"Germ" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... life of Dante, told with some detail, implies, indeed, that it was begun, and some progress made in it, while Dante was yet in Florence—begun in Latin, and he quotes three lines of it—continued afterward in Italian. This is not impossible; indeed, the germ and presage of it may be traced in the Vita Nuova. The idealized saint is there, in all the grace of her pure and noble humbleness, the guide and safeguard of the poet's soul. She is already in glory with Mary the Queen of Angels. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... different kind of life—a soft, lazy, voluptuous romance of feeling, that indisposes us to action—almost to motion. So far from a sojourn in Italy being friendly to the growth of ambition, it nips and almost destroys the germ." ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... coldness of heart. It was the distinction of Aurelius that he was able to harmonise them with the kindness, one might almost say the amenities, of a humourist, as also with the popular religion and its many gods. Those vasty conceptions of the later Greek philosophy had in them, in truth, the germ of a sort of austerely opinionative "natural theology," and how often has that led to religious dryness—a hard contempt of everything in religion, which touches the senses, or charms the fancy, or really concerns the affections. Aurelius had made his own the secret of passing, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... imagination; he will fancy all his friends unjust, ungrateful, and you first of all, if you once refuse to be at his beck and call; he will accuse you of having bothered him to live under your roof and of having prevented him from yielding to the wishes of his country. I already see the germ of these accusations in the turn of the letters you have ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... presence, more and more, by an internal pain, and by the violent spasms of the stomach which it inflicted. Even in 1806, at Warsaw, during one of its agonizing crises, Napoleon was[15] heard to exclaim, "that he carried about with him the germ of premature dissolution; and that he should die of the same malady ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... impossible for us to have dug the canal without a tremendous loss of life had it not been for the advance of medical science. Until we took charge this was one of the worst fever-infested districts on the globe. But just about this time it was discovered that the mosquito carries the germ of yellow fever and other contagious diseases. These pests breed in stagnant water and it was discovered that kerosene on the water forms a film on the surface that means death to the newborn mosquito. Then began one of ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... the Colosseum, with superposed stages of massive piers and engaged columns carrying entablatures. The proportions are awkward, the details coarse; but the spirit of Roman classicism is here seen in the germ. The exterior of this palace is, however, still Gothic in spirit. The architects are unknown; Giuliano da Majano (1452-90), Giacomo di Pietrasanta, and Meo del Caprino (1430-1501) are known to have worked upon it, but it is ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... diminutive vesicles, which, by some mysterious law of nature, mature one at a time, every thirty days, for thirty years of woman's life. When mature, the vesicle separates from the ovary, traverses the tube into the womb, and is thence expelled and lost, or becomes, by contact with the other sex, the germ of a living being. This process is accompanied by a disturbance of the whole system. Wandering pains are felt; a sense of languor steals over the mind; the blood rushes with increased violence through the vessels, and more or ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... winds, so that his music was in many regards necessarily a melodious echo of what was 'whispered by world-wandering winds.' And we can see, too, that he came into American literary life just as it was passing from the germ to the plant, and that every year he ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... canning, sterilization does away with the danger of spoilage by fermentation or "working." Sterilization consists in raising the temperature of the filled jar or can to a germ-killing point and holding it there until bacterial life ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... to indicate what is probably the case, a poison in the blood, the germ of which enters when the proboscis is inserted to draw blood. The poison-germ, contained in a bulb at the root of the proboscis, seems capable, although very minute in quantity, of reproducing itself, for the blood after death by tsetse is very small in quantity, and scarcely ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... too, refers to the deification of sex. O'Brien, in the Round Towers of Ireland states: "The lotus was the most sacred plant of the Ancients, and typified the two principles of the earth fecundation,—the germ standing for the lingam; the filaments and petals for ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... has had a long run. But it will none-the-less make a grim fight. Life will be worth living, for everybody, long before that consummation is in sight. The hovering demon of cold and darkness will be combatted by scientific means of which we have not the germ of ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... Spanish theologian, born at Saragossa; published a book called the "Spiritual Guide," which, as containing the germ of Quietism, was condemned by the Inquisition, and its author sentenced ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... hour, and nothing, for him, had come of it but the birth of an unreasoning hate. To the unconscious demand of these people's presence, of their ignorance, of their faces, of their voices, of their eyes, he had nothing to give but a resentment that had in it a germ of reckless violence. He could tell them nothing because he had not the means. Their coming at this moment, when he had wandered beyond that circle which race, memories, early associations, all the essential ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... in this portion that the germ is found, which will not be eaten by the larva, and will remain capable of developing into a plant, in spite of the large aperture made by the emergence of the adult insect. Why is this particular portion left untouched? What are the motives that ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... your guard, but you should rather say you put me on mine. It was, thanks to that, that I fell into the most senseless, the most brutal of delusions. The delusion passed away—it had contained the germ of better things. I saw my error, and I bitterly repented of it; and on the day you were married ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... its species, is exceedingly convenient; but how was the species to be fixed? Then they got lost in the philosophy of medicine. They raved about the life-principle of Van