority; he is an authority unto himself, which authority he does not claim to be infallible, if he is sober and sane. He is after truth; and whatever ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... go on. I shall use the same programme in the main for both groups, but I shall simplify everything and illustrate more freely for the little ones, telling the historical and scientific stories with much more detail to the older group. This is what Mr. Bird calls my 'basic idea,' which will be filled out from week to week according to inspiration. For November, I shall make autumn, the harvest, and Thanksgiving the starting-point. I am all ready with my historical story of 'The First ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... she said, eyeing him as if he were another log for the fire. "His basic premise that Time is all-existent was sound. Time is past, ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin

... Again and again they had laughed at the discomfiture of the latter, perhaps rejoicing in it the more because it removed fear from their own houses. And probably never had they concerned themselves particularly with the basic ethics of the struggle. It was simply one of the things they saw. It was life. So they made a ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... Darkness and Dr. Watson's umbrella—my wants are simple. And Ames, the faithful Ames, no doubt he will stretch a point for me. All my lines of thought lead me back invariably to the one basic question—why should an athletic man develop his frame upon so unnatural an ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle

... useful for every adult to be able to read, write and reckon. Who, then, can criticize a Government because it insists that all children be taught these basic skills? But for the same reason and on the same principle, provision could be made for swimming-schools in every village and town on the sea-coast, or on the streams and rivers; every boy should be obliged to learn how to swim.—That it may be useful for ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... reasonably be regarded as identical, for the Buddha did not treat of God or the divine government of the world, whereas Christ's chief thesis is that God loves the world and that therefore man should love God and his fellow men. But though their basic principles differ, the two doctrines agree in maintaining that happiness is obtainable not by pleasure or success or philosophy or rites but by an unselfish life, culminating in the state called Nirvana or the kingdom of heaven. "The kingdom ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... which he abandoned the sterility of commerce and turned to the rewards of literature. Nor was this, I believe, merely a deception on Anderson's part, since the breakdown painful as it surely was, did help precipitate a basic change in his life. At the age of 36, he left behind his business and moved to Chicago, becoming one of the rebellious writers and cultural bohemians in the group that has since come to be called the "Chicago Renaissance." Anderson soon adopted the posture of a free, liberated spirit, and ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... Lou continued to learn things. The pupils of a grammar school abjure school bags; a Geography now being a folio volume measurable in square feet, it is the thing to build upon its basic foundation an edifice of other text-books, and carry the sum total to and ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin

... bitter. He saw that the girl's mind was merely skipping over the surface of the commercial sea upon which her father sailed a pirate craft; she had not plunged into the depths where she might have found the basic principles of all business—fairness; she had taken no account of the human impulse that, in just men, impels them to grant to their fellows a fighting ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... almost no checking as to how they spent their time. Well, actually, the jobs to which they were suited were rather trivial—some of them were actually "made work." After all, in a well-run society, it was axiomatic that everyone have basic job security; that's ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett

... smile on the lips. He knew what it was to have the strange and magical current of force in his back and loins, and down his legs, force so perfect that it stayed him immobile, and left his face subtly, mindlessly smiling. He knew what it was to be awake and potent in that other basic mind, the deepest physical mind. And from this source he had a pure and magic control, magical, mystical, a force ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... Contemporary with Abraham, and, if the legends be true, an instructor of that venerable sage, Hermes was, and is, the Great Central Sun of Occultism, whose rays have served to illumine the countless teachings which have been promulgated since his time. All the fundamental and basic teachings embedded in the esoteric teachings of every race may be traced back to Hermes. Even the most ancient teachings of India undoubtedly have their roots in ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates

... "one should never affirm anything offhand. One must try to reach the basic reason for every condition. And this basic reason might just be—as I have said—our superstitious faith in a power which we do not possess. We have grown so terribly modest in our demands; why is it? Might this not lie at the very root of our ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... the training chambers had not prepared him for the surface of Pyrrus. There was the basic similarity of course. The feel of the poison grass underfoot and the erratic flight of a stingwing in the last instant before Grif blasted it. But these were scarcely noticeable in the crash of ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison

... political pressure, of course," said Cameron. "But the real reason was simply our preoccupation with making bibliographies of each others' papers. It's going to take a lot of leg work, something in which our formal courses don't give us any basic training. Fothergill understands that—it's why he pushed me so hard with the Foundation. And Riley up there is capable of seeing ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones

... discovered the left-handed tartrate. These discoveries at the opening of Pasteur's career brought him at once to the front among the scientific men. He followed them with a profound investigation into the symmetry and dissymmetry of atoms, and reached the conclusion that in these lay the basic difference between inorganic and organic matter, between the absence of life ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... indicated in the title, he wrestled with a theory of American aesthetics. "Christmas, 1915", the third book in the series, appeared, applying the "Gospel of Beauty to the Photoplay". The ideas of Art and Democracy that develop in the first two books are used as the basic principles in "The Art of the Moving Picture". Those who desire a close view of the Lindsay idea will do well to read the three works in the order named. Further particulars ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay

... from coffee.[132] This alkaloid, having the formula C14H16O4N2, is also found in fenugreek, Trigonella foenum-graecum, in various leguminous plants, and in the seeds of strophanthus. When pure it forms colorless needles melting at 140 deg. C., and, as with all alkaloids, gives a weak basic reaction. It is very soluble in water, slightly soluble in alcohol, and only very slightly soluble in ether, chloroform or benzol, so that it does not contaminate the caffein in the determination of the latter. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... the large living room. They rose, smiling, to greet their host. "Let's save the self-congratulations for later," snapped Burnett. "These were merely our own preliminaries. We're not out of the woods yet. This, ladies and gentlemen, is our newest recruit. He has seen the light. I have fed him basic data and I'm sure we're not making a ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner

... The basic story-line is that there is a fort in the Hudson Bay Territory that needs some stores and materials to be sent to it from another fort about 150 miles away. The journey could be done by canoe, but there are none available at this time. So ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston

... that public opinion has been based upon an imperfect knowledge of the subject, we shall find a further explanation when we examine the diagrams showing the "direct dyes" obtained from coal tar. According to their mode of application I have here arranged them in three large groups, viz., basic, acid, and Congo colors. A fourth group, comprising comparatively few, is made up of those colors which are directly produced upon ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... oot wie a grain o' basic slag noo and than," said the gardener. "And I just gie them some lime ilka time I think the ground ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce

... being set aside as a basic principle, the reason invoked by the dramatist is positive reason, the reason of science, of justice, of rational logic. In verbose monologues, he combats the superstitions and fanaticism of the orthodox. The whole force of the Maskil's hatred against obscurantism is expressed through the character ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... brought by his son. The chances of a frontal attack had already been discussed between him and Constans, and the latter had devised a formation which, in theory at least, should make such an undertaking feasible. In its basic idea it was the Roman testudo, described by Julius Caesar in the Gallic Commentaries. The phalanx of marching men were protected from arrows, darts, and ordinary missiles by a continuous covering formed of their ox-hide shields, the latter ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... back are going to be a big help. More than one derelict was located. We were right in our surmise that the Reds first discovered the remains of one in Siberia, but it was in no condition to be explored. They already had the basic idea of the time traveler, so they applied it to the hunting down of other ships, with several way stops to throw people like us off the scent. So they found an intact ship, and also several others. At least three are on this side of the Atlantic where they couldn't get at them very well. ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton

... pleasant thought. Halder, everything we've learned recently at the Identification Center indicates that Rane's theory is correct ... every one of the twelve hundred members of the Kalechi group probably can be analyzed down to the same three basic identity-patterns, reshuffled in endless variation. The Federation wouldn't have to capture many of us before discovering the fact. It will then start doing exactly what we're trying to do—use it to identify ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz

... Clearly, Dr. Giles' work established much of the groundwork for the work of later translators who published their own editions. Of the later editions of the ART OF WAR I have examined; two feature Giles' edited translation and notes, the other two present the same basic information from the ancient Chinese commentators found in the Giles edition. Of these four, Giles' 1910 edition is the most scholarly and presents the reader an incredible amount of information concerning Sun Tzu's text, much more than ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... resulting from entire restocking, the acquisition of necessary basic information is as difficult, or more so, but its application is far simpler. That the ground will be fully stocked by natural or artificial means must be assumed, but we can also assume that the result will be influenced only by normal locality conditions and not by accidental ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... of the guns which had made a chilly inside for the man, but when he reflected upon the incompetency, or childish courier's falsity, at Patras and his discernible lack of sense from Agrinion onward, he felt that the fault was elemental in his nature. It was a mere basic inability to front novel situations which was somehow in the dragoman; he retreated from everything difficult in a smoke of gibberish and gesticulation. Coleman glared at him with the hatred that sometimes ensues when breed meets breed, but he saw that this man was indeed ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... The type approaching the loop type, possessing two of the basic or essential characteristics of the loop, ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation

... what the third was, said "To apply fertilizer." And a later Latin writer speaks of the farmer who does not plough thoroughly as one who becomes a mere "clodhopper." You will notice that it is not sowing, nor hoeing after the sowing, but ploughing that is the basic operation. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... awakened interest in the civilization we are framing which is so noticeable among English writers during the past three years. He asked me a remarkable question, and the answer which I gave him suggested certain contrasts which seemed to me of basic importance for us all. He said: "I have been reading books by Sherwood Anderson, Waldo Frank and Ben Hecht and Konrad Bercovici and Joseph Hergesheimer, and I can see that they are important books, but I feel that the essential point to which ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... me,' said Hazel stubbornly—for, although grateful for the festive meal, she could not let her basic rule of life slip—'if Foxy died along of me, I'd die too. I ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... agreed that the question of appointing an International Committee, consisting of two members from each of the five Great Powers, to whom would be referred President Wilson's draft, with certain basic principles to guide them, should be considered at the ...
— The Bullitt Mission to Russia • William C. Bullitt

... necessity the whole sacramental system, in theology, philosophy and operation, of Christianity. It is of its esse; its great original, revolutionary and final contribution to the wisdom that man may have for his own, and it follows inevitably from the basic facts of the Incarnation and Redemption, which are also its ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... the reader knows as well as the writer and can decide for himself much better than I can define them for him. Therefore, I shall content myself with a mere mention of the basic technical elements that ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... of the county from Turriff by Auchterless and the Foudland Hills towards the Tap o' Noth near Gartly. The metamorphic rocks have been invaded by igneous materials, some before, and by far the larger series after the folding of the strata. The basic types of the former are represented by the sills of epidiorite and hornblende gneiss in Glen Muick and Glen Callater, which have been permeated by granite and pegmatite in veins and lenticles, often foliated. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... anxieties and my months of waiting. I forgot those weeks of long mute protest, of revolt against wily old Nature, who so cleverly tricks us into the ways she has chosen. A glow of glory went through my tired body—it was hysteria, I suppose, in the basic meaning of the word—and I had to shut my eyes tight to keep ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... that was a constitutional question only so long as it did not cross that other more universal "right," the paramount "charter of liberty," by which, in his view, all other rights were conditioned. He would impose on all mankind, as their basic moral obligation, the duty to sacrifice all personal likes, personal ambitions, when these in their permanent tendencies ran contrary to the tendency which he rated as paramount. Such had always been, and ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... a morass, supposed by the Romans to be the lake Maeotis, they penetrated through the mountains, and arrived, at the end of fifteen days' march, on the confines of Media; where they advanced as far as the unknown cities of Basic and Cursic. They encountered the Persian army in the plains of Media; and the air, according to their own expression, was darkened by a cloud of arrows. But the Huns were obliged to retire before the numbers of the enemy. Their laborious retreat was effected by a different road; they lost the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... society—well, it all works out neatly in Tighe's formulation. The present state of affairs should continue for about seventy-five years, we feel at the Institute. In that time, reason can—we hope—be so firmly implanted in the basic structure of society that when the next great wave of passion comes it won't turn men ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson

... are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of beauty." And Whitman's own verse is a notable example of a new technique forged in response to a new need of expression. Dealing as he did with the big basic impulses of common experience accessible to all men, Whitman needed a largeness and freedom of expression which he did not find in the accepted and current poetic forms. To match the limitlessly diversified character of the people, ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... poetry Macpherson drew upon the stylistic techniques of the King James Version of the Bible, just as Blake and Whitman were to do later. As Bishop Lowth was the first to point out, parallelism is the basic structural technique. Macpherson incorporated two principal forms of parallelism in his poems: repetition, a pattern in which the second line nearly restates the sense of the first, and completion in which ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson

... this provision, portions of the Florida Purchase were added to adjacent States and the residue compelled to wait twenty-five years before statehood was given to it. The rights of man and citizenship in the State had again been temporarily lost sight of by the party of which these were basic principles. ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... light matches here he ate chiefly by the touch system. There was a marked alkaline flavour to the repast, not unpleasantly counteracted by a growth of vegetable mould of delicate lavender tints which Nature had been decently spreading over the final reduction of this provender to its basic elements. But the time was not one in which to cavil about minor infelicities. Ashes wouldn't hurt any one if taken in moderation; you couldn't see the mould in a perfectly dark hotel; and ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... leaders, and the security that large numbers always seem to afford, is a creature of few independent ideas. It is not like the deer, elk, sheep or goat that has learned things in the hard school of solitude, danger and adversity, with no one on whom to rely for safety save itself. The basic intelligence of the average herd animal can be summed up ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... fact remains that the services are not alike, that no wit of man can make them alike, and that the retention by each of its separate character, customs and confidence is essential to the conserving of our national military power. Unification has not altered this basic proposition. The first requirement of a unified establishment is moral soundness in each of the integral parts, without which there can be no soundness at all. And on the question of fundamental ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... apparent, therefore, that the world is in a permanent danger of being misjudged. That this is no fanciful or mystical idea may be tested by simple examples. The two absolutely basic words 'good' and 'bad,' descriptive of two primal and inexplicable sensations, are not, and never have been, used properly. Things that are bad are not called good by any people who experience them; but things that are ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... Ireland, a Germany, a Jugo-Slav region, a Constantinople, a Rajputana, and a Bengal. I do not mean that these are absolutely fixed things; they may have receded or expanded. But these are the more permanent things; these are the field, the groundwork, the basic reality; these are fundamental forces over which play the ambitions, treacheries, delusions, traditions, tyrannies of international politics. All boundaries will tend to reveal these fundamental forms as all clothing tends to ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... of the great arch of the Democratic Administration. It was the first item in his programme to set business free in America and to establish it upon a firm and permanent basis. He aptly said to me, when he first discussed the basic reason for the legislation, he wished not only to set business free in America, but he desired also to take away from certain financial interests in the country the power they had unjustly exercised of "hazing" the Democratic party ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... shall deal with a problem of the doctrine of affinity, namely, that of the relative strengths of acids and bases. It was quite an early and often repeated observation that the various acids and bases take part with very varying intensity or avidity in those reactions in which their acid or basic nature comes into play. No success attended the early attempts at giving numerical expression to the strengths of acids and bases, i.e. of finding a numerical coefficient for each acid and base, which should be the quantitative expression of the degree of its participation in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... likely to fall upon stony ground and only be received by the faddists in tune to this particular argument. No theory for the betterment of mankind will succeed now with the mass of people or make any lasting mark upon time unless its basic ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn

... The Military and Society: Proceedings of the Fifth Military Symposium of the U.S. Air Force Academy. He is the coeditor with Bernard C. Nalty of the thirteen-volume Blacks in the United States Armed Forces: Basic Documents and with Ronald Spector of Voices of History: Interpretations in American Military History. He is currently working on a sequel to Integration of the Armed Forces which will also appear in the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... longer profitable, and the equilibrium is established through decline in output. However, in the backward swing, due to lingering overproduction, prices usually fall lower than the cost of producing even a much-diminished supply. There is at this point what we may call the "basic" price, that at which production is insufficient and the price rises again. The basic price which is due to this undue backward swing is no more the real price of the metal to be contemplated over so long a term of years than is the highest price. At how ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover

... teaching us new lessons in dietetics, some of which are of commanding importance. One of the most significant of these is the necessity for taking account of the nature of the ash left by a foodstuff in the body. There are basic or alkali-ash foods and acid-ash foods. Foods of the latter class when freely used cause acidosis. Meats are high up in the list of acid-ash foods. It is for this reason that such animals as the lion and flesh-eating men ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... scarcely find a single crustacean, although the ground is full of deep, shady clefts in which masses of dried leaves are collected, and which therefore ought to be an exceedingly suitable haunt for land mollusca. The reason of this poverty ought perhaps to be sought in the want of chalk or basic calcareous rocks, which prevails in the parts ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... [14] This fundamental or basic principle may be designated in Pali, Nidana—chain of causation or, literally, "Origination of dependence". Twelve Nidanas are specified, viz.: Avijja—ignorance of the truth of natural religion; Samkhara—causal action, karma; Vinnana—consciousness of personality, the "I ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott

... employing the same. And such knowledge could not be imparted without the fundamental truths of nature being understood by them, which understanding was possible only to those who had grasped the great Basic Truths of the Science ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... condition of feeling is the combination which the Monarchy has during the past century come to present to the minds of the public. Tradition and history reaching down into the hearts and lives of the people may be considered the basic influence; a general belief in the superiority of British institutions over all others may be stated as a powerful conservative force; while personality and character in the Sovereign may be described as the chief constructive element in this process of increasing loyalty to the Crown. Convenience, ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... We cannot buy a bar of soap or a filtered cigarette without paying tribute to the impact of suggestion. Right or wrong, most of us place more confidence in what "they" say than we do in our own powers of reason. This is the basic reason why psychiatrists are in short supply. We distrust our own mental processes and want an expert to tell us ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... neither required to be a perfect mother nor to rear a perfect child. As Spencer remarks, a perfect child in this imperfect world would be sadly out of joint with the times, would indeed be a martyr. If your basic principles are right and if your child has before him the daily and hourly spectacle of a mother who is trying to conform herself to high standards, he will grow as fast as it is safe for him to grow. Spencer ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne

... patiently. "It's just as I said. We're fishing in the dark, absolutely. So far we haven't a single basic fact on which to build any structure of hypothesis. We must go on fishing. I expect you to dig up all the facts about these people; every odd bit of gossip or rumor or anything else. I'll bring my science to play, but there's nothing ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... unknowing use of some basic physics, and I'm afraid I relapsed for a few minutes into the role of teacher and told them a little bit about the laws of radiation and absorption ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee

... obeyed amid considerable confusion, with Marcia Dayne appointed from the Fort Adams District, and the council excused to draft the basic laws for the week, the faculty was introduced, one ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... five basic types of stage dancing that I teach, covering the modern field in full, and supplying the pupil with a complete knowledge of all the steps needed for a successful ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... Abd al-Rahman AL SAUD (Ibn Saud) after a 30-year campaign to unify most of the Arabian Peninsula. A male descendent of Ibn Saud, his son ABDALLAH bin Abd al-Aziz, rules the country today as required by the country's 1992 Basic Law. Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Saudi Arabia accepted the Kuwaiti royal family and 400,000 refugees while allowing Western and Arab troops to deploy on its soil for the liberation of Kuwait the following year. The continuing presence of foreign ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... the existence of invisible agencies and energies was recognized, and these were attributed to superior persons who lived independent of these visible entities, but at the same time were connected with them. The basic idea in Finnish mythology seems to lie in this: that all objects in nature are governed by invisible deities, termed haltiat, regents or genii. These haltiat, like members of the human family, have distinctive bodies ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all parts of the United ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... combination of steel, cloth, and wire can be made which, moved by the power of electricity or steam, shall form a successful flying-machine, the outlook may be altogether different. To judge it sanely, let us bear in mind the difficulties which are encountered in any flying-machine. The basic principle on which any such machine must be constructed is that of the aeroplane. This, by itself, would be the simplest of all flyers, and therefore the best if it could be put into operation. The principle involved may be readily comprehended by the ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... condition of the time gave little stimulus to novelty. Herein Hume was born a generation too early. Had he written when George III attempted the destruction of the system of the Revolution, and when America and France combined to raise again the basic questions of politics, he might have done therein what Adam Smith effected in his own field. But the time had not yet come; and it was left to Burke and Bentham to ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... metal products, processed food and beverages, chemicals, basic metals, textiles, ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... that they had been cheated of the right to govern themselves. That no power whatsoever should tax them without their own consent was the basic principle of English liberty. Yet it was but a mockery to contend that men who had sold themselves to the governor and whom they were given no opportunity to oust from office, were their true representatives in ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker

... woman, Magdalen. I don't know what it is about you, I fail to analyse it, but one becomes attached to you. You can make even a home pleasant. And if a man once cared for you it is improbable that he would cease to care just because you are no longer young. I take my stand on the basic fact that there certainly has been a mutual attachment. I then ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... For her this power was the mystical central fact of the universe. Now, however, as she stood in the Promenade, it seemed to her that something uncanny had happened to the universe. Surely it had shifted from its pivot! Her basic conviction trembled. Men were not the same everywhere, and her power over them was a delusion. Englishmen were incomprehensible; they were not human; they were apart. The memory of the hundreds of Englishmen who had yielded to her power in Paris (for she had specialised in ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... in a subsequent Memoir [Sonnenschein, London, pp. xiv., 954, 20 in. x 8-1/2, price L2 2s. net] has made out, reluctantly and against the judgment of his firm, that the basic material of the globules, the peculiar tenacity of which was due to some toughening ingredient imported by the Wisitors from their planet, was undoubtedly that indispensable domestic article which is alleged to ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas

... all its own. But there are certain works in which a man finds himself at an angle of vision where there is an especially felicitous union of the aesthetic and emotional elements which constitute the basic qualities of his uniqueness. We recognize these works as being welded into a strange unity, as having a homogeneous texture of ecstasy over them that surpasses any aesthetic surface of harmonic colour, though that harmony also is understood by the ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... litany of lies' was outside his jurisdiction and contained findings made contrary of natural justice. For these reasons we hold that there is substance in the complaints made by the airline and the individuals. Because of those two basic defects, an injustice has been done, and to an extent that is obviously serious. It follows that the Court must quash the penal order for costs made by the Commissioner against Air New Zealand reflecting the ...
— Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster • Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richardson, Duncan

... sanguine, why it wasn't necessary to be born again, even under the auspices of the Great Spirit. It is very gratifying indeed to be in the midst of a great county of this kind that has made one of the great basic industries so successful. It takes three things to make a really great nation; it takes great natural resources, it takes great policies and it takes great people. We have nations in this world where the resources, the possibilities ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... should bear in mind, however, that, perfect as such forms of letters may be for the uses of the printer, the limitations of type have necessarily curtailed the freedom and variety of their serif and swash lines, and that therefore, though accepting their basic forms, he need not be cramped by their restrictions, nor imitate the unalterable and sometimes awkwardly inartistic relations of letter to letter for which he finds precedents in the printed page. Indeed, the same general rules for spacing and the same freedom ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown

... whaling voyage in the Arctic, once—a voyage that was to have been for three years and which had terminated in shipwreck at the end of six months. While his imagination was fanciful, even fantastic at times, he had a basic love of reality that compelled him to write about the things he knew. He knew whaling, and out of the real materials of his knowledge he proceeded to manufacture the fictitious adventures of the two boys he intended to use as joint heroes. It was easy work, he decided ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... last letter it is quite evident that there has been a radical change in your originally sound and inspired ideas, and which clearly indicates to me that a discussion and exchange of basic concept would be fruitless. I'm rather hurt that you question my integrity with the statement about the "slick, calculating, career-minded cult of Ph. Deism." Moreover, I would appreciate, if possible, the ...
— On Handling the Data • M. I. Mayfield

... the trouble is to find the basic arguments. Even among the Hivites and the Hittites, I have not yet ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke

... produces the highest achievement of the individual personality. The Social Democratic organization, opposed though it is to the military organization, is also composed of Germans and is, therefore, directed by the same basic principles as the military organization, although for entirely different purposes. For this one reason it was almost a matter of course that the Social Democrats offered their services for the war at the moment when they ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... National government whose supreme judicial tribunal declares that it cannot, through the executive arm, enforce its own decrees, and, therefore, refuses to pass upon a question, squarely before it, involving a basic right of citizenship. For the decision of the Supreme Court in the Giles case, if it foreshadows the attitude which the Court will take upon other cases to the same general end which will soon come before it, is scarcely ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... Federation and was becoming an entirely independent republic. In order to give the reader an opportunity to get a better idea of the situation which was thus created for the Soviet power in the last moment of the peace negotiations, I think it best to reproduce here in its basic parts the address made by the author of these lines in his capacity as the People's Commissar on Foreign Affairs at the session of the Central Executive Committee on the ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky

... volume on "Lyric Declamation: Recitative, Song and Ballad Singing," will be discussed the practical application of these basic principles of Style to the vocal music of the German, French, Italian and ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam

... August 18, the editor, Alex. L. Manly, starting with a reference to a speaker from Georgia, who at the Agricultural Society meeting at Tybee had advocated lynching as an extreme measure, said that she "lost sight of the basic principle of the religion of Christ in her plea for one class of people as against another," and continued: "The papers are filled with reports of rapes of white women, and the subsequent lynching of the alleged rapists. The editors ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... do justice to this remarkable campaign, which Woodrow Wilson himself, after he had been twice elected President of the United States, considered the most satisfying of his political campaigns, because the most systematic and basic. As Presidential candidate he had to cover a wide territory and touch only the high spots in the national issues, but in his gubernatorial campaign he spoke in every county of the state and in some counties several times, and his speeches grew out of each other and were connected with ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... of talk on deck and at the dinner table, wild talk, speculative talk, imaginative discussions, logical and illogical. But, boiled down to its basic ingredients, the wildest imagination on board the Volhynia admitted war to be an impossibility of modern times, and that, ultimately, diplomacy would settle what certainly appeared to be the ugliest international ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... Basic, isn't it? Destroy the plant, and you cut the heart out of the drug traffic. No cops; no hopeless warfare against cunning smugglers; no battle with big-money corruption of officials. And remember: no chemist alive can synthesize opium or its derivatives. Sure, there ...
— Revenge • Arthur Porges

... his private thoughts about himself, his private opinions about life; and when I reflect now upon my lack of real knowledge at five and twenty, I am amazed at the futility of an expensive education which had failed to impress upon me the simple, basic fact that life was struggle; that either development or retrogression is the fate of all men, that characters are never completely made, but always in the making. I had merely a disconcerting glimpse ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... sorrow (all mental). These are all qualities of the singing tone. They are not intangible. On the contrary, to the one who has them they are definite and are the things he works for from the beginning. They are basic and fundamental. All are combined in what I call tone concept, which is another word for musical ear, or musical taste. This tone concept is by far the most important thing in voice training. The student will not sing a tone better than the one he conceives mentally, therefore the ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger

... overseas investment supplements income from domestic production. The government provides for all medical services and subsidizes food and housing. The government is beginning to show progress on its basic policy of diversifying the economy away from oil and gas. Brunei's leaders are concerned that steadily increased integration in the world economy will ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.



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