Helmont, vitalism, Brownism, organicism, inquired of the doctor whence comes the germ of scrofula, towards what point the infectious miasma inclines, and the means in all cases of disease to distinguish ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... Crawford thought when the sound smote his ears, is much more certain. The cock-crow and betrayal! He had been brought up in the country, and many a time, in his younger and better days, when intercourse with the world had not yet developed the evil germ in his character, he had read and pondered over the mysterious connection between the cock, Shakspeare's "bird of dawning," and the scenes which preceded the Crucifixion. Remembering that the cock had seemed to appear and ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... be by no means difficult, were it in accordance with our present design and purpose, to show that the first germ of republican liberty sprang into life amid the sedges and savage marshes of uncultivated ages, far remote even from the discovery of America, and trace it through successive rebellions, both of a political and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... whatever circumstances might be taken in. But the good bishop lived in an age when a man might write books and yet be permitted to keep his private existence to himself; in the pre-Boswellian [2] epoch, when the germ of the photographer lay concealed in the distant future, and the interviewer who pervades our age was an unforeseen, indeed ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... emotions to plants and souls to bees, might wrap a drama of destiny about this insect. She would command a leading place in a cast which included the butterfly that gave silk to the world, the mosquito that helped to prove the germ theory of disease, and the caterpillar that loosed the apple which revealed the law of ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... carried forward into the invisible world is the punishment of the Titans, those monsters who tried by piling up mountains to storm the heavenly abodes, and to wrest the Thunderer's bolts from his hand. This germ is slowly expanded; and next we read of a few specified criminals, who had been excessively impious, personally offending Zeus, condemned by his direct indignation to a severe expiation in Tartarus. The insulted deity wreaks his ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... betwixt day and night. The only One breathed breathless by itself;— Other than it there nothing since has been. Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled In gloom profound,—an ocean without light. The germ that still lay covered in the husk Burst forth, one nature, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... felt indignant at the doubt cast, even hypothetically, on the purity of his Paolina's love. It was rather the unreasoning animal anger against the person who had given him pain. It was a stab to his heart, this germ of a doubt thus placed there for the first time. He was conscious of the pang, and resented it. In the next minute the hot flush passed from his face, and he ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... general fact, has so many exceptions that it is not safe to trust to it. The Sanitary District Canal of Chicago has proved positively that even the most heavily germ-laden water becomes pure by running many miles at a regulated speed through the open country, but the conditions are altogether different from those of an ordinary river. First, in a river, sewage may enter at any point down-stream to add to the germs already present ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... is the germ of hate. Margaret, confronted by the unawaited, hated Lennox. Lennox, confronted by the inexplicable, hated Margaret. Hatred is love turned inside out. Love is perhaps a fermentation of the molecules of the imagination. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... hesitate to accept as conclusive the slender proof offered in support of the story.[39] It is, perhaps, safer to regard one of the simple schools instituted at an early period in connection with cathedrals and monasteries as having contained the humble germ from which the proud university was slowly developed. But, by the side of this original foundation there had doubtless grown up the schools of private instructors, and these had acquired a certain prominence before the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... forms I am immensely interested when I see a finely-made body in which the soul lies torpid. That is why you unconsciously compose for me a wonderful subject of study. I wonder now, how long this torpidity in the psychic germ has lasted in you? It commenced, of course, originally in protoplasm; but it must have continued through various low forms and met with enormous difficulties in attaining to individual consciousness as man,— because even now it ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... find. Islam was meant for Arabia, not for the world; for the Arabs of the seventh century, not for the Arabs of all time; and being such, and nothing more, its claim of divine origin renders change or development impossible. It has within itself neither the germ of natural growth nor the lively spring of adaptation. Mohammed declared himself a prophet to the Arabs;[71] and however much in his later days he may have contemplated the reformation of other religions beyond the Peninsula, or the further spread of his own (which is doubtful), ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... applaud, reinforcing her words with a whole battery of dimples, all the while privately resolving that no contagion of enthusiasm should inoculate her with the haymaking germ. There were factors that made it all a bit hard to withstand; the sky was so blue, the breeze was so jolly, the mown grass smelled so delicious, and the mountain air had such zest in it. But, on the other hand, the sun was hot and downright ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... see in it the tendency to grandiose language, not yet fully developed as in the Prometheus: the inclination of youth to simplicity, and even platitude, in religious and general speculation: and yet we recognize, as in the germ, the profound theology of the Agamemnon, and a touch of the political vein which appears more fully in the Furies. If the precedence in time here ascribed to it is correct, the play is perhaps worth more recognition ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... be his birthday, she rolled into his study a small keg of brandy, and then withdrew. She returned some time after wards to find that he had broached the keg, and lay insensible on the floor. In this anecdote we cannot but recognise the germ, not only of Hedda's temptation of Lovborg, but of a ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... strangest minds, combining, condensing, developing and multiplying the rich products of his research with marvellous facility and skill; now pondering fondly over some piece of exquisite loveliness, brought from an unknown recess, now tracing out the hidden germ of the eldest, and most barbaric theories, and now calling fantastic spirits from the vasty deep, where they have slept since the dawn of reason. The term 'myriad-minded' which he has happily applied to Shakspeare, is truly descriptive of himself. He is not ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... fancies, and the quaintest, queerest thoughts, ideas, and speculations—are scarcely inferior to his essays. Indeed, some of the best and most admired of the essays are but extended letters. The germ of the immortal dissertation on "Roast Pig" is contained in a letter to Coleridge; the essay entitled "Distant Correspondents" is hardly more than a transcript of a private letter to Barron Field; and the original sketch ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Russian society were the same in all the principalities. There was first the Prince. Then his official family, a band of warriors called the Drujina. This Drujina was the germ of the future state. Its members were the faithful servants of the Prince, his guard and his counselors. He could constitute them a court of justice, or could make them governors of fortresses (posadniki) or lieutenants in the larger ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... Chair, if there was no Pulpit or Bishop's Stall waiting for him, and begging his acceptance of its perquisites, he must needs institute a chair of his own, and pay for leave to occupy it. If there was no university with its appliances within his reach, he must make a university of his own. The germ of a new 'universality' would not be wanting in it. His library, or his drawing-room, or his 'banquet,' will be Oxford enough for him. He will begin it as the old monks began theirs, with their readings. Where the teacher is, there must the school be gathered together. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... gifts were vouchsafed her, Herbert was as dear to her as Mary had been to Mrs. Greville. Must she lose him now, now that the fruit she had so fondly cherished, watched as it expanded from the infant germ, had bloomed so richly to repay her care, would he be taken from her now that every passing month appeared to increase his love for her and hers for him? for Herbert clung to his mother in this dread hour of affliction with increasing ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... nearly ready, proved both toothsome and plentiful. It consisted of lobsters, clams, and muscles, both cooked and raw, ears of green maize roasted in the husk, and no-cake, that is to say, pounded corn mixed with water and baked in the ashes, the germ and animus of hoe-cake, bannocks, Johnnycake, and all the various forms of maize-bread so well known throughout ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... opposed to the monarchy. He had his idea; it was that government must be abolished, and the affairs of the country carried on by committees of experts. He liked the law authorising professional syndicates; there he thought was the germ of the true system. The professional syndicates should nominate the experts, each syndicate the experts in its own business. These should meet, settle the general necessary budget, recommend measures. Then ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... theology for the business of everyday life. Common sense was needed to expose and abase and overturn those criminals whose talents enabled them to conceal their wickedness; proselytism could follow in due course. There was the germ of a new sect in Baltic's conception of Christianity ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... life of the soul within us. Thus my life was early brought under the influence of nature, of useful handiwork, and of religious feelings; or, as I prefer to say, the primitive and natural inclinations of every human being were even in my case also tenderly fostered in the germ. I must mention here, with reference to my ideas regarding the nature of man, to be treated of later, and as throwing light upon my professional and individual work, that at this time I used repeatedly, and with deep emotion, ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... Frederick the Great, the ancestor of the Kaiser, was the author of the phrase, "the treaty is a scrap of paper." What was once in the gristle in the ancestor is now bred in the bone of the Kaiser and Crown Prince. That phrase, "a scrap of paper," holds the germ of a thousand wars. It spells the ruin of civilization. Not to resent it by war, is for the Allies ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... devoted, one might say, the devotional, spirit of the true artist to all his work, but The Scarlet Letter was written at a good pace when once started, though, as usual, the germ had been in Hawthorne's mind for many years. The story of its beginning is one of the many touching anecdotes in that history of authorship which Carlyle compared to the Newgate Calendar. Incidentally, too, it witnesses ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... field," to use Miss Hurl's expression; but inasmuch as artistic endeavor shows that same lack of originality which was characteristic of all other forms of intellectual activity at this time, the germ took root but slowly, and for a number of centuries servile imitations of the highly decorated and decidedly soulless Byzantine Virgins were very common. One of these paintings may be found in almost ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... time. The truth is, these sauria prey upon the crocodile's eggs, no doubt to the particular annoyance of the crocodile, who are, therefore, it is more than probable, no friends of the monitors. The Egyptian would love the monitor for feeding upon the crocodile germ, as much as for his timely warning of the approach of the uncouth enemy. The curious heloderms, from Mexico, with their ophidian teeth, lie at the bottom of the fifth case: they are supposed, but ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... by-products of the chase, were developed by her. She domesticated man and assisted him in domesticating the animals. She built her house, and it was hers. She did not go to her husband's group after marriage. The child was hers, and remained a member of her group. The germ of social organization was, indeed, the woman and her children and her children's children. The old women were the heads of civil society, though the men had developed a fighting organization and technique which ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... family. Certainly, she was improving. She could walk; her arm that had been stiff and painful moved with ease—hurt no more. She still suffered occasional twinges, and decided to continue her self-imposed starvation until every rheumatic germ in ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... bois-brules, who were the vassals of the two great companies. When their strength had been spent in the labors of hunting and trapping, they retired to the vicinity of some post—the largest of these settlements being Fort Garry, the germ of the modern city of Winnipeg, which as early as 1823 boasted of a population of about ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... century or so ago, under one phase or another of piracy. If men were savages on land they were doubly so at sea, and all the years of maritime adventure—years that added to the map of the world till there was little left to discover—could not wholly eradicate the piratical germ. It went out gradually with the settlement and ordering of the far-flung British colonies. Great Britain, foremost of sea powers, must be credited with doing more both directly and indirectly for the abolition of crime ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... or how long those processes lasted. This was as alien from his purpose as it would have been to tell what every physiologist now knows of the processes by which every individual man is developed from a small germ to a breathing and living infant. He takes men—and he could not but take men as he sees them—with their sinful nature, with their moral and spiritual capacity, with their relations of sex, with their relations of family. He has to teach ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... on such a principle must inevitably alienate. His object, I cannot too often repeat, was to bring together, to conciliate, to cement, to introduce a principle which should produce a community of interests among all his subjects. The germ of that principle he found in the alteration of the Musalman profession of faith above stated. The writings of Muhammad, misinterpreted and misapplied, could only produce disunion. He, then, for his age and for his reign, would take the place of the Prophet. He would be the interpreter of ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... of this partnership," he continued, thoughtfully. "You've got the analytical mind and the judicial disposition, and can think circles around me. From what little you've seen of those folks, tell me who, what, and where they are. I'm getting the germ of an idea, and maybe we can ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... one and only poem be ever published is also instructive. On his way back from the funeral of Tennyson in Westminster Abbey, he spent the journey in shaping out some lines on the dead poet, the germ of which had come into his mind in the Abbey. These, with a number of other tributes to Tennyson by professed poets, were printed in the Nineteenth Century for November, 1892. He ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... riches, in short, to reduce the power and influence of the old feudal and territorial nobility. The kingly authority, in our time, is not much of itself, and the principal question has become, how many or how few, or, in short, who are to share in its immunities. In this simple fact lies the germ of the revolution in France, and of reform in England. Money is changing hands, and power must go with it. This is, has been, and ever will be the case, except in those instances in which the great political trust is thrown ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... am now trying to do as I have seen, working steadily, without haste, with much discouragement, and now and then with a great gladness and auroral hope. I have this very day got a new idea that may have in it a true germ!" ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... this dream to her husband, whom it puzzled very much. At length he made out that he was to create a world. He knew before, that the bottom of the ocean was covered with sand. So he dived down, and brought up from thence a glittering grain to serve as the germ of the world. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... ear; and we can take a comfort, denied to Carlyle, from the fact that he has made us awake to our social duties. He has let loose the confusion upon us, and it is only natural that we should at first be overcome by a sense of bewildered helplessness. But this very sense contains the germ of hope, and England is struggling to its feet to wrestle with its wrongs. Carlyle has brought us within sight of our future, and we are now taking a step into it. He has been our guide in the wilderness; but he died there, and was denied the ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... young woman this morning, Miss Ruth!" exclaimed her friend. "I hope this matter will be settled in a way satisfactory to you. I really think there is the germ of a splendid picture in ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... struggle through and look fresh and robust in the spring. The longevity of the pot is surprising when we consider how much death there is all about it. I had a large brown flower-pot once that originally held the germ of a calla lily. This lily emerged from the soil with the light of immortality in its eye. It got up to where we began to be attached to it, and then it died. Then we put a plant in its place which was given us by a friend. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... affections and thoughts,—but that the whole house should thus be overwhelmed with miserable anxiety and pain because of a being in the embryo state of existence, who could neither respond nor understand, what a strange thing it was! No doubt this instinct had been implanted in order to preserve the germ and keep the race going; but that it should thus develop into an absorbing passion and overshadow everything else in life was a proof how the natural gets exaggerated, and, if we do not take care, changes its character altogether, mastering ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... ill of any body. The good qualities, which Leonora sees in her, are not yet visible to my eyes; but Leonora's visual orb is so cleared with charity and love, that she can discern what is not revealed to vulgar sight. Even in the very germ, she discovers the minute form of the perfect flower. The Olivia will, I hope, in time, blow out ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... these chapters in germ which is more fully brought out in the New Testament. Under the Old Covenant many blessings were enjoyed in measure and for a season, which in this dispensation are ours in their fulness and permanence. For instance, the atoning sacrifices of the seventh month had to ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor
... we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He has given no evidence that he has ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... again the fierce sectional excitement, deepened by injury and disappointment. Written in the light of the events alleged to have transpired in the presence of the men who wrote and adopted these resolutions, they seem to me the very germ of despotism and barbarity, and yet I am assured by a gentleman friendly to them that they are the creed of nine-tenths of the party in power in Mississippi. I should like to know—it is right that we should learn—the groundwork of opinions so ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... very liver and lungs, or, in one emphatic word, the very pluck of the metropolis. There is not a more striking instance of the remarkable connexion between little—very little—causes, and great—undeniably great—effects, than the extraordinary origin, rise, progress, germ, development, and maturity, of the above-bridge navy, the bringing of which prominently before the public, who may owe to that navy at some future—we hope so incalculably distant as never to have a chance of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... the Holy Ghost. In three eternal Persons I believe, Essence threefold and one, mysterious league Of union absolute, which, many a time, The word of gospel lore upon my mind Imprints: and from this germ, this firstling spark, The lively flame dilates, and like heav'n's star Doth glitter in me.'' As the master hears, Well pleas'd, and then enfoldeth in his arms The servant, who hath joyful tidings brought, And having told the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Ohio farmers they had well-nigh been driven from the field. The rows of pale thin corn (the stunted reward of necessitous husbandry) "showed that these people possess that spirit of labor, which, however undervalued by some unthinking mortals, is the germ from which all good mast spring." One cannot but notice with what patient industry these sturdy sons of the soil turn these rocky hillsides into fields of growing grain; how the apple trees were made to acquire health and productiveness; and how the wheat ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... mankind thought in waking life through many thousand years; the first cause that struck his spirit in order to explain anything that needed explanation satisfied him and passed as truth. In dreams this piece of ancient humanity works on in us, for it is the germ from which the higher reason developed and in every man still develops. The dream takes us back into remote conditions of human culture and puts in our hand the means of understanding it better. The dream thought is now so easy because, during the enormous duration of the evolution of mankind we ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... proteges, and they were always marked for talent. In early life he discerned the germ of great abilities in two youths of Savannah—George M. Troup and Thomas U.D. Charlton. Through his influence, these young men, almost as soon as eligible, were sent to the Legislature of the State, and both immediately took high positions. Talent was not the only requisite ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... sheaves; For thee alike the circling seasons flow Till the first blossoms heave the latest snow. In the stiff clod below the whirling drifts, In the loose soil the springing herbage lifts, In the hot dust beneath the parching weeds, Life's withering flower shall drop its shrivelled seeds; Its germ entranced in thy unbreathing sleep Till what thou sowest mightier ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... forest, before the age of refinement, impoverishment, and decay, has been transported into a similar and remote nursery, where a tragic and militant regime is permanently established. There the primitive germ is preserved intact and transmitted from one generation to another, renewed and invigorated by interbreeding. Finally, at the last stage of its growth, it springs out of the ground and develops magnificently, blooming the same as ever, and producing the same fruit as on the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of opinion, in the famine of their Canaan. Nullification shall leave a fitting successor, as Philip of Macedon left Alexander to carry out his plans. The abolitionist and the slave-holder are as distinct as were Charles I. and Cromwell, or Catharine de Medicis and Henry of Navarre. The germ that Calhoun has planted shall lie long in the earth, perhaps, but when it breaks the surface, it shall grow in one night to maturity, like that in your so famous 'Mother Goose' story of 'Jack and his Bean-stalk,' forming a ladder wherewith to scale the abode of giants and slay them in their ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... besides, the bright Kaustubha gem in thy bosom, thou art the beginning and the end of creation, and the great refuge of all. Thou art the supreme light and essence of the Universe! Thy face is directed towards every point. They call thee Supreme Germ and the depository of all treasures. Under thy protections, O lord of the gods, all evils lose their terror. As thou didst protect me before from Dussasana, do thou extricate me now from ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... than to close the day by reflection upon God, and heaven, and time, and eternity? No private employment, except that of prayer, have I found more pleasing and profitable than this. Youth is the seed-time of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come. Youthful piety is the germ of true honour, lawful prosperity, and everlasting blessedness. One day of humble, devotional piety in youth will add more to our happiness at the last end of life than a year of repentance and humiliation ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... the furrow, The plough-cloven clod And the ploughshare drawn thorough, The germ and the sod, The deed and the doer, the seed and the sower, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... between the opposite policies to be adopted with reference to Italy and Spain. In it he also calls attention to the scarcity of officers suitable for concerted action in a great enterprise, and a remark concerning the course to be pursued in this particular case contains the germ of his whole military system. "Combine your forces in a war, as in a siege, on one point. The breach once made, equilibrium is destroyed, everything else is useless, and the place is taken. Do not conceal, but concentrate, your attack." In the matter of politics he sees Germany ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... nothing, but she was very thoughtful all that day, and during the days which followed, for she had found out the truth about herself, and a little germ that had been growing in her breast, but of which she had thought little till Daniel Barnett came up and spoke, and made her know she had a heart—a fact of which she became perfectly sure, when the news reached her next morning of the ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... the suppurative process than to overcome it. Those who hold this opinion urge in support of it that cold applications are inimical to the life of the pus organism. At the same time, it must be remembered that in just so far as cold inhibits the growth of the invading germ, so in just the same degree does it adversely influence the functions of the tissues that are to fight against it. To our minds the question thus set up must always remain more or less a moot-point, and while we fully ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... the seed within the pod; The worm within its closed cocoon: The wings within the circling clod, The germ, that gropes through soil and sod To beauty, radiant in the noon: I am all these, behold! and more— I am the love at ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... having been united with hypocrisy. But let them be fairly separated, and then superstition will be honest feeling, and God, who loves all honest men, will lead the poor enthusiast in the path of holiness." Herein lies the germ of a truth. Again, Lavater says,—"A great woman not imperious, a fair woman not vain, a woman of common talents not jealous, an accomplished woman who scorns to shine, are four wonders just great enough to be divided among ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... this contracted germ was only less remarkable than that of the government. The capital of the provincial rebels had expanded into one fit for an empire, comparable to Vienna as a site for a World's Exposition and a caravanserai for those who should attend ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... and the shivering Flitch from the scene of their success and consternation was not ten miles on its way when his nerves and mind began to regain their normal steadiness and order. Another five miles, and the germ of a fresh plot began to swell in his brain—perhaps the ugliest, grimmest plot yet conceived and developed in that defiled temple. It was a crude plot, too, and quite unworthy of Francis Bullard, as he would have realised for ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... thoughts come to these solitudes. Here selfishness dies away, and purity and magnanimity expand, the essence and germ of life. Sitting here in these cool recesses, screened from the sun, moist and musical with the waters, crusts of worldliness and vanity cleave off from the soul. The din dies away, and, with ears attuned to the harmonies of nature, we are soothed to summer ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... vocalic, syllabic endings for words. Contrast Esp. bon-o with French bon, Eng. good, Germ. gut. By this means Esperanto is not only rendered slower, more harmonious, and easier of comprehension; it is also able to denote the parts of speech clearly to eye and ear by their form. Thus final -o bespeaks a noun; -a, an adjective; -e, an ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... way as admirably, but again not on many. The Middle Ages lost the dramatic way almost entirely, but they actually improved the poetical on its narrative side, and the result was Romance. In every romance there is the germ of a novel and more; there is at least the suggestion and possibility of romance in every novel that deserves the name. In the Tristram story and the Lancelot cycle there are most of the things that the romancer of ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... could not do while he realized that Miss Huntington was so near upon the shore; for, so far as such a being could really love, he did love the lady; and yet his sentiment of regard was so mixed up with selfishness and bitterness of spirit, and pride at being refused, that the small germ of real affection which had found birth in his bosom was too much corroded with alloy to be identified. He felt that he had been overreached by Captain Ratlin, and also that he had good grounds of suspecting his successful ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... patronised me unblushingly, made me feel like a foolish amateur, a helpless novice, inquired into my habits of work and conveyed to me that I was utterly vieux jeu and had not had the advantage of an early training. I had not been brought up from the germ, I knew nothing of life—didn't go at it on HIS system. He had dipped into French feuilletons and picked up plenty of phrases, and he made a much better show in talk than his poor mother, who never had time to read anything and could only be vivid with her pen. If I didn't kick him ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... merest germ of an imagination will understand the extraordinary possibilities of such a substance, and will sympathise a little with the emotion I felt as this understanding emerged from the haze of abstruse phrases in which Cavor expressed himself. Comic relief in a play indeed! ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... numbers are legion, who worry about their health and that of the members of their family. What with the doctors scaring the life out of them with the germ theory, seeking to obtain legislation to vaccinate them, examine their children nude in school, take out their tonsils, appendices, and other internal organs, inject serums into them for this, that, and the other, and requiring them to observe a score and one maxims which they ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... 1833, when he really started the germ of his life-work, he, like his father, had the idea that he would live to an enormous age; and he was in high spirits about the pecuniary side of his transaction with ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... occupation to ladies and gentlemen who have nothing to do. It is in distant and far different climes to our own, and in the remote antiquity of long vanished ages:—it is among the people of the East, the Arabs, the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Syrians, that the germ and origin is to be found of this species of fictitious narrative, for which the peculiar genius and poetical temperament of those nations particularly adapt them, and in which they delight to a degree scarcely to be credited. For even their ordinary discourse is interspersed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... refer to the great strides made during the last half-century towards establishing laws and theories of genetics and heredity. Unfortunately, terms such as the "integrity of the germ plasm" and "the Mendelian law," while marking great advances in biological thought and science, have become too much associated in the public mind with a depressing and fatalistic notion that heredity determines everything and that environment can play but a very insignificant part in human evolution, ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... as to the lessons they teach. "When the American Congress declared war on England in 1812," he says, "it seemed as if this unequal conflict would crush her navy in the act of being born; instead, it but fertilized the germ. It is only since that epoch that the United States has taken rank among maritime powers. Some combats of frigates, corvettes, and brigs, insignificant without doubt as regards material results, sufficed to break the charm which protected the ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... after week the voyagers seem the centre of the same watery circle canopied by the same bending sky. No mile-stones tell of their progress. The way-marks of the mariner are the sun by day and the moon and stars by night; no kindred ship answers back its red-cross signal; but there they float, the germ of a future nation, upon the desert waters. Sailing a circuitous route, they did not reach the coast of America until January 13, 1733, when they cast anchor in Rebellion Roads, and furled their sails at last in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... asking you that for the sake of having my conscience clear. Accidents of this kind only develop the germ that is already there and hasten on the disease. The physical influence of the passions on the heart is a theory—It has been studied a great deal the last twenty years; and quite right, too, in my opinion. The thesis that ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... this, for I have not proved it.' He thus chose his sling, his staff, shepherd's bag and stones, because he was used to them, and could recollect what he had heretofore done with them." The modern germ or bacilli theory of disease, now generally accepted by learned physicians, was not unknown or even new in his time. He speaks of it as an "insect" theory, based on the belief that diseases were produced by an invisible insect, floating in the air, taken in with the breath, where it ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... General Biography is an unsatisfactory compilation drawn up by Mr. W. Johnston, to whom we are indebted for the current barbarism so-called. In that account there is not one word on Hell's Treatise on Artificial Magnets, Vienna, 1763; in which the germ of animal ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... that if you destroy even the humblest insect it may be a relation who has unfortunately had to assume this form, and causes even eggs to be classed amongst forbidden articles, because they contain the germ of life. ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... /untw[e]onde/ with Grein and Cosijn. 1276. I have here omitted two half-lines, of which the sense is very obscure. Grein connects /lifrum/ with Germ. liefern"to coagulate" (cf. Eng. loppered milk), instead of assigning it to /lifer/"liver," but this interpretation is not very satisfactory. See also Cosijn's note (Paul und ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... deadly winter the germ of hope was not to be kept from sprouting in their hearts. It was just at this time that ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... of the patriarchs concerning their burial places is like one of those premonitions in an antecedent stratum of geology, or species of animals, of a coming manifestation;—a prophesying germ, a yearning, created by Him who, with all-seeing wisdom, establishes anticipations in the moral, as well as in the natural, world, concerning things with regard to which a thousand years are ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... pursued by thousands in the learned world. It was a tendency which had the honour of being the last in history to embody itself in a distinct mythical cycle. "Doctor Faustus" may probably have had an historical germ; but in any case "Doctor Faustus," as known to legend and to literature, is merely a personification of the practical ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... an image, or a shadow so much more attractive than the original. When wearied of this, Aylmer bade her cast her eyes upon a vessel containing a quantity of earth. She did so with little interest at first; but was soon startled to perceive the germ of a plant shooting upward from the soil: Then came the slender stalk; the leaves gradually unfolded themselves; and amid them was a ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... guidance. It did not look up, for it knew not to whom or to what it might appeal. It travelled an endless round of memory, from cause to effect and back again to cause, looking for the single act, or thought, that must have been the starting point, that must have held the germ of his guilt. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... at a dreadful pace. It was as if a big-bellied bottle were turned upside down, and as if the bottle were sentient and strove to empty the whole of its contents at once through a narrow neck. At last a meaning began to declare itself—the merest intelligible germ of a meaning—but it grew and grew until Paul clapped his hands with a ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... seeming filthiness and the floating corpses. The Hindoos have been laughed at, these many generations, but the laughter will need to modify itself a little from now on. How did they find out the water's secret in those ancient ages? Had they germ-scientists then? We do not know. We only know that they had a civilization long before we emerged from savagery. But to return to where I was before; I was about ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... exclaimed Miss Williams. "Why, I don't possess such a thing! If the water is good and hot and clean, you don't need a towel. Just let the dishes drain. It is much more sanitary. Towels are awful germ harborers. But if you want to help, you might straighten up this table. Don't ask for a cloth or you ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... the significance of the observations. For what I observed is like the tiny spark from the rubbed piece of amber, like the contraction of the muscles of the dead frog that Galvani observed - a small phenomenon that the unbelieving ridicules, but in which the wise sees the germ of new, never-guessed-at ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... been shed will never come back; the wealth which has been wasted will come back but only slowly. In any case, it must become, for all living in it, a Europe of peaceful labour. The peace which shall end this war must be a lasting one and not containing the germ of a fresh war, but establishing a final and peaceful order ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... the appearance of "Hereward the Wake," sometimes called "Hereward, the Last of the English," Kingsley brought to a close a remarkable series of works of fiction. Although the story was not published until 1866, the germ of it came to Kingsley, according to Mrs. Kingsley's "Memoirs" of her husband, during the summer of 1848, while on a visit to Crowland Abbey, near Peterborough, with the Rev. F.D. Maurice. As its title implies, the romance is suggested by the life and adventures ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... one or two at a time. To facilitate germination some growers file the seed, others soak it until the skin becomes sufficiently soft to permit of the paring away of a small portion with a sharp knife. In either case caution must be exercised to avoid injuring the germ. A safer mode of attaining the object is to soak the seeds in water, placed in a greenhouse or stove, for about twenty-four hours before sowing. After soaking the seeds it is necessary to keep the soil constantly moist, or the germs will certainly suffer injury. The number of ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... the Red Chamber.—When the Heavens were opened and earth was laid out chaos prevailed! What was the germ of love? It arises entirely from the strength of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the walls of Sevastopol had sealed by their death not the honor but the dishonor of the old regime of blood and iron. Beneath the rotting corpse of an obsolete statecraft, built upon serfdom and maintained by soldiery and police, the germ of a new and better ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... not a providential compensation for his twice-broken head. Thirty-eight hundred and fifty dollars would be a very handsome atonement for two such raps as he had received, and he was Mammon-worshipper enough to feel willing that his head should be pounded to a jelly at this rate, so long as the germ of his mighty ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... have a germ-proof room for him," laughed Alice Greggory, playfully snapping her fingers at the baby ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... notions of other people's morality are too exalted. I don't accept responsibility for Stafford. He would not have followed my suggestion unless the idea had been in germ in his own mind." ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... govern public as well as private life. The nation comes from the nursery. Public opinion itself is for the most part the outgrowth of the home; and the best philanthropy comes from the fireside. "To love the little platoon we belong to in society," says Burke, "is the germ of all public affections." From this little central spot, the human sympathies may extend in an ever widening circle, until the world is embraced; for, though true philanthropy, like charity, begins at home, assuredly it does not ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... is not distinctly recognized and is not made the basis of the distinction between the two classes. The world is seen to be full of Powers that make for weal or for woe—a conception that contains the germ of all the later development but is at ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... not believe if I tell you. 'Life is but the germ of Death, and Death the development of a ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... circumstances in which he found her, vanished as he drew near to the simple, essential womanhood. His heart saw hers and loved it; and he knew that, the centre once gained, he could, as from the fountain of life, as from the innermost secret of the holy place, the hidden germ of power and possibility, transform the outer intellect and outermost manners as he pleased. With what a thrill of joy, a feeling for a long time unknown to him, and till now never known in this form or with this intensity, the thought arose in his heart that here lay one who some ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... the germ of a fine poetic thought, says John Hay, that "Mr. Lincoln took, and, in a new development and perfect form, gave to it the life and spirit and beauty which have made it celebrated." As it appears in the President-elect's clear, firm handwriting, it reads as follows: "I am loth to ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... considerable advantages must arise from the federal hooping of the States. It was with pleasure that every sincere friend of America beheld, as the natural effect of union, her rising prosperity; and it was with grief they saw that prosperity mixed, even in the blossom, with the germ of corruption. Monopolies of every kind marked your administration almost in the moment of its commencement. The lands obtained by the revolution were lavished upon partisans; the interest of the disbanded soldier was sold to the speculator; injustice was ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the most ancient times have interpreted it. Looking at this song from the position of the Old Testament, its ground-idea is: "Thy Maker is thy husband." Identical with this is the New Testament idea: "The bride, the Lamb's wife." The germ of this representation exists in the Pentateuch, where idolatry is regarded as spiritual adultery. Exod. 34:15; Deut. 31:16. We find it fully developed in the forty-fifth Psalm, which probably belongs to Solomon's age, and which is expressly quoted in the epistle to the Hebrews as a description ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life. Said Calhoun in 1817, "We are great, and rapidly—I was about to say fearfully—growing!"[2:1] So saying, he touched the distinguishing feature of American life. All peoples show development; the germ theory of politics has been sufficiently emphasized. In the case of most nations, however, the development has occurred in a limited area; and if the nation has expanded, it has met other growing peoples whom it has conquered. But in the case of the United States we have a different phenomenon. ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... epigram concerning food that came into his mind. "It's not the food you dream about that matters," he said to himself; "it's the vittles that walk right in and become a member of the family." He felt that this needed a little polishing and rephrasing, but that there was a germ of wit in it. He had a habit of encountering ideas ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... Measure," in which, when it was yet too unripe for practical statesmen, he had attached his faith as a thinker, the orator's eye flashed with young fire. A great truth is eternally clear to a great heart that has once nourished its germ and foreseen its fruits. But when Alban quitted that part of his theme, all the rest seemed wearisome to his listener. They had now wound their walk to the opposite side of the lake, and paused near the thick beech-trees, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the spring. Let him take a dozen or two kernels that appear to be in quality a fair average of the whole lot of seed on hand, place them in a tumbler with some dampened cotton, or a piece of sponge, and set the tumbler in a warm place, where the heat is uniform, and high enough to start the germ in a few days. In a day or two, if the seeds are good, they will begin to swell, and the embryo plant will soon begin to grow. Thus, according to the number of seeds that have germinated out of the ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... give her an occult and supreme significance. And she would be enduring which is the essence of woman's visible, tangible power. Of that I was certain. Had she not endured already? Yet it is so true that the germ of destruction lies in wait for us mortals, even at the very source of our strength, that one may die of too much endurance as well as of too little ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... a value on the Fourth Gospel for a knowledge of the intellectual movement of that day. It is true that a religion need not be a philosophy, but it must not owe philosophy any answer. Small as may be the emphasis that we now lay on the Logos doctrine, in that period it was the centre, the vital germ of the whole Christian teaching. If we read any of the writings of Athanasius, or of any of the older church fathers, we shall be surprised to see how all of them begin with the Word (Logos) as a ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... continually arising. Instead of becoming an eager advocate of every novelty or adopting an attitude of indiscriminate scepticism he will be in some measure able to estimate the true merit of new proposals, and his knowledge of mental operations will serve as an aid in judging whether they have any germ of sound principle. The alternative plan of leaving the teacher to learn his craft solely by practice often has the result of confining him too closely to narrow and stereotyped methods, based either ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various |
